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Bartz v. Anthropic is a major court case that you might not have heard of. But BJ has, because Anthropic stole his book, "Social Media Is Bullshit," along with thousands of other books from authors, in order to train their Claude model. This week, we're joined by Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger to help break down what's happening.
Creators and Guests
Host
Host
Rosie Tran
Rosie Tran is one of the fastest rising stars in the entertainment business! Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, she moved to Hollywood to pursue her career as a professional entertainer. The stand up comedian, writer, podcast personality, and actress has toured internationally, at comedy clubs, colleges, and overseas for the USO in Europe and the Middle East.
Editor
Andrew
I am the Editor of all things on the Stupid Sexy Privacy Podcast.
What is Stupid Sexy Privacy?
Stupid Sexy Privacy is a miniseries about how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos. Your host is comedian Rosie Tran, and the show is written by information privacy expert B.J. Mendelson. Every episode is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. Tune in every Thursday night βor Friday morning if you're nasty β at 12 am EST to catch the next episode.
00:00
Here's three reasons why you should switch from Chrome to the free DuckDuckGo browser. One, it's designed for data protection, not data collection. If you use Google Search or Chrome, your personal info is probably exposed. Your searches, email, location, even financial or medical data. The list goes on and on. The free DuckDuckGo browser helps you protect your personal info from hackers, scammers, and data-hungry companies. Two, the built-in search engine is like Google.
00:30
but it never tracks your searches. And it has ad tracker and cookie blocking protection. Search and browse with ease with fewer annoying ads and pop-ups. Three, the DuckDuckGo browser is free. We make money from privacy respecting ads, not by exploiting your data. Download the free DuckDuckGo browser today and see for yourself why it has thousands of five-star reviews. Visit DuckDuckGo.com or wherever you get your apps.
00:59
Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy, a podcast mini series sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. I'm your host, Rosie Tran. You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime. And I'm your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorst. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey. I'm pretty sure that's not what a Japanese Macau sounds like. Oh, it's not. Not even close.
01:27
Let's hope there aren't any zoologists listening. Okay, I'm also pretty sure that's not what a snow monkey sounds like. Over the course of this mini-series, we're going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.
01:55
These tips were sourced by our fearless leader. He really hates when we call him that. DJ Mendelson. Episodes 1 through 33 were written a couple of years ago. But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it. And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we've gone back and updated a bunch of them, even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way. That's right.
02:20
So before we get into today's episode, make sure you visit stupidsexyprivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter. This way you can get updates on the show and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026. And if you sign up for the newsletter, you'll also get a free PDF and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King's new book, How to Protect Yourself from Vashis and Weirdos. All you have to do is visit stupidsexyprivacy.com. stupidsexyprivacy.com.
02:49
That's what I just said. Stupid, sexy, privacy dot com. I know, but repetition is key to success. You know what else is? What? Bonzo, eat your pablum like a good boy and pretty soon you'll grow up to be a big, strong, handsome man just like your daddy. Then you'll have Swedish pancake too. I'm really glad this show isn't on YouTube because they pull it down like immediately. I know. Google sucks. And on that note.
03:17
Let's get to today's privacy tip! BJ's previous book, Social Media is Bullshit, was stolen by Anthropic, the makers of Claude. He's still waiting to get his settlement check from Anthropic as part of the Bartz vs. Anthropic case. Allegedly, he'll get $3,000, which isn't even close to what St. Martin's Press paid him to write the book, which was $24,000. Meanwhile, the Anthropic IPO could value the company at a trillion dollars.
03:45
or around the entire proposed 2027 budget for the Pentagon. So today, BJ is joined by the CEO of the Authors Guild, Mary Rasenberger, to speak about the Barthes versus Anthropocase and other issues impacting authors and creatives like him. From 2002 to 2008, Mrs. Rasenberger worked for the U.S. Copyright Office and the Library of Congress as Senior Policy Advisor and Program Director for the National Digital Preservation Program and an attorney with over 25 years in roles that span private practice, government, and the corporate sector.
04:15
as a recognized expert in copyright and media law. We hope you'll enjoy this interview and we'll be back real soon with new privacy tips as soon as How to Protect Yourself from Fascist and Weirdness is released next week. Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy. Before we get into this interview today with Mary Reisenberger, who is the CEO of the Authors Guild, I just have to disclose a couple of things real quick. So the first is I am a dues-paying member of the Authors Guild.
