Some of you may have read about or heard of the big copyright infringement lawsuit involving AI company Anthropic, and potentially hundreds of thousands of authors whose books were downloaded by Anthropic from an illegal pirate site online and then used to train their AI chatbots.  This was willful copyright infringement because they never came to us and offered payment for the licenses to use our works, which is what copyright law protects.  Anthropic knowingly ignored copyright law and downloaded our books for free from a pirate site.

According to the U.S. Copyright Act, financial penalties for infringement range from $750 to $150,000 for each book.  Had a jury awarded $150K per book, Anthropic would have collapsed.  So they negotiated a settlement with the lead plaintiffs and attorneys for $1.5 billion dollars.  This amount should pay the authors approximately $3,000 per "work," as it's called in copyright matters.

Yes, I am one of them, and 28 of my books were downloaded  by Anthropic.

You know, I'm not anti-AI at all.  We're already using it on many occasions--Alexa, various chatbots, etc.--and as time goes on we'll rely on it more and more.  What I can't tolerate is when Big Tech companies, worth billions and trillions of dollars, refuse to pay authors licensing fees for using their work to train the chatbots.  They wanted our work fast, and free.

Going forward we may see more lawsuits alleging this.  Most of my adult life--nearly 60 years so far, if you count books I wrote that were never published--has been spent creating worlds, characters, and adventures, all of which takes a great deal of time and mental investment.  It's how I and many others make a living.  My works are in multiple formats:  audiobooks, ebooks, printed books, foreign language editions.  But all of those publishers paid us to put them in those formats.  

I and all the other authors whose works were downloaded feel vindicated by the outcome of the Anthropic lawsuit.  But I want to make it clear that I was not rooting for the company to collapse.  I was rooting for all the authors whose work was stolen, because our worth is often disrespected and undervalued.  And most authors do not make very much money in the long run.  It may take two years from contract signing to actual publication, and royalties (actual sales) are only paid if the original advance is paid back.  Not only that, but royalties are paid only twice a year, making it very difficult to budget.

I thank all of you who purchase our books.  In my case, it helps keep the dog and cat fed!