Publishers want a cut of author payouts on books they gave back.
Authors began getting emails this month about their share of Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement. One novelist says HarperCollins claimed a book whose rights returned to the author seventeen years ago. A writers' watchdog blames poor records or a glitch in the claims system, not greed.
Why it mattersThis is the first big test of who actually gets paid when an AI company settles. If middlemen absorb the money, future settlements will not protect the people whose work was taken.
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