Authors push back as publishers and agents claim shares of Anthropic settlement
Authors awaiting payouts from Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement say publishers and literary agents have filed claims that may exceed their legitimate share. Writers are reporting repeated errors, prompting concerns about systemic problems in the distribution process.
Some authors hoping to receive payments from Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement say they received surprising emails this week, informing them that someone else was claiming their money.
Anthropic settled a class-action copyright lawsuit last year after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use, but that pirating such material is not. The settlement received final court approval in July, allowing payments to proceed. Under its terms, authors of nearly 500,000 titles are to receive $3,000 for each pirated work. For books still in print through a traditional publisher, the payment is split evenly between author and publisher. For self-published books or works whose rights have reverted to the author, the entire amount should go to the writer.
But authors have taken to social media to complain that publishers appear to be claiming more than their fair share. Mystery and thriller writer April Henry questioned, for instance, why HarperCollins claimed one of her books for which rights had reverted at least 17 years ago. Henry also said she received a credit alert the same day, adding the publisher as her employer, a claim she denies.
Victoria Strauss, who runs the popular blog Writers Beware, said she has received complaints falling into two broad categories. In one, publishers are seeking payment for works they no longer legitimately control because rights have reverted. In the other, publishers are demanding the full 100% payment when they are entitled to only 50%. Strauss said she is reluctant to attribute such problems to malice, noting that poor recordkeeping could plausibly explain them. Some publishers have already acknowledged mistakes and asked Anthropic to correct them.
Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, told The New York Times she does not see this as a grab by publishers or an attempt to deliberately cheat authors. Rather, she called it a predictable consequence of bad recordkeeping and a confusing settlement process. Strauss acknowledged that the complaints she has seen are only a small glimpse into a massive operation, but added that the unusually high number of reports over the past two days and repeated identical errors suggest something widespread and systemic, not routine glitches.
Literary agencies are also filing claims for a cut of the payments. Strauss said this is surprising because agents are not rightsholders in the books they sell. Author Courtney Milan, the pen name of former law clerk and law professor Heidi Bond, was blunt on Bluesky, writing that some agents are apparently trying to claim percentages and that she does not remotely believe they should do so. Milan and the Authors Guild have shared details about how authors can dispute their payment allocations. One important caveat is that, for an author to claim 100% of a book's payment, rights reversion must have occurred before August 10, 2022, which is the settlement's download date.
