Authors push back as publishers, agents claim shares of Anthropic settlement

Anthropic settled a copyright class action last year after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use, but pirating that material was not; the deal received final approval in July, allowing payments to proceed. Under the settlement’s terms, authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If a book is still in print with a traditional publisher, the payment splits 50-50 between author and publisher; if the book was self-published, or the publisher reverted the rights by letting it go out of print, the author should get the full payment.

But writers have posted on social media that publishers appear to be claiming more than their fair share on some payments. Mystery and thriller author April Henry asked, “WTF is HarperCollins playing at? They claimed one of my books on the Anthropic Settlement that reverted back at least 17 years ago AND on the same day I got a credit alert saying they had been added as my employer! (which they never were).” At the blog Writers Beware, Victoria Strauss wrote that author complaints fall into two categories: publishers seeking payment for works whose rights have reverted, and publishers seeking a full 100% payment when they’re entitled to only 50%. Strauss said she’s “reluctant to attribute to malice what can be plausibly explained by poor recordkeeping,” noting some publishers have already asked Anthropic to fix the errors. Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger told The New York Times she doesn’t see this as “a grab by the publishers,” attributing it instead to bad recordkeeping and a confusing settlement process. Strauss acknowledged her observations are “a peek through a small crack in a massive wall,” but said the volume and repetition of the errors she’s received “suggest to me that these aren’t the kind of routine glitches you might expect from such a large operation, but something much more wide[s]pread and systemic.”

Publishers aren’t the only ones seeking a cut: Strauss said a number of literary agencies are also filing claims, which she called surprising since “agents are not rightsholders in the books that they sell.” Author Courtney Milan (the pen name of former law clerk and law professor Heidi Bond) wrote on Bluesky, “Apparently some agents are trying to claim percentages on the Anthropic settlement, and I do not REMOTELY think they should do this, what the fuck, stop that shit!” Milan and the Authors Guild have shared details on how authors can dispute their payment allocations; one key detail is that for an author to make a 100% claim, the rights reversion must have happened before August 10, 2022 — the settlement’s “download date.”

Why it matters

The disputes show that even a finalized, court-approved AI copyright settlement can break down in execution when rights-tracking across publishers, agents, and authors is inconsistent — a problem likely to recur in future AI licensing deals.