Dale Nelson Weighs in on Anthropic’s Class Action Settlement in the Daily Journal
Dale Nelson recently spoke to the Daily Journal about the recent settlement reached in the class-action copyright lawsuit filed against the AI firm Anthropic by a group of authors, who accused the company of illegally using more than 7 million books to train its chatbot assistant, Claude.
Dale tells the Daily Journal that Anthropic’s choice to settle could function as a warning to other AI firms about the dangers of relying solely on a fair use defense.
“Anthrophic was arguing that, you know, they could potentially be exposed to billions of dollars in damages if this trial were move forward,” Dale explains. “Any of these companies that are going to roll the dice and say, ‘we’re just going to rely on fair use,’ had to have recognized that they were taking a chance and that it might be ruled not a fair use. That’s the risk you take in making that kind of a momentous decision.”
Dale adds that she believes the Plaintiffs may have also felt inclined to settle due to the laborious task of notifying the millions of rightsholders, which a trial would potentially require.
“I think the plaintiffs also felt pressure to settle because the work that they would have to do to put the lists together seemed burdensome even though they stood to potentially recover damages during trial… Sometimes, even a bad settlement is better than a good lawsuit financially speaking,” she concludes.