Legal

After rightsholders found widespread errors in their claims for the Anthropic settlement, the settlement website has continued to vex many people, since records often appear to stay the same and not reflect submitted changes. PL contacted class counsel, who clarified that “the requested changes will not show up in the portal immediately.” (It would be nice if they had indicated that on the settlement website.) When changes are submitted in the portal, the rightsholder gets an instant confirmation email, but that does not mean the underlying record is changed right away. After that, “a staff member from the Settlement Administrator […]

The judge in the Freeman-Wolff copyright case offered a rebuke of Lynne Freeman and her attorneys’ attempts to lengthen the proceedings. “I do not believe that Ms. Freeman’s counsel is acting in good faith and I will not stand for being jerked around—and I am indeed being jerked around—in this manner by any lawyer who practices before me,” Judge Colleen McMahon wrote. The filing is a response to months of filings arguing whether Freeman will be able to pay legal fees incurred by the defendants. In July, Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that Freeman must pay all attorney fees for Entangled, […]

OpenAI created a library of pirated books for use and sharing outside of its training data, according to a newly unsealed version of the books plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgement. Internal documents also show that employees believed LLMs would create substitutes for books and threatened creative output, echoing what authors have long argued in their lawsuits against LLM companies. The initial filing gave only hints that OpenAI could be vulnerable to the same issue that led to Anthropic’s record-setting copyright infringement settlement—keeping a private library of all the downloaded pirated books and using it for broad purposes, not just AI […]

After widespread errors occurred in claims for the Anthropic copyright settlement, rightsholders now have 60 days to submit information to support their claim. Previously, the deadline for filing a dispute was 30 days from the day the claimant received their notice about the settlement allocation (between September 2–4). The settlement website notes that disputes may not be resolved within those 60 days. “Any works for which disputes are not resolved before the first distribution of Settlement payments will not be included in the first distribution and will instead be included in a subsequent distribution,” the site says.

The Authors Guild has updated its resources for authors making Anthropic claims, following a wave of incorrect claims filings earlier this month. The updates include a list of dedicated email addresses at four of the five big houses for authors to reach out for claims challenges or other disputes: Penguin Random House: anthropicsettlement@penguinrandomhouse.com HarperCollins: anthropicsettlement@harpercollins.com Macmillan: anthropic@macmillan.com Hachette Book Group: AnthropicClaims@hbgusa.com The Guild adds: “If your publisher does not have a central email address for issues around the settlement, you should reach out to your editor. If the editor is no longer with the publisher, try to find a contact for the general counsel […]