The letter from the US I found in my (home) mailbox last week sounded like a spam building on copyright violations, if an elaborate one, with promises of huge settlement benefits ($3000 per work, for a total of $1.5 billion!) and a California judge authorization stamped on the envelope… However, after being contacted by a co-author and checking on Internet about the existence of a class action against Anthropic and its pirated libraries, I realised this was not (a spam) and checked that the database of the works concerned by this settlement included eight of my books. (Incl. second editions.) Although I do not expect much return (if any!) once the costs and fees and publishers’ share are subtracted, and the remainder split between 7M books!, this is a first instance of getting back at the providers of pirated copies that are everywhere (since publishers came up with the brilliant scheme of provided access to pdf versions!)
“The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic infringed copyrights by downloading datasets containing copyrighted books in violation of the federal Copyright Act. Anthropic denies all the allegations and denies that it did anything wrong. Anthropic argues that its use of the downloaded datasets was fair use. You can get more information about the lawsuit and view related court documents (…) . Copying a work without permission is not copyright infringement if a defendant can show the copying was fair use. If the use is determined to be infringement, the Copyright Act provides for statutory damages of between $200 and $150,000 per work, depending on factors including the harm that was actually caused by the infringement, and whether the alleged infringer reasonably believed its use was fair or instead acted wilfully. If the use was fair (or there was no copying), the defendant owes $0 (…) The resulting Settlement is the largest copyright class action settlement in history. It provides approximately $3,000 per work (not per Class Member), plus interest earned on the Settlement fund, less the Court-approved costs and fees taken out“
