Here is a short summary of the motion to approve the class settlement (more detail here):
Subject to court approval, the principal terms are: Anthropic will pay the Class at least $1.5 billion dollars, plus interest.
With around 500,000 works in the Class, this amounts to an estimated gross recovery of $3,000 per Class Work.
Anthropic will destroy the LibGen and PiLiMi datasets after the expiration of any litigation preservation or other court orders.
Note that the final list of works affected, which will differ substantially from the list on the Atlantic website, will not be finalized and released until early October. Divisions of each award between author and publisher may be subject to minor variation based on original contract terms. In the case of self-published work, and wherever rights have fully reverted to the author, some award details remain to be clarified.
This is the beginning of a long process.
There are more details provided here and here, and many more coming soon. We will keep you updated on what’s next.
For now, make sure you fill out the author and publisher settlement form, located here, and make sure SFWA has your correct preferred email and mailing address.
This is a great way to end the week – with an acknowledgement of our labor and the possibility of more to come.
Stay tuned, and keep writing!
Your SFWA Advocacy Team
Ongoing Issues to Be Addressed
While this week’s announcement comes as a promising first step towards accountability and the protection of authors’ work for many, SFWA recognizes the persistence of deep uncertainties around this decision, and what it has revealed about our publishing ecosystem.
As noted recently on Writer Beware®, even traditional publishers do not always register an author’s copyright (a key component of eligibility for this Class Action). Indie-published writers, writers whose works are part of complex multi-author texts, and writers who operate outside the US also face challenges when it comes to next steps extending from this first settlement.
Authors excluded over technicalities in this first Class Action are welcome to start their own, building on the preliminary success of this initiative.
Lastly, the aforementioned Anthropic settlement has not yet been approved by the court. If enough authors opt out of its terms, it will be stopped automatically.
So what is the best course of action for an author who was pirated by Anthropic but not included in the class at this juncture? Talk to a lawyer about your options. If there is uncertainty about if your work(s) will qualify, fill out the above settlement form. And spread the word, to keep up the pressure on companies that have stolen from literary creators.
This decision is only the beginning of a long struggle to better protect our work.
