Authors push back as publishers and agents make claims on Anthropic settlement

作者发起反击：出版商与代理商对 Anthropic 和解金提出索赔

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. 一些希望获得 Anthropic 15 亿美元版权和解金份额的作者表示，他们本周收到了一些令人惊讶的邮件——邮件通知他们，有其他人正在对他们的赔偿金提出索赔。

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. 去年，在法官裁定利用受版权保护的材料训练 AI 模型属于“合理使用”原则范畴、但盗版这些材料则不然之后，Anthropic 就一起版权集体诉讼达成了和解。该协议于 7 月获得最终批准，赔偿流程得以推进。

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. 根据和解条款，近 50 万部作品的作者将为每部被盗版作品获得 3,000 美元的赔偿。如果书籍仍由传统出版商印刷，赔偿金将由作者和出版商平分。如果是自出版书籍，或者出版商通过让书籍绝版的方式归还了版权，那么作者应获得全部赔偿金。

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).” 但作家们纷纷在社交媒体上发帖称，出版商似乎在索取超过其应得份额的赔偿金。例如，悬疑惊悚小说作家 April Henry 质问道：“哈珀柯林斯（HarperCollins）到底在搞什么鬼？他们竟然对我的其中一本书提出了 Anthropic 和解索赔，而这本书的版权至少在 17 年前就已经归还给我了！而且就在同一天，我收到信用提醒，说他们被添加为我的雇主！（他们从来都不是）。”

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%. 在知名博客“Writers Beware”上，Victoria Strauss 写道，她收到的作者投诉主要分为两类：一类是出版商对已无权索赔的作品（因为版权已归还）寻求赔偿；另一类是出版商在仅有权获得 50% 的情况下，却试图索取 100% 的全额赔偿。

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. 对于这两种情况，Strauss 表示她“不愿将可以用糟糕的记录保存来合理解释的事情归咎于恶意”——她指出，一些出版商已经表示这是一个错误，并已要求 Anthropic 进行修正。

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. 同样，美国作家协会（Authors Guild）首席执行官 Mary Rasenberger 在接受《纽约时报》采访时表示，她并不认为这是“出版商的掠夺行为”，也不相信出版商是“故意想坑害任何作者”。相反，她认为这是糟糕的记录保存和混乱的和解流程所导致的必然结果。

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. Strauss 也承认，她所看到的投诉只是“透过巨大墙壁上的一条小缝窥见一斑”。她写道：“但在过去两天里，我收到的报告数量异常之多，而且作者们反复报告完全相同的错误，这向我表明，这些并非大型运营中常见的例行故障，而是更为广泛和系统性的问题。”

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.” 此外，出版商并不是唯一寻求分一杯羹的群体。Strauss 表示，她还收到投诉称，一些文学代理机构也在提出索赔，她对此感到惊讶，因为“代理商并不是他们所售书籍的版权持有者”。

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!” 作家 Courtney Milan（前法律助理兼法学教授 Heidi Bond 的笔名）在 Bluesky 上的一篇帖子中表达得更为直白：“显然，一些代理商正试图从 Anthropic 和解金中索取分成，我完全不认为他们应该这样做，搞什么鬼，快停下这种破事！”

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.) Milan 和美国作家协会还分享了更多关于作者如何对赔偿分配提出异议的细节。（一个棘手的问题是：特定书籍的版权归还时间。作者若要对一本书提出 100% 的索赔，版权归还必须发生在 2022 年 8 月 10 日之前，即和解协议中的“下载日期”。）