04:42
And the second thing is that in the settlement of the Barts v. Anthropic case, which we're going to talk a little bit about in this interview, I am one of the authors ah who had their work stolen from Anthropic and will be receiving a check of some kind, I guess, within the next month or so. So I just wanted to disclose that before we got into it. So Mary, would you be so kind as to just take a moment to introduce yourself? Yeah. Hi, PJ. Thanks for inviting me on today.
05:11
I am CEO of the Authors Guild and um I have been with the Authors Guild 11 and a half years now. Formerly, I was a media copyright attorney in private practice and also worked at the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress. Oh, wow. I've always imagined that that sort of job is amazing. Is it as good as I think it is?
05:37
My current job, all my jobs have been amazing, but I love my current job, yeah. Tell us a little bit, so I mentioned at the top that I'm a member of the Authors Guild, but for people who may not be familiar with it, how would you describe it? The Authors Guild is a professional organization for writers. em It's 114 years old, we've been around for a long time, and our uh primary mission
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um In fact, really, sole mission is to protect, support, foster the profession and vocation of writing in this country and to sustain a robust, vibrant literary culture. um So we do, we, for members, we provide all kinds of services, which BJ, you're familiar with. You know, we provide free legal services.
06:34
provide websites, tons, provide a lot of information, educational webinars, those are all open to the public. um And our, you know, it's really simple and like our work is really complicated because there's so many challenges today, but it's really simple to sort of know what we need to do because it's always about um just protecting the profession. So in addition to serving members, we are advocates for
07:04
the literary profession and vocation at large. And so we do a lot of lobbying in Congress. We try to get legislation or prevent legislation that will hurt authors and get legislation that supports it. Like we've been doing a lot around AI. We help get the small claims court in the copyright office enacted. We bring litigation. We've got a litigation against OpenAI now, another one against NEH.
07:34
uh We also we go after publishers who don't pay their authors or constantly breaching contracts. We've got a couple different litigations around that right now. We just work with publishers to make sure authors are treated fairly. If an author is not getting paid, we make sure they get paid. You know, that's sort of the.
07:59
umbrella of what we do and make sure authors have the information they need to succeed in the field. Yeah, I have to say when we did our contract with DuckDuckGo for the book that we're working on, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos, I called the Authors Guild and I took advantage of the free legal service for authors and they got right back to me and uh they were just a huge help in going through the contract for that book because it
08:29
It was a little bit of an unusual situation of a contract between an author and a tech company, right, to write and distribute the book. So, you know, I could sit here and praise the staff all day, but I just wanted to pass on my thanks for doing what you do at the Authors Guild and providing those services, because it's a cruel world out there for authors. Yeah, it's a tough profession and a uh crucial profession. um
08:57
You know, our feeling is writers need all the support they can get right now. And that's what we're there to do. So I'm very happy to hear that you've had a good experience. And let me ask you about some of the litigation or some of the actions that the Office Guild takes. So we talked a little bit about HR 7661, which is I feel the intentionally misleadingly titled Stop the Sexualization of Children Act. But it's essentially a book band.
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uh from what I understand from the law. Does that sound about right to you? Yes. So um this is a federal legislation to um try to keep books that have anything about sex in them out of schools. And we actually are part of six, seven litigations right now on the state level. We've seen in, particularly in the writer states, there's been legislation
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bills proposed to um try to limit the books that children and teenagers and young adults even have access to in schools and even bookstores. um So, I mean, we've got litigations in Texas, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, um and a couple other states. I'm not remembering all of them right now, but um
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You know all of these are you know they say it's all about protecting children from sexuality. Yeah it's called the stop the sexualization of children act. That's not really what it's about. It's using that that is a pretense to ban books in schools. um They are particularly directed towards books that talk about um LGBTQ.
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characters or youth, they, you know, they want to prevent any children from being exposed to LGBTQ, transgender. Those books are considered like de facto uh sexual, even though many of them are not at all and they are banned. uh Also though, these laws are on this federal bill, I'm sure would be too, they end up dispro-
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proportionately targeting books by people of color um and about race, which is kind of interesting, even though the bills don't talk about race, they are actually used that way. uh We think they are very dangerous because they are going where the federal government should not go or any state government. are, um you know, per se, violations of free speech because they're trying to control
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uh They're trying to control speech in schools and among students. We have been very successful in all of our lawsuits in the lower courts so far. have won every single case that we brought, and I should say they're not just our cases. In each case, we've brought the cases with coalitions of others, uh whether they're students um or bookstores.
