It seems that Anthropic's piracy-related headaches are not going away just yet, despite agreeing to the largest-ever payout for a copyright case in the United States. For the benefit of those who might not be aware, Anthropic had reached a $1.5 billion settlement for a class-action lawsuit just a few days back, entailing a payout of around $3,000 for each of the roughly 500,000 litigants.
Do note that the Judge in question had ruled back in June that Anthropic's use of copyrighted material to train its large language model (LLM), Claude, constituted fair use of the said material, but caveated his judgement by allowing the litigants to pursue piracy claims against Anthropic for downloading books illegally from websites such as Library Genesis.
This brings us to the core of today's topic. The judge in the case has now rejected Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with class members, asserting that the deal was being forced "down the throat of authors" when it was "nowhere close to complete."
Specifically, the judge has identified several lacunae, including the list of works involved in the case, the list of authors, the process of notifying members of the class, and the type of claim form that class members can use to get their share of the settlement.
The judge felt that a lot of class members "get the shaft" once there's "money on the table" and the lawyers stop caring, which necessitates dotting all of the i's and crossing the proverbial t's. Judge Alsup now wants the lawyers involved in the case to design a claim form that gives each class member an explicit choice to opt in or out. The attorneys now have until September 15 to produce a complete list of works involved in the case.
The court has to approve the final list of works, a list of all class members, and the claim form by October 10 for the settlement to proceed.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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