I file my claim in the Anthropic copyright case — and sit back to wait for the results.

I wrote about the Anthropic copyright case in three blog posts here, so I’m not going to go into the details again. If you want to get up to speed on my thoughts, read these:

• Fighting Against AI Copyright Theft
• Is Any Book Really Dead These Days?
• Copyright Basics

My Claim

The case went back and forth and it seemed for a while that the $3,000 per title settlement was not going to be accepted. But then it was and recently the legal team handling the claims for copyright holders including authors like me published the definitive list of infringed works. I used the lookup feature and found nine of my books.

Of the nine, two were registered under the name of the publisher, McGraw-Hill. The rest were registered under my name.

I clicked the link to file a claim, which is required if I expect any compensation for their theft of my work. The form was time consuming to complete — it took me nearly an hour to add all nine titles. And yes, I added all nine because maybe there is a chance that I’ll get some of the proceeds for titles not registered with me as the actual copyright holder.

Theoretically, I should be entitled to $21K to $27K of compensation. I’m not sure if the lawyers’ fees come out before or after this payment. For all I know, I might only get $100/title. But I also know that I won’t get anything if I don’t submit a claim.

I’ve done my part; now I have to wait and see.

Further Thoughts

My thoughts on this matter are pretty straightforward. No person or organization should be allowed to access and use copyrighted work without going through legal channels to do so. Anthropic committed piracy; that’s accepted and is the reason they’re paying up. But did they get permission to use the works to train an AI system? Clearly, they did not. That’s the real reason they should be paying.

I’m in a weird situation. In my mind, these books were dead. They cover topics that are no longer current and have very little (if any) value. I never expected to see another dime in compensation for writing them. So this is all icing on a cake I’ve already eaten. I’ll take it!

But what of the people whose work still has legitimate current value? Or of future books I might write that don’t go out of print in 2 years? How often will our work be used without our permission to train systems designed to replace us?

I’ve got a real problem with that — and you should, too.