Media Roundup + Statements: “Anthropic Agrees to Pay $1.5 Billion to Settle Lawsuit With Book Authors”

Primary Document: Settlement Agreement (39 pages; PDF) (via CourtListener)

From The NY Times:

In a landmark settlement, Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to a group of authors and publishers after a judge ruled it had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyrighted books.

The settlement is largest payout in the history of U.S. copyright cases. Anthropic will pay $3,000 per work to 500,000 authors.

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As part of the settlement, Anthropic said that it did not use any pirated works to build A.I. technologies that were publicly released. The settlement also gives anyone the right to still sue Anthropic if they believe that the company’s technologies are reproducing their works without proper approval. Anthropic also agreed to delete the pirated works it downloaded and stored.

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From Reuters:

Anthropic and the plaintiffs in a court filing asked U.S. District Judge William Alsup to approve the settlement, after announcing the agreement in August without disclosing the terms or amount.

“If approved, this landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history, larger than any other copyright class action settlement or any individual copyright case litigated to final judgment,” the plaintiffs said in the filing.

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From WIRED:

Anthropic is not admitting any wrongdoing or liability. “Today’s settlement, if approved, will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims. We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said in a statement.

It’s unclear how the literary world will respond to the terms of the settlement. Since this was an “opt-out” class action, authors who are eligible but dissatisfied with the terms will be able to request exclusion to file their own lawsuits. Notably, the plaintiffs filed a motion today to keep the “opt-out threshold” confidential, which means that the public will not have access to the exact number of class members who would need to opt out for the settlement to be terminated.

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This is not the end of Anthropic’s copyright legal challenges. The company is also facing a lawsuit from a group of major record labels, including Universal Music Group, which alleges that the company used copyrighted lyrics to train its Claude chatbot. The plaintiffs are now attempting to amend their case to include allegations that Anthropic used the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent to illegally download songs, and their lawyers recently stated in court filings that they may file a new lawsuit about piracy if they are not permitted to amend the current complaint.

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From the Associated Press:

As part of the settlement, the company has also agreed to destroy the original book files it downloaded.

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On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.”

The Danish Rights Alliance, which successfully fought to take down one of those shadow libraries, said Friday that the settlement would be of little help to European writers and publishers whose works aren’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

“On the one hand, it’s comforting to see that compiling AI training datasets by downloading millions of books from known illegal file-sharing sites comes at a price,” said Thomas Heldrup, the group’s head of content protection and enforcement.

On the other hand, Heldrup said it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine, compared to the size of the business, for breaking the rules.

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From Variety:

A hearing has been set for Sept. 8 for preliminary approval of the agreement. A website, AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com, has been established to enable class members to participate in the settlement. The website is expected to add a searchable database of affected works, which were contained in the Library Genesis (LibGen) and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi) databases.

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Analysis/Statements

• Association of American Publishers: Statement and Q&A
• Authors Alliance: Statement/Analysis
• Authors Guild: Statement/Resources
• Dan Cohen: Will a Landmark AI Settlement Make Authors Feel Whole?
• Human Artistry Campaign: Statement
• Re:Create: Don’t Read Much Into the Proposed Settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic
• Re:Create: Statement on the Settlement in Bartz v. Anthropic 

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Data Files, Libraries, News, Roundup