Publishers and literary agents claim a share of the $1.5 billion Anthropic paid in the books lawsuit
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
The first big money an SI company paid authors for training ran into not technology but the old bureaucracy of the book market; the "SI pays creators" model works, but intermediaries want their cut too.
Under Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement, about 500,000 books receive $3,000 each: for books in print the money is split equally between author and publisher, and for self-published books and books whose rights have reverted, 100% goes to the author; the settlement received final approval in July. Now authors complain that publishers are claiming books whose rights reverted long ago (HarperCollins filed a claim for author April Henry on a book whose rights reverted at least 17 years ago), demanding 100% instead of 50%, and literary agents are filing claims without being rights holders. The head of the Authors Guild attributes this to poor record-keeping, while the Writer Beware blogger points to suspiciously identical errors.
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