Neil Gaiman has asked the US District Court in Wisconsin to dismiss the civil lawsuit accusing him of rape and sexual assault filed by former employee Scarlett Pavlovich in February. Gaiman filed a motion to dismiss on March 4, writing in the filing that the case should be adjudicated in New Zealand. The filing states that “the Trafficking Victims Protection Act cannot be applied extraterritorially” and “international comity dictates that United States courts must abstain from adjudicating acts committed within the jurisdiction of a foreign nation.” The brief in support of the dismissal states, “Plaintiff’s claims are a sham. Her […]
Legal
Authors Guild Urges NEA Grantees and Applicants To Hold Tight; EOs Likely Unenforceable
Donald Trump’s January 20 and 21 executive orders to government agencies to terminate grants promoting DEI or “gender ideology” have sent NEA grant recipients and applicants—both organizations and individual authors—into confusion over the past few weeks. Making the landscape vaguer still is a preliminary injunction blocking those executive orders, in a case brought by higher education organizations and the city of Baltimore. Authors Guild president Mary Rasenberger advises that the NEA’s new rules and mandated “assurance of compliance” that new grant applicants are required to sign are likely unenforceable due to vagueness and unconstitutionality. In particular, new regulations have appeared […]
Meta Reached Out To Publishers To License Books But Gave Up
Newly released documents in the Kadrey v. Meta copyright infringement suit state that the tech giant reached out to publishers to license books for AI training, but ultimately “paused” that effort. In a deposition, director of business development, AI partnerships Sy Choudhury said that in early 2023 Meta looked into licensing “fiction book data, scientific textbook data, normal textbook data, images, videos” but the work to license “fiction books, nonfiction books, and coding” was stopped in April 2023. In another deposition, Alexander Boesenberg, who works in business development and AI partnerships, said, “We got to a point where we decided […]
Judge Rules Against “Fair Use” Defense in First AI Copyright Case
Thompson Reuters won its case against tech company Ross Intelligence, which copied TR’s Westlaw legal content to create its own AI, Reuters reports. This is the first judgement in an AI copyright infringement case in the US. Specifically, the judge ruled that Ross’s use of Westlaw’s content did not constitute “fair use”–a defense being used by several AI companies in suits about their use of pirated books. “We are pleased that the court granted summary judgment in our favor and concluded that Westlaw’s editorial content, created and maintained by our attorney editors, is protected by copyright and cannot be used […]
Meta Documents Suggest Licensing Books Would Preclude Them From Pirating Them
According to newly unsealed filing in the case of several authors against Meta for copyright infringement, plaintiffs note that Meta’s documents show that the tech company knowingly used pirated material to train their AI tool Llama, even after employees raised flags that it was unethical and looked into paying for licenses. According to the filing, in one document, a Meta employee stated that she’d “been helping with buying content” from a redacted textbook publisher. Other internal messages “openly discuss licensing efforts and weigh the tradeoffs of using pirated textbooks and other copyrighted works from LibGen instead, including a statement that […]
Six Publishers and Authors Guild Sue Over Idaho Book Ban Law
Six publishers—Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks—have filed suit challenging a book banning law in Idaho that went into effect on July 1, 2024. The publishers are joined as plaintiffs by Authors Guild; authors Malinda Lo, David Levithan, and Dashka Slater; the Donnelly Public Library District; a teacher; two students; and two parents. The law, HB 710, affects both public and school libraries. Like other book banning laws, it prevents minors of any age from accessing any books with “sexual content,” with a definition of the term that’s “exceptionally broad, vague, […]