Oral arguments began today in the Book People v. Wong case against Texas’s READER book banning law before a panel of judges. The defense largely argued that the plaintiffs’ claims aren’t ripe, and that their assertations of harm are not sufficient. Judges often asked about the definitions of “sexually explicit” and “sexually relevant,” since booksellers would be barred from selling books categorized as such to public schools. While defense attorney Kateland Jackson explained that the definitions come from the penal code, plaintiffs’ counsel Laura Lee Prather argued that those definitions are “cherry picked” from the penal code, mostly dealing with […]
Legal
Judge Dismisses Portions of Authors’ Lawsuit Against Meta
Judge Vince Chhabria of the US District Court in Northern California has dismissed portions of Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden’s class action lawsuit against Meta. The judge granted Meta’s motion to dismiss claims that the output of Meta’s large language model, LLaMA, infringes on their copyrights, saying that he didn’t understand how the AI tool’s output was similar to Silverman’s book. The plaintiffs may amend the claim, but for it to stand they must “argue that LLaMa’s output was substantially similar to their works,” Reuters reports. Meta has not responded to the authors’ main argument, that their books’ […]
While Copyright Office Considers, FTC Is Already Concerned that Generative AI Is Unfair Competition for Creators
As the US Copyright Office considers the thousands of comments on “copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence systems,” the Federal Trade Commission drew attention with a press release to their own position on generative AI in the marketplace — suggesting the agency stands ready to protect creators from unfair competition and consumers from non-transparent machine-generated content. From a pure copyright perspective, resolving issues around fair use could take months to formulate and legislate, or more likely years to litigate, while the world changes before creators’ eyes. Importantly, the FTC states more definitively what creators have been waiting […]
Copyright Office Shares Comments On AI Legal Issues
Earlier this year the US Copyright Office solicited comment on “copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence systems,” in order to “help assess whether legislative or regulatory steps in this area are warranted.” They have received nearly 10,000 comments, which were recently posted into a searchable archive, including extensive submissions from market leaders such as OpenAI, Google and Meta. Google takes the classic tech company approach, suggesting any issues should be left to the courts (where final adjudication will be glacial). Like all of their peers, they argue that large language models (LLMs) are just math; they “capture […]
All Seasons Press Sues Author Mark Meadows For Lying — Or For Then Telling the Truth?
In a filing that deftly blends unintended comedy with performance art, publisher All Seasons Press sued author Mark Meadows in a Florida state court on Friday, alleging breach of contract in his publishing agreement. They seek payment of approximately $3 million in expenses, potential lost profits, and “reputational harm.” The publisher says that they are acting based on unconfirmed press reports that Meadows testified before a grand jury in exchange for immunity “that neither he nor President Trump actually believed…claims” that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent. The suit claims the publisher “determined that it was legally and ethically obliged […]
Amazon Sues Scammers Offering Fake Publishing Services
Amazon recently filed suit in the Northern District of California against a number of people and companies “that falsely claim affiliation with Amazon services, including Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing.” The company asserts in the complaint: “Defendants run an international scam operation that deceives authors into paying for fraudulent and materially substandard services under the guise that they are affiliated with Amazon by using logos that are confusingly similar or nearly identical to Amazon’s distinctive trademarks. While Amazon has already taken swift action to shut down many of Defendants’ websites, Defendants—at least ten individuals and eight entities—continue to register […]