The AAP, Hachette, Wiley, PRH, and Harper Collins filed a brief with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals opposing the Internet Archive’s appeal of the copyright lawsuit they lost last year. District Court Judge John Koeltl’s verdict granting summary judgment just under a year ago was clear, overwhelming, and rooted in Second Circuit precedent. So the plaintiffs’ arguments are largely the same as the those that won them the case. Despite the IA’s assertion that they were doing it for the common good, their copying and distribution of in-copyright books — under the invented legal theory of controlled digital lending […]
People 3/15
At FSG, Eric Chinski has been promoted to editorial director, non-fiction.
ALA Report: Books Targeted For Censorship Surged in 2023
The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom released a new report on library censorship attempts in 2023, recording a 65% increase from 2022 in the number of titles targeted. A total of 4,240 unique book titles were targeted at schools and public libraries, up from 2,571 the previous year. These titles were distributed among 1,247 demands. The report notes that public libraries saw the biggest increase, with the number of censorship attempts rising 92%. At schools, demands were up 11%. The ALA writes, “Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this […]
NYT Responds to OpenAI’s “Hacking” Claims
The New York Times responded to OpenAI’s motion to dismiss the paper’s copyright lawsuit, which claimed that the Times “hacked” Chat-GPT in queries to get responses that support their case. According to the Times’ response, OpenAI’s claim is “as irrelevant as it is false.” “OpenAI’s true grievance is not about how The Times conducted its investigation, but instead what that investigation exposed: that Defendants built their products by copying The Times’s content on an unprecedented scale—a fact that OpenAI does not, and cannot, dispute,” lawyers for the paper state in their filing. That OpenAI used the Times’s copyrighted material to […]
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalists
Aspen Words announced the finalists for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, "for a work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture."
People 3/14
Patrick Nielsen Hayden becomes editor-at-large at Tor Publishing Group.