Writer Beware

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Predatory Opt-Outs: The Speculators Come for the Anthropic Copyright Settlement

NOV 7, 2025December 23, 202513 COMMENTS

The enormous, $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright class action settlement is reputedly the biggest copyright infringement recovery in history. With such a high-profile case, it's inevitable that eligible authors aren't the only ones looking to benefit.

Yesterday, the Publishers Lunch newsletter published a story about an Arizona law firm called ClaimsHero that has mounted a push, complete with social media ads, to encourage authors to opt out of the Anthropic settlement. Why? Presumably, because authors who opt out preserve their right to sue Anthropic, and ClaimsHero wants to identify clients for a possible class action lawsuit of its own that could enable it to reap a big payout on contingency.

ClaimsHero, which appears to be the kind of law firm that advertises on billboards along the highway, has created a webpage for this effort that frames opting out in terms of money (of course). If your work is included in the settlement, why settle for a measly $3,000 when you could receive up to $150,000, the maximum amount of statutory damages available for willful copyright infringement? (Emphasis added):

The Anthropic Class Action Settlement: What You Need to Know Right Now

Header image: multicolored, backlit letters AI repeating diabonally on a yellow background (Credit: Steve Johnson / Unsplash.com)

OCT 31, 2025January 16, 20265 COMMENTS

One of the most urgent issues confronting writers and other creators right now is the use of copyrighted material for generative AI training.

The large language models that power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude require “training” via the ingestion of vast amounts of text, images, and other materials scraped from the internet or incorporated into databases created by AI companies.

Much of this material is protected by copyright. For the most part, AI companies have not sought permission from rights holders for exploiting their work in this way (nor did creators even start discovering the extent of the companies’ use of their content until a few years ago). They claim permission isn’t needed because AI training falls under the definition of fair use—a limited and transformative use of the material that does not require the copyright owner’s agreement (or remuneration).

BOOK MARKETING SCAMS

Army of Bots: Deeper Into the Vortex of Nigerian Book Marketing Scams

Header image: a whirlpool, blue water and white froth, whirling down around a dark central point

OCT 20, 2025December 29, 202576 COMMENTS

I've published a couple of posts now about the tidal wave of AI-driven book marketing scams from Nigeria that has swept over the writing world in the past year or so.

A hallmark of these scams has been how abruptly they appeared and how fast they have become ubiquitous. But proliferation isn't the only way in which Nigerian scams are speedy. They are also morphing and adapting extremely quickly, likely in reaction to the responses they're getting from the writers they target.

This post takes a look at the adaptations I'm seeing now.

Bartz v. Anthropic Settlement: An Update for Authors

Header image: pile of crumpled multicolored Post-it notes, each with a copyright symbol (Credit: StepanPopov @ Shutterstock.com)

SEP 26, 2025November 18, 202525 COMMENTS

A year ago, a group of authors filed suit against AI company Anthropic over its creation of an enormous library of digitized books to train its Claude LLMs, arguing that because Anthropic did not seek authors’ permission for the creation of the library or for AI training on the included works (claiming, as most AI companies do, that this constituted fair use), Anthropic's actions constituted copyright infringment. (You can see the original complaint here.)

In addition to purchasing and scanning physical books, Anthropic also downloaded millions of books and other works illegally uploaded to pirate sites. This past June, the judge in the case, Judge William Alsup, determined that while Anthropic’s digitzation of physical books, and its use of these for AI training, did indeed qualify as fair use, its downloading of pirated copies did not.

Accordingly, Judge Alsup certified a class of LibGen & PiLiMi Pirated Books authors (LibGen is pirate site Library Genesis; PiLiMi is pirate site Pirate Library Mirror), consisting of "all beneficial or legal copyright owners" whose work both possesses an ISBN or ASIN, and was registered with the US Copyright Office within 5 years of publication and before being downloaded by Anthropic (August 10, 2022).

BOOK MARKETING SCAMS

Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams

Header image: the word "scam" spelled out in red dice, in front of other, blurred multi-colored letter dice against a black background (Credit: AzriSuratmin / Shutterstock.com)

SEP 19, 2025November 4, 2025123 COMMENTS

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a rising and extremely prolific marketing scam that I've been able to trace back to operators in Nigeria.

Using highly personalized (AI-generated) email solicitations that make it seem the sender (always with a Gmail address, always presenting as a marketing or PR expert) has really read the book, the scammer offers marketing services of various kinds, usually for a not-exorbitant fee of a few hundred dollars. If the author bites, they're referred to a Nigerian "assistant" or "payment processor" on Upwork or Fiverr for payment. The scammer then demands access to the author's KDP account.

I've since discovered two new and distinct iterations of this scam--both of which, like the first one, have appeared abruptly and spun up very fast.

Protecting Intellectual Property: What Writers Need to Know About Copyright

Header image: red coyright symbol in front of rows of gray copyright symbols, on a lighter gray background (Credit: niroworld / Shutterstock.com)

SEP 12, 2025September 12, 202518 COMMENTS

I was reminded of that this week, thanks to an email from an author who discovered that several of their books were included in one of the databases of pirated works used by the AI company Anthropic for AI training. The author wanted to know whether they were eligible to be part of the gigantic $1.5 billion settlement Anthropic has agreed to pay to compensate writers for its misuse of their intellectual property. (You can read more about the lawsuit, and the settlement, here.)

One of the criteria for eligibility, set by the court, is that copyrights to the pirated works must have been properly registered with the US Copyright Office before Anthropic downloaded the databases. And indeed, the author’s books were all registered in a timely manner…but not with the Copyright Office. Instead, the author used a website called Copyrighted.com, which offers a kind of faux registration using timestamps and its own certificates.