The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Maryland parents who want to remove their children, on religious grounds, from public school lessons in which “LGBTQ+-inclusive” books are used. As expected, the Court provided a preliminary injunction in favor of the parents in Mahmoud v. Taylor in a 6-3 decision, with the Court’s three liberal justices dissenting. The school district originally allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons in which LGBTQ+ books were used. Eventually, the opt outs became disruptive and the county reversed the policy. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito writes, “The [school] Board’s introduction of […]
Legal
Authors Sue Microsoft Over LLM Copyright Infringement
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 […]
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 […]
Judge Dismisses Part of Academic Publishers’ Suit Against Google
In a lawsuit brought by Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Macmillan Learning, and Elsevier against Google, Judge Jennifer L. Rochon dismissed the plaintiff’s claims that the tech giant engaged in vicarious copyright infringement due to the use of Google Shopping to sell pirated digital textbooks. “Google exercises no control over the infringing Pirate Sellers’ third-party websites, where the actual alleged infringement takes place,” the opinion states. It continues, “The fact that ‘search engines [can] effectively cause a website to disappear by removing it from their search results’ is not enough to give rise to vicarious liability.” The judge, however, allowed one […]
Former Fleet Publisher Ursula Doyle Reaches Settlement With Hachette UK
Former publisher of Hachette UK’s Fleet imprint Ursula Doyle has reached an undisclosed settlement with the company. Doyle filed a discrimination complaint in summer 2024, writing on a fundraising page for legal fees that she faced online harassment from colleagues for publishing Kathleen Stock’s 2020 “gender critical” book Material Girls and that the company did nothing to protect her from the abuse. Doyle also claimed in a statement that the company discriminated against her “by introducing a trans-inclusion policy, which explicitly allows men who say they are women to use women’s toilets and shower facilities.” Doyle wrote in an update […]