Category Archives: Blog

Announcing Departure of Rachel Brooke, Authors Alliance Senior Staff Attorney

Posted March 18, 2024
Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash

Dear Authors Alliance Members, Friends, and Allies,

It is with a heavy heart that I am announcing my departure from Authors Alliance. For me, the development is bittersweet—in a few weeks, I will be starting a new job at a law firm where I’ll focus on litigation and developing my advocacy skills in a new way. I’m excited for this next chapter, but I’ll sorely miss being an Authors Alliance staff member and working to advance the interests of our members, a dedicated and engaged community of authors who care deeply about access to knowledge and culture. 

My time at Authors Alliance has seen a lot of change, both on an organizational level and in terms of the world around us. I joined as a staff attorney in late 2020, during a stormy political season and in the midst of a public health crisis. Working with former executive director, Brianna Schofield, I got to know this community and began to understand what mattered to you. I wrote one of our guides, Third-Party Permissions and How to Clear Them, drawing on my past experience working as a literary agent in addition to what I had learned about copyright law and the particular needs of our members. I also spent nine months as our interim executive director before Dave joined us back in 2022. Along the way, with the blessing and guidance of our outstanding board of directors, Authors Alliance began to focus more on policy and scale back our education work. Back in 2014, there was a dearth of these kinds of educational resources for authors, but that has changed over time, particularly with the increasing presence of scholarly communications offices to guide academic scholars.  

This week is my last as an employee of Authors Alliance, and next week will be my first as a regular member. During my years with Authors Alliance, I’ve been asked a lot of times “who can join” and whether a person “qualified” as an author. Unlike other authors’ organizations, we don’t gatekeep when it comes to membership. If you—like me—write, for business or for pleasure, and you—like me—believe in our mission, Authors Alliance would love to have you join as a member. And what I love about this organization is that it truly does want to be responsive to the needs of its members. Our two amicus briefs in the Hachette Books v. Internet Archive litigation (that Dave and Kyle Courtney wrote about just last week) were based on a survey we conducted of members and other authors, because we saw how author interests were taking a back seat to the interests of large publishers in the litigation. I wrote both of these briefs, and it was an absolute pleasure to use my legal training to share this important perspective with the courts. 

We created our most recent guide, Writing About Real People, because we so often heard from nonfiction authors writing about real people who had questions about whether they might be exposing themselves to legal risk. The same is true for the permissions guide—it was partially inspired by the fact that a guest blog post on clearing rights for images had been one of our most popular of all time, indicating the need for this kind of resource. We began conducting advocacy work in the realm of AI and copyright because it was clear that generative AI had the potential to reshape authorship and intellectual property laws, and we thought our voice could be useful as a sensible, measured one that remained optimistic about technology and innovation. 

On a personal level, being an attorney for Authors Alliance has given me both a strong sense of job satisfaction and the feeling that my work is helping people and making a difference in the world (something many lawyers can only dream of!). Whether it is seeing our views shape the development of the laws and regulations governing information policy, or hearing from an author who got their rights back or successfully negotiated with their publisher to retain their copyright, the effects of our work have reminded me that our organization really matters. It’s one I have been honored to be a part of for the past three and a half years. Please feel free to reach out over email (for now, you can reach me at rachel@authorsalliance.org) in the next few days, or add me on twitter or LinkedIn—I’d love to stay engaged with this community, even if I’m no longer involved professionally. I also plan to attend our 10th Anniversary celebration in May, and hope to see many of our members and allies there!

Fondly,

Rachel

Publishers’ reply brief in Hachette v. Internet Archive: First Impressions

Posted March 15, 2024

Dave Hansen and Kyle Courtney jointly authored this post. They are also the authors of a White Paper on Controlled Digital Lending of Library Books. We are not, as the Publishers claim in their brief on page 13, a “cadre of boosters.” We wrote the paper independently as part of our combined decades of work on libraries and access to knowledge.

Earlier today the publishers (Hachette, Harper Collins, John Wiley, and Penguin Random House) filed their reply brief on appeal in their long-running lawsuit against Internet Archive, which challenges (among other things) the practice of controlled digital lending. 

