Author and former Navy Seal David Goggins is suing Amazon for selling counterfeit copies of his 2018 self-published book Can’t Hurt Me on its third party marketplace. In a suit filed on February 23 in the US District Court for the Western District of Seattle, Goggins alleges that the retailer knowingly sold bootleg copies of the book, as well as summaries that included Goggins’ images, and other products based on the book, despite Goggins’ repeated efforts to get the materials removed. According to the suit, Can’t Hurt Me has sold seven million copies to date. (Circana Bookscan has recorded US […]
Legal
Judge Dismisses Parts of Author Suits Against OpenAI
Ninth Circuit District Court Judge Aracelli Martinez-Olguin in California dismissed four of the more technical counts brought by authors against OpenAI in multiple lawsuits. The decision follows other rulings in being skeptical that the output of generative AI—even if it is significantly similar to an original work—is a violation of the creator’s copyright. Notably, however, the foundational claim—that training OpenAI on a massive corpus of copyrighted works without permission violates copyright—was not challenged at this stage, and will proceed. Also notable is that Judge Martinez-Olguin did allow another important claim of the plaintiffs to go forward, which is the allegation […]
NYPL Tries New “Orphan” Works Workaround
The New York Public Library has developed a novel, permission-based approach to try to bring potentially in-copyright “orphan works” of scholarship back into general availability. The problem, as they have identified through a variety of efforts, is that often neither the author not the publisher is certain whose permission is needed to digitize and make available out-of-print or otherwise commercially dormant books that may still be covered by copyright. And the expense — and potential liability — of doing the research or granting permission without certainty about the rights makes the risks outweigh the potential benefits of agreeing to republication. […]
Tattered Cover Files Reorganization Plan, with Higher Debts Than Originally Declared
Following their first filing for voluntary bankruptcy in mid-October, the owners of Tattered Cover filed a reorganization plan with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado earlier this week. While the store group initially said it lost about $660,000 during the year last year and owed at least $1.375 million to publishers and Colorado’s Office of the State Auditor for abandoned gift cards, the new documents depict a more severe situation. As of the initial filing in October, they had secured debt of approximately $820,000, and unsecured claims of just over $3.2 million. In the previous year, 2022, […]
Appeals Court Agrees that Texas READER Law Violates First Amendment
In a unanimous verdict, a three-judge panel on the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld District Court Judge Alan D. Albright’s clear and comprehensive ruling that Texas’s READER Act, a book banning law, is unconstitutional. The ruling and preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the law, which had been stayed pending the appeal, can now go forward, as the Appeals Court denied the state’s motion for stay pending further appeal. The case is a clear loser for Texas, and the Appeals Court barely breaks a sweat in rejecting all of the state’s fanciful arguments otherwise: “The question presented […]
Pen America and PRH’s Suit Against FL Schools Will Continue
Pen America and Penguin Random House’s lawsuit against the Escambia County, FL school board will move forward, U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell ruled on Wednesday. The plaintiffs, which include a group of authors and parents, argue that the school system’s removal of more than 1,600 titles–including dictionaries and encyclopedias–is a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. “Today, we urged the court to vindicate the Constitutional rights of students, parents, authors and publishers,” Pen America, Florida director Katie Blankenship said in a statement. “We are heartened that Judge Wetherell agreed and that our case can proceed. These books need to […]