The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower-court ruling against the Internet Archive (IA).

The suit was first brought in 2020 by HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Wiley, alleging “willful mass copyright infringement” by IA’s “National Emergency Library,” which offered unlimited borrows of over a million ebooks. Judge John Koeltl of New York Federal Court issued a summary judgment against IA on March 24, 2023.

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The US Census Bureau report for April 2024 shows bookstore sales of $596 million, up 2.4% from April 2023. For the first four months of 2024, bookstore sales were down 4.0% at $2.553 billion. All retail was up 3.6% for the month, and up 2.9% year-to-date.

The Association of American Publishers’ StatShort report for April shows sales up 18.3% compared to April 2023, with most major cat­egories showing sales increases. ...Read More

Romance writer Christine DeMaio, who also publishes as CD Reiss, has launched a proposed class-action lawsuit against Amazon, alleging an unlawful monopoly on audiobook sales. She is represented by Hagens Berman, which has brought various publishing-related class-action suits in recent years, with mixed success. The filing claims that Amazon’s Audible ACX program, which is open to self-publishers, charges a fee of 60% for authors who use their platform exclusively – ...Read More

Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy in May 2024 in the Southern District of Texas. The RWA was unable to pay the hotel contracts for their annual conferences after membership plummeted following a series of high-profile controversies. The RWA owes about $3 million to hotels, and almost $75,000 to other creditors.

The main cause of the fiscal problems is a long-term contract RWA signed with Marriott Hotels to host ...Read More

Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Sourcebooks have joined a previously reported lawsuit oppos­ing Iowa’s SF 496, a law that seeks to ban books depicting sex or involving gender identity or sexual orientation. They join existing plaintiffs Penguin Random House; the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA); authors Laurie Halse Ander­son, John Green, Malinda Lo, and Jodi Picoult; three teachers; and a high school student. “We as publishers are uniting ...Read More

The New York Times reports that Meta (the parent company for Facebook, Ins­tagram, and Meta AI, among other concerns) considered purchasing Simon & Schuster last year in order to train their Large Language Model on the company’s books:

Lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by The Times. They also conferred on gathering ...Read More

Federal judge Stephen Locher has filed a preliminary injunction against the state of Iowa’s book-banning law, calling the measure “incredibly broad.” The measure was meant to go into effect January 1, 2024, and would restrict books about sexuality or gender, or with descrip­tions or depictions of sex, from school libraries and classrooms. It originally banned books with LGBT content as well, but the state of Iowa re­versed that position in ...Read More

The US Copyright office has solicited comments on ‘‘copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence systems,’’ drawing thousands of responses. Comments from many authors, and organizations including the Authors Guild and the Association of American publishers, argue that Large Language Models rely on mass copyright infringement in order to function at all. The Authors Guild said,

The leading LLMs today were ‘‘trained’’ on datasets of ap­proximately 200,000 books, ...Read More

Penguin Random House (PRH) and the Iowa State Education Association have filed a lawsuit against the state of Iowa and the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA). The suit names other plaintiffs including authors Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Malinda Lo, and Jodi Picoult, whose books have been banned or removed in Iowa; two middle school teachers; one high school student; and one school librarian.

The lawsuit challenges Iowa Senate File ...Read More

SF writer Paul Tremblay and author Mona Awad are the named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against Open AI, alleging their ChatGPT, a Large Language Model “AI” chat program, infringed on their copyrights — and those of thousands of other authors. In addition to copyright infringement, the authors allege violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, and negligence.

The filing argues that thousands of books were ...Read More

Writing organization PEN America, publisher Penguin Random House, authors, and parents have filed a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District and school board in Florida, arguing that recent book bans their violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs seek to have the removed books returned to library shelves.

The plaintiff statement says,

Ensuring that students have access to books on a wide range of topics and expressing a diversity of ...Read More

Judge John Koeltl of New York Federal Court issued a summary judgment on March 24, 2023, finding in favor of the four publishers who sued the Internet Archive. The suit, brought in 2020 by HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Wiley, alleged “willful mass copyright infringement” by IA’s “National Emergency Library,” which offered unlimited borrows of over a million ebooks.

The judge wrote: “At bottom, IA’s fair use ...Read More

Book Riot is reporting that an obscenity case brought against Barnes & Noble in Virginia has been dismissed, with the judge saying neither of the books named met the legal definition of obscenity.

As we previously reported, the suit was brought by Virgnia state delegate and lawyer Tim Anderson and Republican Congressional candidate Tommy Altman, who sued Barnes & Noble in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to stop sales of fantasy ...Read More

The lawsuit brought by four publishers against the Internet Archive is slowly moving forward. The suit, brought in 2020 by HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Wiley, alleges “willful mass copyright infringement” by IA’s “National Emergency Library”, which offered unlimited borrows of over a million ebooks. Both sides submitted mo­tions and requested summary judgment in July 2022. The actual trial is expected to begin this fall.

IA claims ...Read More

Amazon has stopped selling Kindle ebook readers in China, and will stop sell­ing ebooks there in June 2023. The Kindle app will be removed from Chinese app stores in 2024, and readers who previously purchased Kindle ebooks will no longer be able to access their libraries. Customers who bought a Kindle reader this year may receive refunds. Amazon is reportedly “ad­justing the strategic focus of its operations,” and will continue ...Read More

Book Riot has reported that Virginia state delegate and lawyer Tim Anderson and Republican Congressional candidate Tommy Altman are suing Barnes & Noble in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to stop sales of fantasy A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas and Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe, calling passages that include sexual language “obscene.”Anderson claims the court found “probable cause that the books… are obscene to ...Read More