Anthropic judge rejects $1.5B AI copyright settlement

Thus, I stand to receive about $9,000 as a result of this settlement.

I think that's fair, considering that two of those books received advances under $20K and never earned out. Also, while I'm sure that Anthropic has benefited from training its models on this dataset, that doesn't necessarily mean that those models are a lasting asset.

This settlement has nothing to do with any criminal liability Anrhropic might have, only tort liability (and it doesn’t involves damages, not fines.)

- Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX): Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 for orchestrating a massive fraud involving the misappropriation of billions in customer funds.

- Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos): Began an 11-year prison sentence in 2023 after being convicted of defrauding investors with false claims about her blood-testing technology.

- Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani (Theranos): The former president of Theranos was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for his role in the same fraud as Elizabeth Holmes.

- Trevor Milton (Nikola Corporation): Convicted of securities and wire fraud, he was sentenced to four years in prison in 2023.

- Ippei Mizuhara: The former translator for MLB star Shohei Ohtani was charged in April 2024 with bank fraud for illegally transferring millions from the athlete's account.

- Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin: Convicted in February 2025 for a $577 million cryptocurrency fraud scheme.

- Bernard Madoff: Sentenced to 150 years in prison in 2009 for running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He died in prison in 2021.

- Jeffrey Skilling (Enron): The former CEO of Enron was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2006 for fraud and conspiracy. His sentence was later reduced, and he was released in 2019.

- Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco International): The former CEO served over six years in prison after being convicted in 2005 for looting millions from the company.

- Bernard "Bernie" Ebbers (WorldCom): Sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud. He was granted early release in 2019 and died shortly after.

Apart from this list I know Nissan's ex CEO was put into solitary confinement for months.

Who went to prison from Exxon for the Valdez oil spill[1], or from BP for the Deep Water Horizon[2] debacle?

Who went to prison from Norfolk-Southern for the East Palestine train derailment[3]?

Who went to prison from Boeing for the 737Max debacle[4]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Palestine%2C_Ohio%2C_trai...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings

I did notice. Which is why my list included mass deaths and massive pollution/ecological destruction, some of which we still don't know what the eventual damage/death toll will be.

And that's the bigger issue: property crimes are considered more serious than mass murder and poisoning our world. Just as with the fraudsters, the corporate veil should have been pierced for the murderers and despoilers of our environment, with harsh prison sentences for those whose avarice and sociopathy allowed them to murder and despoil.

Civil liability is fine, and the "corporate death penalty" (revoking charters, barring directors/managers from future employment, etc.) should be invoked with extreme prejudice in those circumstances as well.

But we don't do that. Because corporations are, in the above circumstance, not "people", but a legal fiction protecting its owners from liability. But when it benefits the corporation and its owners/managers, a corporation is a "person."

I'd say we should work it the other way -- if a corporation is responsible for deaths and despoilation, all the owners should have a share in the punishment.

That way, after a few thousand wealthy individual investors and the owners of a few dozen hedge funds/investment houses are put in SuperMax for a decade or two for the misdeeds of the companies in which they've invested. And let's not make the boards of directors, C-Suite and any others directly involved feel left out either. They can commiserate with their fellow scumbags in the prison yard.

That does sound pretty harsh doesn't it? Perhaps too harsh? I don't think so. Because as we're constantly reminded, business responds strongly to incentives.

And if businesses are strongly incentivized to not poison our citizens, kill airplane passengers and destroy our environment with the threat of long prison sentences and a stripping of their assets, I'd expect they'd respond to such incentives.

But, as it is now, when the incentives are to privatize profit and hold harmless those who kill us, make us sick and destroy our environment, those are the incentives to which corporations will respond.