SFWA (the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) has been one of the loudest groups complaining about artificial intelligence writing and has made multiple statements about generative AI, and now they’re urging their members to join in the settlement of the case against Anthropic, the creators of Claude.
It’s interesting to see how people who are supposed to be professional writers don’t seem to have much reading comprehension of case law. When getting into SFWA’s statement, it’s clear that their president, Kate Ristau, either willfully ignored or didn’t realize that the settlement included a ruling that the use of books duly purchased by a company for AI constitutes fair use and has no bearing on copyright, but the settlement only applies to the piracy portion of the case. While it’s universally agreed that piracy is both illegal and a bad thing, Ristau talks to her members as if they have standing on the copyright issues still.
The full statement reads:
The class-action lawsuit against Anthropic that SFWA supported through an amicus brief reached a preliminary settlement. Michael Capobianco, my fellow Commissioner with Authors Coalition, and I met with the lawyers from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP representing authors in this case.
The basic argument in this class-action lawsuit is that Anthropic infringed on author copyrights.
Instead of going to court, Anthropic has agreed to a settlement.
This a big victory for authors (in what is expected to be the first of many lawsuits).
What does this mean?
We don’t have all the details yet. The judge ordered a lightning quick agreement process on the settlement, which will be negotiated and filed by Friday, September 5.
At that point, we will be able to share more details about the settlement amount and who will ultimately be a legal or beneficial owner of the class in this settlement.
Why is SFWA emailing you about this?
As an organization representing authors and creators like you, SFWA participated in supporting this lawsuit before the court.
We signed onto an amicus brief in favor of the class-action lawsuit and gave our feedback on the class and the proposed suit.
We met with Authors Coalition member groups and attorneys to work through how to contact authors who are owed money.
We met again with lawyers yesterday to discuss the proposed settlement.
What’s next?
The class still needs to be finalized. SFWA is working with the attorneys (as we discussed here) to collect author information, so that authors can receive notice if the court approves this settlement.
If you receive notice, you will have 90 days to choose to:
Participate in the class
Participate and object
Not participate
If you have friends or colleagues who are not part of SFWA and may be impacted by this lawsuit, we encourage you to share this website with them:https://www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-author-contact/
The sooner they get in contact, the better.
If you are receiving this email, you will also be receiving information about the lawsuit from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP in the following weeks. We encourage you to follow up.
After the settlement is finalized, we will update you on the full details.
Her statement acts to her members as if this has anything to do with generative AI copyright rights, which it does not, which, from her position as the head of a non-profit organization like this, begs the question as to whether she’s so incompetent that she’s not able to parse through a ruling on this, or if she’s wilfully misleading her entire organization into thinking that this is somehow going to bring down generative AI, when at most, Anthropic is, by our analysis, looking at around $1 million in payouts based on existing piracy laws.
A company like Anthropic can easily afford such a settlement, and it doesn’t change the fact that in the same suit, Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of millions of pirated books to train the Claude LLM was “exceedingly transformative” and did not affect any relevant markets for those works.
Moreover, there’s already second case precedent on the matter as Judge Vince Chhabria in the Meta lawsuit also ruled that their training of AI is “highly transformative.”
So while SFWA may be wishing for a reality in which this is a big win for their anti-AI coalition, the facts remain that artificial intelligence is not infringing on copyrights as they claimed.
What do you think about SFWA’s statement? Leave a comment and let us know.
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SFWA's lawyers are notoriously incompetent. This has been the case for over a decade.
"Spin it and keep the outrage alive."