Stephen Elliott’s lawsuit against Media Men list creator Moira Donegan appears to be on life support, after Magistrate Judge Sanket Bulsara denied his request to order defendant Moira Donegan to unmask the Jane Does who Elliott claims defamed him — info she has already said she doesn’t have. Judge Bulsara said that there was no cause, given that there was already a fully briefed motion, as well as an amended complaint, ready for Judge Lashann DeArcy Hall to rule on. Even if Donegan was served discovery, Judge Bulsara said, there was little reason to think she would produce the same […]
Legal
For Your Lawyers: Internet Archive’s Wikipedia Deal Raises Profile of Disputed Online Lending
Since 2010 the Internet Archive has built a massive online lending library of over 1 million titles based on a disputed (or invented, depending upon your perspective) view of copyright: They have scanned books from libraries, including a significant corpus of recent, in-copyright books, and lend the digital versions on the same one-lend-at-a-time-per-copy rule that publishers impose on ebooks that they lawfully license to library customers. The IA calls this “controlled digital lending,” which has been vigorously disputed in recent years by publishing organizations including the SFWA, the Authors Guild, and the AAP. That challenge may become more urgent now […]
Judge in Parneros v. Barnes & Noble Discourages Bookseller’s “Risky Motion”
Attorneys in Parneros v. Barnes & Noble sat before Judge John Koeltl as the business day closed November 4 to discuss Barnes & Noble’s intent to move for summary judgement on two of its former ceo’s three claims — defamation and breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Judge Koeltl called it “a risky notion” more than once, noting that the mere fact of the timing of his termination — 2 weeks before contractual benefits were due to accrue — gives credibility to the fair dealing claim, whatever board members might have said so far in discovery. Koeltl […]
Hachette Book Group Fends Off A Justice Department Attempt to Unmask Anonymous
The head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Division Joseph Hunt wrote to Hachette Book Group general counsel Carol Ross, as well as literary agents Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn at Javelin, trying to unmask the author of the forthcoming book A WARNING, by Anonymous. The DOJ wants to know if the author is potentially subject to pre-publication review as part of their Federal employment. But as has been reinforced in recent instances, from Edward Snowden’s book (which the government is suing over) to Amaryllis Fox’s book (in which so far they appear to have given her a pass for […]
Holt and Holtzbrinck Agree Not to Pay Snowden Anything, for A While
Publisher Henry Holt and two German-based Holtzbrinck companies agreed in an order submitted along with the US Attorney General’s office to a Federal Court in Virginia that they would not pay out any proceeds to Edward Snowden or his representatives earned by his book Permanent Record prior to April 1, 2020. (For now that simply aligns with a normal royalty accounting schedule, though that is not mentioned in the order.) The submitted file does indicate that Holt licensed rights to the book from the German-based HIM Holtzbrinck 37, which is the originating contractual party with Snowden.
Negotiations Between Publishers and Audible Continue
Audible’s attorney reported to the court on Wednesday as promised, telling Judge Valerie Caproni that the publisher plaintiffs “responded yesterday” to Audible’s previous offer “with a counter-proposal, which Audible is now considering.” Once again, attorney Nicole Gueron asks the court to withhold ruling on the motions for a preliminary injunction (or a dismissal) pending the continuing discussions, promising another update on or before November 14.