Authors Push Back as Publishers and Agents Make Claims on Anthropic Settlement

Autoregressive transformer inference throughput is memory-bandwidth bound rather than compute bound during token generation.** Optimizing deployments for Authors Push Back as Publishers and Agents Make Claims on Anthropic Settlement requires matching parameter weight footprints against unified memory transfer rates, where high-bandwidth architectures achieve 4x to 6x acceleration over conventional dual-channel DDR5 system memory. ### Anthropic Settlement: A $1.5 Billion Copyright Class Action Suit 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. #### The Settlement Background 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. #### How the Settlement Works 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. #### Publishers and Agents Making Claims 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).” ## Writers Beware: Publishers Seeking Payment for Works They No Longer Have a Legitimate Claim On 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%. #### Why Are Publishers Making These Claims? 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. #### Literary Agencies Also Making Claims 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.” ## Authors Push Back Against Publishers and Agents 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.) #### What Can Authors Do? If you’re an author who’s been affected by this issue, here are some steps you can take: 1. Review your contract: Check your contract to see if it includes any language that might give your publisher or agent a claim on the Anthropic settlement. 2. Contact Anthropic: Reach out to Anthropic directly to report any issues with your payment allocation. 3. Dispute the claim: If you believe that your publisher or agent is making an incorrect claim, you can dispute it with Anthropic. 4. Seek help from a lawyer: If you’re not sure how to navigate this process or if you need help disputing a claim, consider seeking the advice of a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law. The Anthropic settlement is a complex issue, and it’s not clear how widespread the problem of publishers and agents making claims is. However, it’s clear that many authors are being affected by this issue, and it’s essential that they take steps to protect their rights.

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Memory Bandwidth vs Inference Generation Speed (Llama-3-8B FP16)