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In some cases, ACLU is a party to the case in Colorado. um Publishers are working with us on these cases too. their coalition's a plaintiff's bringing these cases. And we are winning and we are getting excellent decisions in the lower courts. The states are appealing them though. um
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This federal bill is an attempt to do this on a federal level and it also will be if it's enacted and we are certainly protesting this bill and lobbying against it in DC right now. If it were enacted, it also would be found unconstitutional. It is viewpoint discrimination by the government and these bills are always um overly broad. They're um
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the deaf initially, they're very hard to understand what is being actually censored and what isn't. So what happens is that in the application, those who are liable, whether they're teachers or libraries, um for um executing them, they have to be overbroad in what they censor to be careful because
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terms like what is sexual content? It's never very well defined. They do have a carve out for classics in this particular bill, but they point to a 1990 list. So anything post 1990 is, I guess, considered, you know, that even if it's a classic, and we all know there are plenty of post 1990 books that are taught widely in schools.
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those anything post 1990 is not included. And they also refer to some Christian less and that's just not that's not OK. Our librarians and teachers have been educated to know what children can read at what level and they know best and we need to leave it to those experts to decide what's appropriate for children at different levels. This is not something
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the federal government or the state should be getting into. Yeah, I totally agree. And so I kind of, wanted to ask, would you say that within the last year or so has probably, has that been the busiest time for you author skilled in terms of litigation? Yes. Yes, absolutely. We, you know, usually if we have one litigation, it's a big deal. We've got nine right now. So yeah, it's been a very busy time. Let's talk about.
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barts me anthropic a little bit because we've talked a lot about the use and misuse of artificial intelligence on the show. We actively tell people not to use generative AI. And so if you can give us sort of a just a high level overview of what that case was. Sure. So that case is a class action brought by three named plainness.
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m One of whom was just voted in as a new council member of the Authors Guild last night, Charlie Graber, um with um Kirk Johnson and Andy Bartz. And m they brought the case on behalf of all authors whose books were used to train anthropics, AI models. And the case went very quickly through the court. oh
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There was a summary judgment motion last spring where the court decided, we think very wrongly, that the training itself was fair use. um And I won't go into any detail on that decision other than to say there were just a couple factors the court got really wrong. And part of the problem with that case is that he didn't even allow discovery to finish before
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He agreed to hear the defendant's motion on summary judgment on the fair use issue. At the same time, there were were motions for uh class action uh certification, which and so his decision was the training was fair use. But where they got the books was from pirate websites and specifically LibGen, which is a well known notorious pirate website, which
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um The publishers and the authors guild have been working to get taken down for well over a decade. They've already lost a couple of civil lawsuits, um but they're based in Russia and very hard to actually get taken down um completely off the internet. Their US domains were taken down well over a decade ago, they're about a decade ago. um
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still have other domains, they just keep moving. um So the judge said that piracy was not fair use because they downloaded books, um seven million copies and created a database of those books. That um was eventually, and then he certified the class for that piracy.
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So there is a settlement um agreement that the judge has preliminarily approved. The claims process has been open since the fall where anybody, there's the Anthropic Settlement website, uh easy to find. Just type in Anthropic Settlement in a search engine and you'll be taken to it. uh
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works look up there to see if your book is included in the settlement. It will be on the list. And if it is, you need to file by March 30th. So we've only got 11 days left to file. Do get your claim in. each... If all of the claims, the settlement is for 1.5 billion. And if
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500,000, all 500,000 works, is what the list was whittled down to, are included, I mean, the claims are filed for them, then it's about 3,000 per work. And if there's a current publisher, the default is that the publisher gets 50 % of that under the contract. But if your contract looks different, you can say that in the claim form and ask for more or less or whatever it is.
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But that's basically the process and we've been um helping out the class action lawyers, just advising them on contracts, what they look like on the copyright law, on authors interests. They've been really good about getting our advice on things and listening to our suggestions on how this would best benefit authors and of course publishers too who are now part of the class.
20:00
I should just say that if an author for whatever reason doesn't get their claim in by March 30th, if their publisher does, they will still be entitled to their share. But it's better authors to get your claims in and do it now. And you'd be surprised how many books are on that list. So do look.
20:20
Hey everyone, this is Amanda King, one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy. These days I spend most of my time talking to businesses and clients about search engine optimization, but...
20:32
That's not what this is about. I wanted to tell you a little bit about a book I've co-authored with BJ Mendelsohn called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. And the title tells you pretty much everything you would want to know about what's in the book. And thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo, we'll actually be able to give you this book for free in 2026.
