Following a string of concerns raised by Judge William Alsup over the preliminary settlement reached between authors and Anthropic in the Bartz v. Anthropic class action lawsuit charging the AI giant with copyright infringement, attorneys for the authors have filed a package of materials they hope will answer all of the judge’s questions.
At the top of Judge Alsup’s list were concerns about how the $1.5 billion settlement would be paid out to authors and publishers as well as whether attorneys for the authors had conducted a vigorous enough campaign to alert all authors about the lawsuit and their options. It was these problems and others that led Judge Alsup, to the surprise of many, to delay granting preliminary approval of the deal at a September 8 hearing. He set a new hearing for September 25, during which Alsup expects to rule on the changes made to the agreement.
As laid out in the new filing by the attorneys, and explained in a note to members of the Association of American Publishers by CEO Maria Pallante, the revised settlement proposes “default (non-mandatory) recovery allocations for claimants of trade and university press books, with authors and publishers splitting the per-work award equally in half (with co-authors and co-publishers splitting the author or publisher share of the award equally amongst themselves), with an option to vary from those divisions based on a particular contract.”
For education titles, the proposal “does not provide a default percentage for this sector but instead requires the claimant to make a good-faith representation regarding the percentage of recovery that the claimant is entitled to receive for a given work relative to other potential claimants of the work.”
As proscribed in the original agreement, authors have the right to opt out of the settlement.
The amended filing also lays out an ambitious publicity campaign to alert anyone who may be party to the lawsuit. According to the filing, the legal administrator involved in the case, JND, will spend about $15 million in an effort to reach potential claimants using tactics ranging from direct notice sent via first class mail, social media outreach, and publication in consumer and trade publications (including PW), as well as outreach by several well-established membership organizations to their members in both the U. S. and other countries.
The filing further notes that the administrator has addresses for about 279,000 works that had been filed with the U.S. Copyright Office, a figure that represents approximately 58% of total identified works, which would put the number of works eligible for a recovery at about 482,000. The number of works involved that had not been filed with the Copyright Office remains a sore spot among authors, agents, and publishers.
Not-for-profit author organizations that signed a declaration supporting the agreement include Novelists, Inc., Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the Authors Guild. According to the press release issued by the plaintiffs, the groups back the plan because it provides “a simplified, one-step process allowing individual authors to file their own claims and the availability of a non-mandatory default 50/50 split, rooted in industry norms and practices reflected in most trade and university authors’ contracts.”
Representatives also provided comments from all three authors named in the lawsuit, including Andrea Bartz. “I strongly support this settlement and, in the coming months, I’m committed to helping class members, including my fellow authors, understand the settlement and why it’s such a critical step for those of us who believe that Anthropic violated our copyrights” Bartz said.
The AAP’s Pallante filed her own declaration with the court “supporting the fairness and practicality of the proposals and stating that AAP will continue to play an informational role in alerting publishers of the status of the settlement.” She said the AAP had consulted with other publishing associations and organizations that also backed the agreement and again stressed that the settlement was of great importance beyond the monetary payout.
“The proposed settlement provides enormous value in sending the message that artificial intelligence companies cannot unlawfully acquire literary works from shadow libraries or other pirate sources to use as the building blocks for their businesses,” she wrote to members.
Additional filings from the plaintiffs' lawyers are expected to be made today.
