>instead of allowing anyone to train on already scanned books for free

That would be pirating. So your complaint is that they didn't do more piracy?

My complaint is that after this settlement nothing has materially changed except that the big labs now benefit from higher barriers to entry in their market. Authors don't make more money (other than a one time protection payment from Anthropic to publishers and some lawyers). Literally no one else benefits, except I guess used book marketplaces and book scanner vendors.

To be clear, this isn't a problem with the court process. Everything here appears perfectly in accordance with the law. It's just an absurd state to be in.