AI pirated our books on network security and cryptography: we're up for Bartz v. Anthropic

Have you heard the one about the multi-billion dollar, Amazon-backed artificial intelligence (AI) company that stole digital copies of seven million books and used it to train its chatbots? I have not only heard it, my partner may be part of it. 

An unknown number of the two dozen books that we have authored since 1992 were among the pirated volumes that the company known as Anthropic downloaded and used without permission. (There's a list of them down below.) 

Thankfully, several authors sued Anthropic in a case that is referred to as Bartz v. Anthropic. The Authors Guild says the class action suit was "brought by authors against an AI company for using books without permission to train large language models." (Source)

An example of an unauthorized scan
of a book that was probably among
the 7 million that Anthropic
used to train its LLMs 

In other words, Anthropic had engaged in mass digital piracy—downloading digital scans of thousands of books from illegal archives—to build its AI technology, technology that is now generating billions of dollars. At least, that's what Anthropic says: 

"At the beginning of 2025, less than two years after launch, Anthropic's run-rate revenue had grown to approximately $1 billion. By August 2025, just eight months later, our run-rate revenue reached over $5 billion—making Anthropic one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history." (Source)

The suit against Anthropic was filed by fiction author Andrea Bartz (We Were Never Here) and two nonfiction authors Charles Graeber (The Good Nurse) and Kirk Wallace Johnson (The Feather Thief).

 In June 2025, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found that Anthropic's piracy was not fair use. Now Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5bn (£1.11bn) to settle the lawsuit. (Source)

However, Chey and I do not expect to receive any money any time soon, if at all. As with any lawsuit, there's a lot of small print. Here is what some of it means, as described by the Authors Guild:

The settlement agreement discloses that approximately 500,000 titles out of the 7 million copies of books that Anthropic reportedly downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi [libraries of pirated copyright material] meet the definition required to be part of the class after accounting for duplicates and non-eligible works. That means that after attorneys’ fees and other expenses are deducted, rightsholders can expect approximately $3,000 total per title, which will be shared among the rightsholders for that title (if there is more than one rightsholder). (Source). 

I definitely own the rights to two of my books, one through reversion, and the other because it was self-published by me (as Dreva Hill Press). The rest were standard publisher contract books. What is not mentioned in the superficial mainstream media coverage of this case is that the per book payment is subject to a default 50/50 split between authors and publishers.

And did you notice that the settlement only covers a small percentage of the books of which Anthropic made illegal use? The 500,000 titles covered by Bratz = 1/14 or just over 7%. We do not yet know how many of our books are included in that 7%.

Supposedly, a list of works included in the settlement will be published in October. The website for his will be here: Anthropic Works List Lookup.

A selection of books by Stephen and Chey Cobb
(Most are over 600 pages in length)

Irony and Ethics

Ironically, the copy of Cobb's Guide to PC and LAN Security that I found in one of the illegal repositories had been scanned into a .pdf from a paper book. That's ironic because I had made the entire contents of the book freely available in .pdf files made from the publisher's originals. These are available on this website and also ResearchGate.

I decided to share the book in that way because I didn't feel right charging money for access to something that was getting on in years (technically although not fundamentally). Also, sharing digitally is relatively cheap compared to mailing somebody a 700-page book that weighs a couple of pounds (1.3kg). Just FYI, the copy on ResearchGate stats received 98,000 reads. I've never bothered to couple how many times it has been downloaded from our website.

A reasonable question at this point might be: why should anthropic pay you for downloading a copy of your book when you yourself have made it free to download. The answer is pretty simple: I made the book freely available so that people who wanted to learn about computer security could read it, which is very different from offering it to a company using it to create a product.

Our Books/Lottery Tickets

Here is a list of Cobb books possibly pirated by Anthropic, the multi-billion dollar AI company. Those authored by Stephen Cobb are listed as SC with co-authors named appropriately.

1. Using Reflex: the Database Manager, SC
2. Using Quattro: the Professional Spreadsheet, SC
3. Working with DisplayWrite 4 - Stephen T. Cobb
4. Quattro Power User's Guide, SC
5. The Stephen Cobb User's Handbook to Excel for the IBM PC, SC
6. TOPS, the IBM/Macintosh Connection, SC & Marty Jost
7. Using Quattro Pro, SC
8. The Stephen Cobb User's Handbook to Lotus 1-2-3, Release 2.1, SC
9. Symphony Made Easy, SC
10. Using Quattro Pro 2, SC
11. The Steven Cobb User's guide to FileMaker, SC & Chey Romfo Cobb
12. Using Quattro Pro 3, SC
13. PC Magazine Guide to 1-2-3 Release 2.3, SC
14. The Stephen Cobb Complete Book of PC and LAN Security, SC
15. WordPerfect for Windows: the Complete Reference, Steve Dyson, Daniel J. Fingerman, and SC
16. Quattro Pro 4 Inside & Out, SC
17. Quattro Pro for Windows Inside & Out, SC and Bryan Pfaffenberger
18. Maximizing performance with Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows, SC & Sally Powers
19. The Quattro Pro for Windows Book, SC, Bryan Pfaffenberger, Yvonne Johnson
20. The NCSA Guide to PC and LAN Security, SC
21. Symphony Made Easy: Covers Version 2.2, SC
22. Cobb's Guide to PC and LAN Security, SC
23. Network Security for Dummies, Chey Cobb
24. Cryptography for Dummies, Chey Cobb
25. Privacy for Business: Web Sites and Email, SC 

Anthropic Investors

These include: Amazon, ICONIQ Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Altimeter, Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, Blackstone, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, General Atlantic, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Insight Partners, Jane Street, Qatar Investment Authority, TPG, and T. Rowe Price.