This is the first time I've ever been truly disappointed that none of my
books have been pirated.... :o)
Nicolas
Normally, when I get an email that says something like “you’ve been
chosen to receive /thousands of dollars/ from this thing you’ve read
about in the news,” I file it in the same junk folder with the offers
to share millions of dollars from the widow of Saddam Hussein, the
email from [email protected] that they represent the IRS and
I have to give them my full banking information immediately to avoid
cancellation of my everything, the notices that I’ve bought 500 bucks
of Bitcoin and call this number if this is in error, and their fellow
scammy brethren.
And then, once in a blue moon, it’s something real; and that’s the
case now with the Anthropic copyright settlement.
In a nutshell, the AI firm Anthropic /allegedly/ used a huge trove of
pirated publications to train their AI model Claude; they have been
sued in a class action suit, and rather than face a jury, they have
offered to settle, with the settlement amount being $3K per pirated
work (divided up among authors, publishers, and some percentage for
unspecified fees).
So this is a real thing. Here’s an NPR report about the suit and
settlement:
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/nx-s1-5529404/anthropic-settlement-authors-copyright-ai
And here’s the official settlement website:
https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/
That site has a lookup form where authors can see if any of their
works were in the pirated trove (and therefore may be claimed). I
found a few of mine, and, out of curiosity, checked a few other
origami authors and found a few of their works, too.
If you have works that show up in their list, you can make a claim for
each work. There’s much more information on the settlement site, with
various caveats and definitions and eligibility and rules for how each
settlement gets divvy’d up among potential claimants. Since I Am Not a
Lawyer, I won’t try to describe it all here; I’ll just recommend that
if you are an origami author, do a quick search on their lookup form,
and if you find one or more of your books, read further about the
claim process, and then decide if you want to move forward.
HTH,
Robert