For the months after the decision, we had been observing all the hot takes, cheers, jeers, and awkward declarations about the case, the Internet Archive itself, and Controlled Digital Lending (CDL).

This post is not part of that fanfare. Here, we want to identify a few critical issues that the publishers focus on in their brief, including some questionable fair use analysis that they repeat from the district court below. Much of the brief is framed in heated rhetoric that may cause alarm, but much like publishers’ announcements about interlibrary loan, e-reserves, or document delivery, we believe controlled digital lending is here to stay, regardless of the lower court’s poor copyright analysis and current publisher’s brief.

Framing the Question

As is often the case, the parties disagree on what this case is actually about. For its part, Internet Archive says in their “Statement of the Issue on Appeal” that the question is  “whether Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending is fair use.” Publishers, on the other hand, reframe the question more broadly, which in combination with their arguments through the brief,  seems intended to not just kill IA’s implementation of controlled digital lending, but to encourage the court to rule in a way that would call into question all other library applications of CDL.. They say that the question is  “whether IA’s infringement of the Publishers’ Works is fair use based on IA’s CDL theories and practices.” 

This litigation, coordinated by the AAP,  seems to us an attempt to undermine what libraries have done for centuries: lend the books that they already lawfully own. Ironically, the opposition calls CDL a made-up theory created by a “cadre of boosters,” but in actuality, it’s the publishers’ licensing system that is a modern, made-up invention. The works themselves are unchanged, but the nature of digital delivery allows publishers to charge people in new ways. There is nothing in the Copyright Act that states ebook licensing is, or should be, the default way for libraries to acquire and lend books. 

Commercial vs. Non-Profit Use

One of the most criticized aspects of the decision below is the lower court’s conclusion that IA’s activities are commercial, as opposed to non-profit. The publisher’s brief enthusiastically embraces this conclusion, while also attempting to drive a wedge between IA’s lending and that of other libraries: “IA’s practices are distinctly commercial – especially in comparison to public and academic libraries.” 

The district court concluded that IA’s activity was commercial because it “stands to profit” through its partnership with Better World Books on its website, and by “us[ing] its Website to attract new members, solicit donations, and bolster its standing in the library community” (p. 26).

As many amici pointed out earlier in the appeal, the use of a nonprofit’s website to solicit donations is routine; it would be chilling for sites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Hathitrust and others (all of whom filed briefs in this case) to face heightened copyright liability just because they seek donations in combination with aspects of their sites that rely on a fair use assertion.  The publishers attempt to distance themselves from this absurd result (“The concern that Judge Koeltl’s analysis “would render virtually all nonprofit uses commercial” is wildly overblown”), but it is clear from the number and diversity of amici who filed to speak to just this issue that the concern is very real. 

As for Better World Books (BWB): BWB  is an online bookstore and a Certified B Corporation, meaning that it achieves high standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. B Corps are committed to using business as a force for good in the world. According to its website, BWB donates books to nonprofit organizations, including the Internet Archive. As of November 2019, IA and BWB have a partnership to digitize books for preservation purposes. 

The focus on the supposedly commercial relationship with Better World Books (a used book reseller) seems to us a stretch based on the facts. The publishers’ brief makes a big deal of Better World Books (referencing them over 20 times in the brief), and argues that IA’s use is commercial because a)  IA encourages readers to purchase books through links on its site to Better World Books, and b) Better World Books donates some funds back to IA.  The first point is perplexing–one would think they’d be pleased that readers are encouraged to purchase copies of their books–even if on the used market. But the later point about BetterWorld Books’ commercial influence on IA’s operation is just not rooted in the facts of the case. As IA laid out in its opening brief, it has only received $5,561.41 from Better World Books in the relevant time frame.  That’s an infinitesimally small drop in the bucket compared to the costs that IA has borne to digitize and lend books for no monetary return from readers. It’s hard to see how such an amount could be construed to tilt IA’s entire operation into a commercial activity. 

