Kimberly Ann Miletta, former president of Beverly Hills-based Phoenix Books, was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud by the Central District of California. The court found that Miletta defrauded the owners of Phoenix Books, embezzling at least $1.3 million from the company and the owner’s personal bank account. Between October 2013 and January 2018, Miletta used the company credit card, which she controlled exclusively, on personal expenses, including spa treatments, clothing, veterinary bills, designer handbags, and more. She then paid the credit card out of the owner’s personal account. Miletta also made fraudulent wire transfers of almost $1 […]
Legal
Books to Be Restored To Libraries After Settlement in FL Case
Books including And Tango Makes Three will be restored to public school libraries in Nassau County, FL, following the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the authors and local students and parents. In their May complaint, plaintiffs including authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson asserted that the school board and district officials “unconstitutionally targeted And Tango Makes Three, a widely acclaimed children’s book containing LGBTQIA+ characters and themes, for removal from the District’s public school library shelves…at the behest of an anti-LGBTQIA+ advocacy group,” Citizens Defending Freedom. CDF challenged 35 other books, including those by Toni Morrison, Khaled Hosseini, Jonathan […]
Second Circuit Upholds Lower Court Ruling On Internet Archive
In a ruling released on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s finding that the Internet Archive’s copying and lending of digital books infringes copyright. The court writes, “This appeal presents the following question: is it ‘fair use’ for a nonprofit organization to scan copyright-protected print books in their entirety and distribute those digital copies online, in full, for free, subject to a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio between its print copies and the digital copies it makes available at any given time, all without authorization from the copyright-holding publishers or authors? Applying the relevant provisions of the […]
Iowa Book Ban Suit Sent Back to Lower Court
On Friday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision that halted enacting a book banning law in Iowa. The decision, written by Judge Ralph R. Erickson, says that the lower court’s decision was “based on a flawed analysis of the law” and remanded it back to the district court “for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.” The suit, brought by Penguin Random House and joined by Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Sourcebooks, and several authors, challenged an Iowa law that would remove from schools any book that describes or depicts sex, regardless of […]
Former Scribe Media Employees File Motion For Emergency Relief
In the ongoing litigation against Scribe Media, a group of former employees has filed a motion for emergency relief, following an effort by ceo Eric Jorgenson to get class members to take individual payouts in exchange for confidentiality agreements and legal release. The employees declined the offers, which were for two weeks of salary paid out in installments. The group originally sued last year, after being abruptly laid off in May 2023 without severance and with outstanding pay due to them. The suit is currently set for trial in April 2025. The plaintiffs are requesting a curative notice to the […]
Court Rules Against Circumvention of Copyright Protections
A DC Circuit Court rejected an appeal that challenged protections for copyrighted works. The case was originally brought in 2016 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of a computer science professor and a tech inventor, who argued that preventing technological measures to circumvent copyright protections, or locks on digital media–as established by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act–was unconstitutional. Their claims were struck down in 2022 in an as-applied case, and now have been denied on a facial basis. In a decision passed down on Friday, Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote, “The First Amendment protects a right to read, but it […]