Authors Grady Hendrix and Jennifer Roberson have filed a class action lawsuit in the Northern District of California against Apple for copyright infringement using their books to train its LLM. The lawsuit asserts that Apple used the pirated dataset Books3 to train its language models, and that the company’s Applebot software scraped pirate sites to obtain copyrighted books. It also notes that Apple entered a licensing deal with Shutterstock to train its genAI tools, but not with authors. “Apple did not compensate creators for use of their copyrighted works and concealed the sources of their training datasets to evade legal […]
AI
Powell’s Under Fire For AI Merch Design
Critics have asserted online that Powell’s Books in Portland used AI to create designs that appear on shirts and mugs. One shows an illustration of a wolf standing on top of books, the spines of which show both binding and pages. One online comment claims that employees complained about the design before the shirts were printed, but “were given the runaround.” “Powell’s workers have been voicing concerns about the use of AI in these designs for months and company leadership has been unmoved… maybe feedback from customers and book industry peers will move them?” the Powell’s workers’ union, ILWU Local […]
Anthropic Settles With Authors For $1.5 Billion
Anthropic has settled the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a class of authors for at least $1.5 billion, plus interest. The proposed settlement, once approved by the court, will be split among the rightsholders of all of the books included in the class after administration and lawyers’ fees and expenses, and will pay out in four installments, with the full settlement amount being paid by Anthropic over two years. Anthropic is paying $3,000 for each infringed work with a registered US copyright, and this huge win for creators comprises the “the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history” in the […]
Authors Express Concern Over Unregistered Copyrights
On social media, a rash of authors have reported an initial finding that their publishers may not have formally registered copyright for their books with the US Copyright Office as stipulated by contract — which means those titles would not be eligible to participate in the Anthropic class action settlement. Books must have been registered within five years of the publication date and before the start of Anthropic’s infringement (or within three months of publication) to qualify as part of the class. Any other books are not entitled to any part of the settlement and that cannot be remediated at […]
Additional Law Firms Join Anthropic Suit to Support Publishers and Authors
While Anthropic tries to win a reprieve from or postponement of the class action trial on their infringement of up to 7 million books, the business of determining legal eligibility continues apace. Attorneys from both sides are drafting a notice form to be distributed to class members along with a list of works at issue. Class action law firm Edelson and the copyright firm Oppenheim + Zebrak have joined the original plaintiffs’ attorneys, serving as publishers’ coordination counsel, “representing the interests of publishers in the common goal of maximizing the per-work recovery for the Class.” The newly added firms “are […]
Anthropic Tries to Appeal Author Class Certification, Claims It Faces “‘Death-Knell’ Situation”
Enjoy, at least for a brief moment, that AI company Anthropic’s legal posturing expressing outright existential panic, as it filed a petition in early August with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to appeal the certification of a broad class of copyright owners of “any book in the versions of” the pirate libraries LibGen or PiLiMi downloaded by Anthropic. This frail start-up tells the Court of Appeals it may be forced into massive settlement of billions of dollars over their theft of 7 million illegally pirated books, pleading that, “This case presents a quintessential ‘death-knell’ situation justifying immediate […]