20:55
All you need to do is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com and sign up to our newsletter. Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for our newsletter. We'll let you know when the book and the audiobook is ready because if you want a PDF copy that's DRM free, it's yours. And if you want an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you can get that.
21:25
to. Now, I gotta get out of here before Bonzo corners me because ah he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him because I got a book to finish.
21:38
Yeah, honestly, I was I was kind of surprised because my book was came out in 2012. So it wasn't like a new book by any stretch. Anyway, I think it was out of print after a certain point. So I was I was on it for, you know, speaking to authors that might be listening. I was a little surprised that my book wound up on there. I'm sure that's have you have you heard that from people? I people wrote to you off the scale and said, what is my what is my book doing in this data set? Yes. So.
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It is so the books that are included on that list. They are books that Anthropic actually downloaded from from Libgen or another pirate site called Pirate Library Mirror um and that were where the copyright was registered and they have to have an ISBN or ASIN number and that's you know to you know to weed out things that aren't actually books. um And if it meets that criteria and it was on the the
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data in the data set that Anthropic downloaded, then your work should be on that list. And it is amazing how much you find in LibGen. I will say there are a number of people who say, well, my book's in LibGen and it meets all the other criteria, so why isn't it on the list? And that's because the downloads happened in the summer of 21 from LibGen and 22 from Pirate Library Mirror and
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um There was less in those sites then. um There's been an explosion of books added to the pirate website since. Right. so what tell me about what happens there because clearly this this problem seems to have gotten much worse, right? Like uh since the case was originally filed. So what what does the authors go? What does the coalition, I guess, do to protect authors in a case like that? From the piracy itself?
23:37
Yes. well, these these uh foreign based pirate websites have been they're intractable. It's been a real problem because you send them a takedown notice. They don't care. You know, they're hard for US law enforcement to to touch um because they're based in Russia. um It's um you know, lawsuits have been brought and they're.
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default judgments, but you can actually enforce the judgments other than getting um ISPs to take down the um domain names. um So, um but there is legislation that we've been working on with other groups in the copyright space for years now, um but this year I think it has a good chance of passing. It's called the Blockbeard Act and it would allow copyright owners
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to file in courts to get websites blocked in the US. um And that, they have to be foreign, they have to be dedicated to piracy, but that is what these sites are. Like LibGen, Anna's archive, the former Z library, which the government was successful in getting taken down. Yeah, so it's um just...
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I would tell authors just have a Google alert for your name and just see where where your books are popping up on pirate sites. If they're based in the US, you can send a cease and desist. Not a cease and desist, sorry, you just send a takedown notice and um the US. Based entities will take down your your book if you're having a problem with that. Contact the author's Guild. We can help you if it is a foreign based.
25:29
Pirate site, you can send take down notices, but good luck with that. Just keep an eye out. I always tell people to just do what you can. Don't feel overwhelmed. Just do a little bit each day if you can, because it matters. Protecting your copyright. For an author, sometimes it's all you have. All you have is your work. That's right. That's right. And there are lost sales, but it's also, to your point, don't get overwhelmed. You're going to have some...
25:57
you're gonna lose some sales to piracy. That's just the fact of living in this day and age. And it's too bad. publishers and the authors guild, we're doing everything we can to limit that. Yeah, let me ask you about the human authored certification program. Because I feel like this is sort of one of the, what do we do about this problem of AI.
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or concern of AI authored books flooding the market, Like flooding Amazon and people manipulating the ratings on Amazon to get these like non-human authored books to the top of the chart. So tell us about the human authored certification program and what it does. So this is um the human authored certification is a trademark, certification trademark.
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that actually we are registering with the trademark office that you can put on your book or you can use it uh in connection with advertising, marketing, selling the book. And it's a logo that says human author and it's got a little logo figure in the middle of it. It's a circular design. um We uh issue it to anyone who applies on, have a
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portal on our website. You have to certify that yes, you wrote the book. It wasn't AI generated and that the text is fully human authored except for a de minimis amount to account for spell check, rumor check, that sort of thing. um We also make exceptions for indexes and table of contents. You can use AI to brainstorm.
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You know to research it's really just saying that the text of the book was written by me it was authored by me it is my voice and that's what it means you know to be an author is to write your own works in your voice um and it has your you know it's it's it's it's your authorship it comes from your um your intellect and.
28:11
Consumers, they want to know that they're connecting to a human being. They don't want to read AI-generated material. So this both protects the author and the reader, the consumer. So when they buy something, they know it was written by a human being and they have that connection. By and large, there's a lot of AI junk already available in online bookstores. readers are not happy when they get that.
28:41
So it's both a consumer protection and a way for authors to identify their books as authentic um human written. I correct me if I'm wrong, because I could swear I saw this, that the program is open not just to authors guild members, but it seems to be widely available for a fee. Is that right? Correct. So we opened it up for authors guild members uh end of 24.
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And we've just opened it up for non-members and also publishers. But we do charge non-members a small fee of $10 title because we have to verify your identity if you're not a member. And that costs money. we're going to be enforcing this because we want it to be trustworthy. We want consumers to know that when that certificate is used honor and connection with the book, it is in fact human author.
29:41
we need to um take legal action against those who are using the mark in a fraudulent way. Absolutely. I'm proud to say that our book uh applied. I think the second I saw the initial announcement for human authored certification, within that week, I think we went in there and said, ah OK, Please tell us how can we support the Authors Guild? Like if we're listening to some
30:10
we're learning about the organization for the first time. What are something that readers or people that might want to support authors, how can they get involved? How can they help? Well, what I would say is join, know, join the authors guild, educate yourself on the issues today. um Talk about this with fellow authors about the issues um because supporting the profession is supporting the guild.
30:38
You know, of course, if we we have our foundation raises money for advocacy and we are always looking for donations, hate to beg, but that is just the truth of running a not for profit. Our dues covers only half of not even half of our budget. And we are very, um you know, very shoestring operation um under staff like many not for profits. But um
31:08
But that, of course, is a great way to help, but also just getting the word out and advocating for yourselves as writers is really important. And our motto this year is we are stronger together. We have to work together to ensure that the writing profession survives the age of AI and book banning.
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and scams, you know, there are just so many challenges that we're facing today and we need to stick together to fight them. Yeah, I'm thankful for the existence of this organization because I just have seen the multiple creative professions just eroded or eliminated in my lifetime, in my short lifetime. And often there weren't organizations like your office guild to protect creative. So I can't thank you enough.
32:06
There's no stupid, sexy privacy without our friends at DuckDuckGo. So if you want to thank them for making the show possible, we hope you'll check them out. Because stupid, sexy privacy is a people-powered project. With a couple of exceptions, like producing podcast transcripts through Riverside. We don't use AI. Everyone who works here is getting compensated for their time, effort, and energy. The only way that's possible is to find good partners like DuckDuckGo.
32:33
So today we're gonna highlight DuckDuckGo's web browser, a tool millions of people have switched to in order to safely search and browse the web. And the best part is the DuckDuckGo browser is free, just like all the content we create at Stupid Sexy Privacy. We make our money from DuckDuckGo. DuckDuckGo makes its money by selling privacy-respecting search advertising. These are ads based on what you've searched for. They're not generated by data gathered without your consent.
33:02
And if you have an Android phone, the DuckDuckGo app offers a nice additional layer of privacy. It does this by blocking invasive data harvesting from the other apps on your phone. For example, when BJ wrote this ad in the last hour, DuckDuckGo's app tracking protection for Android blocked 218 tracking attempts by Substack and four other apps on his phone. And in the last week, DuckDuckGo's app blocked 9,202 tracking attempts across 11 different apps. This included 43 tracking attempts from the Starbucks app.
33:31
Despite the fact that BJ hasn't been at Starbucks in over a month, at stupid, sexy privacy, we're never going to recommend you use something that we don't use ourselves. So do you want to take back control of your personal information? Well, there's a browser designed for data protection, not data collection, and that's DuckDuckGo. Make sure you visit DuckDuckGo.com today and check out this episode's show notes for a link to download the DuckDuckGo browser for your laptop and mobile device.
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you
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This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California. It was written by B.J. Mendelsohn, produced by Andrew Van Voorst, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran. And of course, our program is sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. If you enjoy the show, I hope you'll take a moment to leave us a review on PocketCast, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you may be listening. This won't take more than two minutes of your time, and leaving us a review will help other people find it.
34:32
We have a crazy goal of helping 5 % of Americans get 1 % better at protecting themselves from fascists and weirdo. Your reviews can help us reach that goal, since leaving one makes our show easier to find. So please take a moment to leave us a review and I'll see you right back here next Thursday at midnight. After you watch Rosie Tran Presents on Amazon Prime, right? Bonzo, I wish that you'll have many more birthdays just like this one. With those you love and trust around you always to share your happiness.
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And I wish that you'll get a chance very soon to prove that being loved and looked after like a human being has made you feel like a human being. And that if love can do that to you, then it ought to be able to make some other human beings... human beings.