Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

If you have the time, read the judge's response to the motion:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...

The big deal for publishers and authors is the payout per eligible title is $3k. For a traditional publishing contract involving one author, the amount will be split down the middle.

The other thing which caught my eye is the judge slashed the class counsel's fee by half, from 12.5% ($187.5m) to 6.8% ($101m). The class counsel's unreimbursed litigation expenses were $2.6m.

The three class representatives get just $15k each.

Seems squarely in the "cost of doing business" category

To be clear, the issue is not that the books were used to train Claude, but that they were pirated.

I sincerely don't understand what the point of these laws are, when the cost of flagrant violations is no more than a slap on the wrist -- these really meager sums that serve as nothing more than something to point at and say "Look, we did something!"

Cover-your-ass strategy, and nothing more. Who, besides the ones at fault, are ever happy with these mean-nothing fines?

The justice system really needs an overhaul with how it tackles "justice" between the wealthy, the connected, the corporations, and the rest. Though I am unsure what that would look like. Minimum net wealth per category of infraction across the board?

Edit: grammar

Are "open" models exempt from that? Can imagine they used the same datasets.

that number is missing a zero or two in front of the decimal point

Maybe they can give it in the form of expiring Fable credits.