Emma Alpern, Vulture; Publishers Hit the AI Jackpot
"When Anthropic said it would pay $1.5 billion to resolve the class-action lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic, it was agreeing to the largest U.S. copyright settlement of all time. Each copyrighted title will be allotted $3,000, mostly split 50-50 between authors and publishers, with the first payment coming as soon as November. For publishing houses with thousands of titles, the not-insubstantial infusion of tech money is “a shot in the arm,” as one publishing professional puts it. “I don’t think anyone’s satisfied,” says a big-five editor, “but it was more money than I expected. It’s a lot of money.”
It was a different story for writers, many of whom, earlier this September, logged on to Anthropic’s online portal to check on their claims and were shocked to discover their publishers had filed for 100 percent of the cash. Others realized with dismay that their publishers had failed to register their books for copyright at all, making them ineligible, and that some out-of-print books were shown as being subject to the publisher-author split even though their ownership had long ago reverted to the person who wrote them. The mood was grim. “I knew the Anthropic settlement would get messy, but I’m in disbelief over the shakedowns happening with publishers, former agents, and others trying to get a bigger percentage (or any at all),” children’s writer Elizabeth Eulberg wrote on Threads. I asked author April Henry if she’s found it hard to reach her publishers, one of whom mistakenly filed for 100 percent. “I didn’t try. Who would I get in touch with?” she says. “They never really communicated with us.”
No comments:
Post a Comment