If the literary year 2025 could be summed up in a single figure, that figure would be $3,000. The amount, of course, scheduled to be paid for each eligible title in the Anthropic AI piracy settlement.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
You would be forgiven for thinking that $3,000 is “the amount” that rights holders of titles will end up being paid when a tech company has used a pirated copy of their work to train its generative AI model.
But now six authors have decided otherwise, issuing individual suits against tech firms including Anthropic (and also several other major players). Those claims clearly state that $3,000 is not sufficient compensation. Interestingly, the authors paved the way for these claims by opting out of the $3,000-per-title Anthropic settlement.
They are each now claiming $150,000 per title from each of six defendants against whom they are bringing the case. $150,000 is the ceiling set by the Copyright Act, and the claimants state that the fact the Anthropic settlement alights on a figure standing at just 2 percent of that ceiling is, in itself, not acceptable.
Challenging the Settlement Logic
One interesting thing about this case is that the claimants place significant emphasis on the importance of what goes into AI models in ensuring the quality of what comes out. That is, AI models worth vast sums to the companies behind them derive that value from the exceptionally high quality of the work on which they have been trained.
Having been an indie since before the dawn of Kindle, this kind of statement always piques my curiosity. On the foundations of such rhetoric are often built arguments of differential value. I am not, I hasten to add, suggesting these authors are doing so. But such arguments might claim that there is a higher tier of “better” books worth more per title than any general class.
What Comes Next
I highly recommend the Publishers Weekly article on the case, which provides some very helpful background, including cautionary notes issued by the judge in the Anthropic case about opting out of the settlement.
I end by noting that one of the reasons cited by many commentators for the low payout level is that anything approaching the upper limit would have sent Anthropic bankrupt. Six claimants as against hundreds of thousands is very different arithmetic, but an arithmetic that could, if successful, create a two-tier settlement.
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