As one of those authors (3 books in this case) I'll just point out:
Most authors don't own any interesting rights to their books because they are works for hire.
Maybe I would have gotten something, maybe not. Depends on the contract. One of my books that was used is from 1996. That contract did not say a lot about the internet, and I was also 16 at the time ;)
In practice they stole from a relatively small number of publishers. The rest is PR.
The settlement goes to authors in part because anything else would generate immensely bad PR.
Most authors don't own any interesting rights to their books because they are works for hire.
Maybe I would have gotten something, maybe not. Depends on the contract. One of my books that was used is from 1996. That contract did not say a lot about the internet, and I was also 16 at the time ;)
In practice they stole from a relatively small number of publishers. The rest is PR.
The settlement goes to authors in part because anything else would generate immensely bad PR.
As usual, nothing is really black and white