A group of authors–Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Eloisa James, Hampton Sides, Victor LaValle, Mary Bly, Jonathan Alter, Eugene Linden, Daniel Okrent, Rachel Vail, and Simon Winchester–filed suit against Microsoft in New York’s Southern District, arguing that the tech company’s use of their books to train its Megatron LLM is copyright infringement. Plaintiffs argue that Microsoft knew that they needed licenses to use books because they entered a licensing deal with Harper Collins last year. But they say that Microsoft used the Books3 pirate database of nearly 200,000 books, knowing that it was infringement. “The end result is a computer model […]
Archives for June 2025
Former Bonnier Executives Launch Firefinch
Kate Parkin and Margaret Stead will launch independent publisher Firefinch, “a small, focused publishing house with an approach and ethos that will appeal to authors, agents and publishers alike,” the Bookseller reports. Firefinch will publish six titles beginning in June 2026, by Heather Morris, Christy Lefteri, Anya Bergman, Jonathan Black, Marc Levy, and Kate London. The company is “backed by an unnamed investor.” Parkin will be managing director and Stead will be executive director. In addition, Blake Brooks has joined as audience development director. Parkin was managing director of the adult publishing division at Bonnier Books UK until 2022 and Stead […]
Forthcoming: Books From Cynthia Erivo, Demi Lovato, and Jennie Garth
Flatiron Books will publish Cynthia Erivo‘s SIMPLY MORE: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They’re Too Much on November 18. Flatiron EVP and publisher Megan Lynch will edit in a deal brokered by Albert Lee at UTA. The book is a series of “personal vignettes” reflecting on the ways Erivo “has grown as an actor and human, the practices she’s learned over years of performing.” Flatiron will also publish Demi Lovato‘s cookbook ONE PLATE AT A TIME: Recipes for Finding Freedom with Food, “a collection of more than eighty recipes, all created to emphasize enjoyment over perfection,” on […]
People 6/26
A Different California Judge Believes LLMs Are Likely Infringing Much of the Time, But Authors Made the Wrong Argument So Meta Case Is Dismissed
In another copyright infringement case brought in California’s Northern District—this time against Meta, filed by 13 prominent authors—Judge Vince Chhabria issued a surprising ruling. He suggest that “in cases involving uses like Meta’s, it seems like the plaintiffs will often win,” but in this particular case the plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and thus “the Court has no choice but to grant summary judgment to Meta on the plaintiffs’ claim that the company violated copyright law by training its models with their books.” That said, however, “In the grand scheme of things, the consequences of this ruling are limited. This […]
Anthropic’s Use of Legally Acquired Books “Was Exceedingly Transformative” And Fair Use; Stealing and Using 7 Million Pirated Books Was Not
AI company Anthropic won a limited victory in the copyright infringement case brought against it by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in the Northern District of California. Federal District Judge William Alsup granted Anthropic summary judgment for their use of copyrighted books to train their service Claude and its predecessors, finding it “was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act.” At the same time, however, Judge Alsup wrote that Anthropic’s downloading of millions of illegal, pirated copies of books for its central library and AI training was not remotely […]