Well, well, well. Earlier today, I predicted the proposed class settlement would be “at least $1 billlion or more.” At high noon today, the parties filed their motion for pre-approval of the proposed settlement. The amount? “At least 1.5 billion.” They say that’s highest reported copyright settlement ever.
We learned that Bartz identified so far 465,000 books in the class. The proposed recovery is $3,000 per book.
Anthropic agrees to destroy all pirated copies from the 2 shadow libraries in the class.
My quick take: this settlement seems fair. It’s the highest reported copyright settlement ever. The Plaintiffs’ class secured both class certification and a major victory on pirated books datasets — both of which now will not be subject to appeal, where we already have a contrary decision by Judge Chhabria on the use of pirated books.
The total amount of books in the class, while a high number, is well under the outer limit of something under 7 million — the amount of copies in the 2 datasets in the class. That certainly is a a big factor in the calculation for the settlement amount. Granted, a jury still could have awarded higher amounts in statutory damages. But there’s no guarantee they would have. That’s the whole point of settling for both sides — avoiding the risk of a worse outcome.
On Monday, Sept. 8, at high noon, Judge Alsup will hold a hearing on the motion for preliminary approval of the class settlement in San Francisco. It’s unclear whether there’s any remote access for this.
DOWNLOAD THE SETTLEMENT
EXHIBIT A COMPARISON OF OTHER COPYRIGHT CASES
DOWNLOAD CLASS COUNSEL DECLARATION
DOWNLOAD SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT