Korean publishers seek AI book-licensing body after Anthropic piracy

The Korean Publishers Society, a trade group representing roughly 500 trade-book publishers, issued a public appeal to South Korea’s government, National Assembly and AI companies on October 20, calling for a copyright trust body to manage AI licensing and compensation for books, per Seoul Economic Daily. The group wants AI firms to disclose which books trained their models, obtain authors’ prior consent, and pay into a standardized licensing system modeled on music-rights collecting societies. The appeal follows reports that Anthropic bought and digitized Korean books, including pirated copies by novelists Han Kang and Kim Ae-ran, for AI training — echoing the piracy claims at the center of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion Bartz v. Anthropic settlement in the US.