For anyone who has actually worked on such projects, it is clear that IA is not archiving or lending books for commercial purposes. The idea that there is money to be made in doing so is laughable. Instead, it is providing access to knowledge and cultural heritage. This fundamental point somehow got lost on the publishers on the road to enormous profits.

eBooks vs. Digitized Books

There are lots of nuances that got lost in the decision below, which we believe were helpfully addressed by amici filings earlier in this appeal (e.g., the privacy implications of licensed ebooks vs. CDL copies lent by libraries).  The publishers seem happy to gloss over the details again in this brief, particularly when it comes to the differences between licensed ebooks and those that are lent out with CDL. 

First, the publisher’s brief makes clear they really don’t like it when books are available for free.. They use the word 33 times (about every other page of the brief)! Many of the references obscure what “free” really means though –  for example, asserting that  “Two Publishers believe that 39-50% of American ebook consumers read their ebooks for free from libraries rather than paying for their own commercial ebooks” (emphasis added) while ignoring the exorbitant costs and other burdens placed on libraries and the public to fund that licensed access. This is a major part of why libraries have responded both by embracing CDL and by advocating for laws that would require fair licensing terms for ebooks. . 

Second, as far as market harm goes, the Publisher’s assert that “IA offered the Publishers’ library and consumer customers a free competing substitute to the authorized ebook editions” essentially arguing that “you can’t compete with free.” But, that is just not true.  Examples are trivially easy to conjure up open source software vs. Microsoft or iOS. How often do you run into someone who uses Libre Open Office, or Ubuntu? And of course in creative industries, we’ve seen this kind of model take hold in numerous areas, including book publishing, with “freemium” models.’

That’s because products that are free often offer a different user experience than those that aren’t. Usually when someone opts to pay, they’re paying for an enhanced experience. The same holds true of books scanned for CDL vs. licensed ebooks. CDL books are just that – they are digitized physical books. They don’t have the nice, crisp text of licensed ebooks, nor the interactive features. You can’t highlight, or change the font, or look up a word by touching it, or do any of the myriad of functions that you can with an ebook. 

That a library is loaning and controlling those copies is also a major distinguishing factor, because borrowing a book from a library (along with all the special privacy protections one receives) provides a vastly different reading environment than one in which vendors can scrape, process and sell data about your reading experience. Notably, the publishers did not engage with this argument. 

“IA refuses to pay the customary price and join the Publishers’ thriving market for authorized library ebooks…”

Good gravy! According to the publishers, libraries should be forced to pay over and over again for the same book, to join a market for which there is no evidence that they are harming. 

The publishers’ devote a large portion of their brief – nearly 20 pages– to arguing about market harm. Most of it comes down to the assertion that mere fact of the existence of a digital book market means that  CDL must negatively impact the rightsholders’ profits (despite no empirical evidence of market harm). The lower court decision stated that IA has the “burden to show a lack of market harm” (p. 43), and concluded (without reference to meaningful evidence) that “that harm here is evident” (p. 44), an assumption which the publishers are happy to rest on. 

There is a genuinely important legal question raised here about which party needs to prove what when it comes to market harm. The publisher’s brief relies heavily on the idea that IA bears the burden on every point of its fair use defense, especially market harm. But as IA points out in its opening brief, 

“Although the Supreme Court has stated fair use is an affirmative defense for which defendants bear the burden (Campbell, 510 U.S. at 1177), it has also suggested this burden may apply differently to noncommercial uses than commercial ones. Sony stated that noncommercial cases require “a showing by a preponderance of the evidence that some meaningful likelihood of future harm exists.” 464 U.S. at 417; see Princeton Univ. Press v. Mich. Document Servs., Inc., 99 F.3d 1381, 1385- 86 (6th Cir. 1996) (“The burden of proof as to market effect rests with the copyright holder if the challenged use is of a ‘noncommercial’ nature.”). 

Conclusion

The brief is predictably hyperbolic, and continues to refuse to allow for any room for digital lending based on a misreading, in our view, of precedents such as Sony, TVEyes, and ReDigi. But, CDL is not some form of library-sanctioned piracy. CDL is based in copyright, fair use, and the public mission of libraries, while also broadening access to the books that library systems spend billions of dollars to collect and maintain for the public—including long-neglected, out-of-print books with enormous social and scholarly value and books for which commercial ebook licenses are not available.

