The rule, and the claims against it
Anthropic’s $1.5bn settlement over pirated books, approved in July, covers close to 500,000 titles and pays $3,000 for each work. The split is meant to be simple. If the book is still in print with a traditional publisher, the money is divided 50-50 between author and publisher. If it was self-published, or the publisher reverted the rights by letting the book go out of print, the author takes the whole payment. Rights that reverted before the download date of 10 August 2022 fall on the author’s side of the line.
TechCrunch reported on 6 September that authors are finding that rule ignored. Some say publishers have filed claims on books whose rights reverted years earlier. Others say publishers are claiming 100% of a payout where the rule allows at most half.
Named cases
The novelist April Henry said HarperCollins had filed a claim against her payout for a book whose rights reverted to her more than 17 years ago. “WTF is HarperCollins playing at?” she wrote.
Literary agencies are also filing, which is the part that surprised writers most, since agents are not rightsholders in the books they sell. “Agents are trying to claim percentages on the Anthropic settlement, and I do not REMOTELY think they should do this,” the author Courtney Milan wrote.
Not obviously a paperwork problem
Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, who has been logging complaints, wrote that the “unusually large number of reports” points to something “much more widespread and systemic” than routine administrative error. That is the distinction that matters: a mistaken claim gets withdrawn, while a contested interpretation of reversion clauses gets litigated, and the settlement’s payment machinery is not built for the second.
The Authors Guild reported at the start of September that 91.3% of eligible books had been claimed, so the pool of disputes is close to its final size.
What to watch
First payments of roughly $2,203.56 per title are due between 1 and 15 November, but only for works where every rightsholder has agreed on the split. Every contested title misses that window. The practical test of the settlement is not the headline $1.5bn but how many authors are still waiting in December because a publisher or an agent filed a claim they were not entitled to make.
