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Category Archives: Copyright

Book Publishers Won’t Stop Until Libraries Are Dead

TechDirt: “Earlier this week there was finally a hearing in the case brought by the big book publishers to kill off libraries. That, of course, is not how the publishers describe the lawsuit, but it’s absolutely what the lawsuit is about. We’ll get to some of the details in a moment, but we’ve joked in the past that if libraries were new today there’s no way that book publishers would let them exist. In some ways they’re a legacy holdover from before publishers had that much power. The attack on controlled digital lending (CDL) more or less proves this. As much as publishers like to claim they “love libraries,” their actions here speak quite clearly that they would destroy them if they could. Controlled digital lending is no different from how a library lends out books today. In both cases, it gets a physical copy of the book (either through purchase or donation), and then proceeds to lend out that copy. With a physical library it’s literally that physical copy. With CDL it’s a scan of that book, but the scan is tied to the physical copy, so that if a digital copy is loaned out, no one else can take out another copy. Every part of that has been deemed legal. Copyright law already has first sale rights, written directly into the law and allow for the lending or reselling of copyright-covered works without a license or permission. Similarly libraries are given explicit rights to make copies, so long as those collections are made available to the public. On top of that, courts have determined, multiple times, that book scanning itself is fair use for libraries. So, literally each separate component of what is happening with Controlled Digital Lending has already been deemed to be legal and exactly what we expect libraries to do…”

Internet Archive

Internet Archives Blog: “Today’s lower court decision in Hachette v. Internet Archive is a blow to all libraries and the communities we serve. This decision impacts libraries across the US who rely on controlled digital lending to connect their patrons with books online. It hurts authors by saying that unfair licensing models are the only… Continue Reading

Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists?

The New Yorker – According to the lawyer behind a new class-action suit, every image that a generative tool produces “is an infringing, derivative work.” By Kyle Chayka – “…Last month, McKernan joined a class-action lawsuit with two other artists, Sarah Andersen and Karla Ortiz, filed by the attorneys Matthew Butterick and Joseph Saveri, against… Continue Reading

Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence

A Rule by the Copyright Office, Library of Congress on 03/16/2023 – “The Copyright Office (the “Office”) is the Federal agency tasked with administering the copyright registration system, as well as advising Congress, other agencies, and the Federal judiciary on copyright and related matters. Because the Office has overseen copyright registration since its origins in… Continue Reading

Authors risk losing copyright if AI content is not disclosed, US guidance says

Ars Technica: “As generative AI technologies like GPT-4 and Midjourney have rapidly gotten more sophisticated and their creative use has exploded in popularity, the US Copyright Office has issued guidance today to clarify when AI-generated material can be copyrighted. Guidance comes after the Copyright Office decided that an author could not copyright individual AI images… Continue Reading

Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law

CRS Legal Sidebar – Generative Artificial Intelligence and Copyright Law. February 24, 2023: “Recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) are raising new questions about how copyright law  principles such as authorship, infringement, and fair use will apply to content created or used by AI. So-called “generative AI” computer programs—such as Open AI’s DALL-E 2 and… Continue Reading

AI-created images lose U.S. copyrights in test for new technology

Reuters: “Images in a graphic novel that were created using the artificial-intelligence system Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection, the U.S. Copyright Office said in a letter seen by Reuters. “Zarya of the Dawn” author Kris Kashtanova is entitled to a copyright for the parts of the book Kashtanova wrote and arranged, but… Continue Reading

Publishers Want to End How Libraries Lend Books Online

Medium: “When the pandemic began and schools and libraries around the country were forced to close their doors, teachers and librarians were at a loss over how to get digital books into the hands of young readers and their families. The problem was so drastic that the Internet Archive (IA), a nonprofit digital library, declared… Continue Reading