For only the second time, the Authors Guild and the AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives) joined together to file an amicus brief in support of the seven publishers suing to block Audible Captions. They say the “feature presents a significant threat to the rights and livelihoods of authors and their representatives…. Audible seeks to bypass its glaring infringement of authors’ and publishers’ rights by arguing that this is a contract issue, not a copyright issue and that, in any event, its misappropriation qualifies as fair use.” Significantly, their legal argument is that “Audible completely ignores the Copyright Act’s explicit recognition […]
Legal
Publishers Push Back on Audible’s Legal Evasion, Refute Any Educational Benefit from Captions
Publishers replied to Audible’s arguments against a injunction blocking the release of their Captions transcription feature, swatting at the legal arguments as a distraction rather than an answer, and exposing the idea that there is any compelling educational benefit. “Audible’s brief is remarkable for what it admits and fails to rebut, as well as its many misstatements of copyright law.” Audible has already all but self-injuncted, telling independent publishers and authors it has “chosen to wait until the outcome of the [legal] proceeding to release it — “which is exactly what Publishers explained Audible could do to if it wanted […]
Why Audible’s Legal Arguments Fail
Ahead of the formal response from the seven publishers suing Audible for copyright infringement due to their Caption feature, assistant director at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property and assistant professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University Devlin Hartline provides a preview of the likely arguments. It’s plainly a copyright case and not a contract dispute, as Audible had argued, because “the publishers only claim infringement of the underlying works, that is, the literary works from which the sound recordings of the audiobooks are derived.” It’s the same as if Audible had produced a […]
Government Sues Edward Snowden, Seeking to Collect Any Book and Speech Earnings
The US government filed suit again Edward Snowden in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, seeking any and all earnings from his just published book Permanent Record, as well as earnings from his speeches, alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty. As a former employee of both the CIA and the NSA, Snowden had signed secrecy agreements requiring pre-publication review of any book, but he “did not, at any time, submit the manuscript for Permanent Record to either the CIA or NSA for prepublication review. Nor did Snowden obtain written approval from CIA or NSA prior to sharing manuscripts with […]
Audible Says Publishers Have A Contract Dispute, Not A Copyright Infringement Case
Audible filed their reply to publishers’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking the release of the Captions feature on their work, and the company used the same arguments to file a separate motion to dismiss the case entirely. Of course if Audible actually means what they have been writing to self-published authors and independent publishers — that they “have chosen to wait until the outcome of the proceeding to release” the feature — they could save the court some effort and so stipulate as a legal promise, which would make rendering a verdict on a restraining order unnecessary. That would […]
Legal: More On Captions, and Fox, As EU Is Advised Against Resale of eBooks
Last week when we reported that Audible was telling self-published ACX authors “we have chosen to wait until the outcome of the proceeding to release” their controversial Captions feature, the company said this was “what we’re communicating to authors” and declined to answer our question about whether that policy applied to publishers as well. The Independent Book Publishers Association complained to Audible about Captions on behalf of 27 of their members, and got the exact same form e-mail response back that we quoted last week, Publishing Perspectives reports. Which suggests the entire launch, aside from public domain titles, has been […]