Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week — emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments.
Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use doctrine, but pirating that material was not. The deal received final approval in July, allowing the payments to move forward.
Under the terms of the settlement, the authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If the book is still in-print with a traditional publisher, the money will be split 50-50 between author and publisher. If the book was self-published, or if the publisher reverted the rights by allowing the book to go out-of-print, then the author should get the entire payment.
But writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments. For example, mystery and thriller author April Henry asked, “WTF is HarperCollins playing at? They claimed one of my books on the Anthropic Settlement that reverted back at least 17 years ago AND on the same day I got a credit alert saying they had been added as my employer! (which they never were).”
At the popular blog Writers Beware, Victoria Strauss wrote that she’s been receiving author complaints that fall into two broad categories: one where publishers are seeking payment for works that they no longer have a legitimate claim on (because the rights have reverted), and another where publishers are seeking a full 100% payment when they’re only entitled to 50%.
In both cases, Strauss said she’s “reluctant to attribute to malice what can be plausibly explained by poor recordkeeping” — and she noted that some publishers have already said this is a mistake that they’ve asked Anthropic to fix.
Similarly, Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger told The New York Times that she doesn’t see this as “a grab by the publishers” and that she doesn’t believe publishers are “specifically trying to screw any author over.” Instead, she argued that this is the predictable result of bad record-keeping and a confusing settlement process.
Strauss also acknowledged that any complaints she’s seen are just “a peek through a small crack in a massive wall.”
“But the unusually large number of reports I’ve received over the last two days, as well as the fact that authors are reporting the exact same errors over and over, suggest to me that these aren’t the kind of routine glitches you might expect from such a large operation, but something much more wide[s]pread and systemic,” she wrote.
And publishers aren’t the only ones seeking a cut of the payments. Strauss said she’s gotten complaints that a number of literary agencies are also making claims, which she said is surprising since “agents are not rightsholders in the books that they sell.”
Author Courtney Milan (the pen name of former law clerk and law professor Heidi Bond) was more blunt in a post on Bluesky, writing, “Apparently some agents are trying to claim percentages on the Anthropic settlement, and I do not REMOTELY think they should do this, what the fuck, stop that shit!”
Milan and the Authors Guild also shared more details about how authors can dispute their payment allocations. (One tricky issue: When the rights to a specific book reverted. In order for an author to make a 100% claim on a book, the rights reversion needs to have happened before August 10, 2022, which is the “download date” in the settlement.)
Facts Only
* Authors received emails reporting claims on their Anthropic settlement payments.
* The copyright class action was settled following a ruling on fair use for training AI models.
* Authors of nearly 500,000 titles are to receive $3,000 per pirated work under the settlement terms.
* Payments are split 50-50 if the book is in-print with a traditional publisher.
* Authors receive the full payment if the book was self-published or rights were reverted by the publisher.
* One author reported a claim by HarperCollins regarding a book that reverted rights over 17 years prior.
* Victoria Strauss reported receiving complaints from publishers seeking payments for works where rights have reverted, and instances of seeking 100% payment when only 50% is due.
* Mary Rasenberger suggested the issues stem from bad record-keeping and a confusing settlement process.
* Literary agencies were also reported making claims on the payments.
* One author alleged that some agents are attempting to claim percentages on the settlement.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative reveals a friction point between a legally established settlement structure and the practical realities of contract administration and record-keeping. The emergence of widespread discrepancies suggests that large, complex financial agreements—like copyright settlements—are highly susceptible to administrative error rather than purely malicious intent. The fact that multiple parties, including publishers and literary agencies, are making contradictory claims points toward systemic ambiguity in defining ownership rights across different publishing models (in-print versus self-published).
The analysis of author reports and expert commentary demonstrates a pattern where complexity is leveraged to create uncertainty. When expectations clash with flawed administrative processes, the result is disputes framed as deliberate obstruction rather than predictable bureaucratic error. The observation that system-wide issues are being reported suggests that the scale of the event amplifies minor errors into significant grievances, affecting human agency over rightfully earned compensation. The core implication is that intellectual property settlement mechanisms require more robust and standardized archival systems to prevent reputational damage and financial disputes for creators.
What systemic changes in contract auditing could be implemented to ensure transparency in high-stakes settlements? How does the reliance on post-hoc explanations like "poor record-keeping" absolve entities of responsibility for established errors? What recourse exists when complexity itself becomes a barrier to equitable distribution?