During the pandemic, the importance of digital library access became strikingly apparent. It is unfortunate that the Publishers chose that moment of national emergency to sue a non-profit library for loaning books digitally. CDL simply seeks to preserve the library’s long-established and vital mission to collect and lend books in an increasingly licensed-access digital world.

Writing About Real People Update: Right of Publicity, Voice Protection, and Artificial Intelligence

Posted March 7, 2024
Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Some of you may recall that Authors Alliance published our long-awaited guide, Writing About Real People, earlier this year. One of the major topics in the guide is the right of publicity—a right to control use of one’s own identity, particularly in the context of commercial advertising. These issues have been in the news a lot lately as generative AI poses new questions about the scope and application of the right of publicity. 

Sound-alikes and the Right of Publicity

One important right of publicity question in the genAI era concerns the increasing prevalence of “sound-alikes” created using generative AI systems. The issue of AI-generated voices that mimicked real people came to the public’s attention with the apparently convincing “Heart on My Sleeve” song, imitating Drake and the Weeknd, and tools that facilitate creating songs imitating popular singers have increased in number and availability

AI-generated soundalikes are a particularly interesting use of this technology when it comes to the right of publicity because one of the seminal right of publicity cases, taught in law schools and mentioned in primers on the topic, concerns a sound-alike from the analog world. In 1986, the Ford Motor Company hired an advertising agency to create a TV commercial. The agency obtained permission to use “Do You Wanna Dance,” a song Bette Midler had famously covered, in its commercial. But when the ad agency approached Midler about actually singing the song for the commercial, she refused. The agency then hired a former backup singer of Midler’s to record the song, apparently asking the singer to imitate Midler’s voice in the recording. A federal court found that this violated Midler’s right of publicity under California law, even though her voice was not actually used. Extending this holding to AI-generated voices seems logical and straightforward—it is not about the precise technology used to create or record the voice, but about the end result the technology is used to achieve. 

Right of Publicity Legislation

The right of publicity is a matter of state law. In some states, like California and New York, the right of publicity is established via statute, and in others, it’s a matter of common law (or judge-made law). In recent months, state legislatures have proposed new laws that would codify or expand the right of publicity. Similarly, many have called for the establishment of a federal right of publicity, specifically in the context of harms caused by the rise of generative AI. One driving force behind calls for the establishment of a federal right of publicity is the patchwork nature of state right of publicity laws: in some states, the right of publicity extends only to someone’s name, image, likeness, voice, and signature, but in others, it’s much broader. While AI-generated content and the ways in which it is being used certainly pose new challenges for courts considering right of publicity violations, we are skeptical that new legislation is the best solution. 

In late January, the No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas and Unauthorized Duplications Act of 2024 (or “No AI FRAUD Act”) was introduced in the House of Representatives. The No AI FRAUD Act would create a property-like right in one’s voice and likeness, which is transferable to other parties. It targets voice “cloning services” and mentions the “Heart on My Sleeve” controversy specifically. But civil societies and advocates for free expression have raised alarm about the ways in which the bill would make it easier for creators to actually lose control over their own personality rights while also impinging on others’ First Amendment rights due to its overbreadth and the property-like nature of the right it creates. While the No AI FRAUD Act contains language stating that the First Amendment is a defense to liability, it’s unclear how effective this would be in practice (and as we explain in the Writing About Real People Guide, the First Amendment is always a limitation on laws affecting freedom of expression). 

The Right of Publicity and AI-Generated Content

In the past, the right of publicity has been described as “name, image, and likeness” rights. What is interesting about AI-generated content and the right of publicity is that a person’s likeness can be used in a more complete way than ever before. In some cases, both their appearance and voice are imitated, associated with their name, and combined in a way that makes the imitation more convincing. 

What is different about this iteration of right of publicity questions is the actors behind the production of the soundalikes and imitations, and, to a lesser extent, the harms that might flow from these uses. A recent use of a different celebrity’s likeness in connection with an advertisement is instructive on this point. Earlier this year, advertisements emerged on various platforms featuring an AI-generated Taylor Swift participating in a Le Creuset cookware giveaway. These ads contained two separate layers of deceptiveness: most obviously, that Swift was AI-generated and did not personally appear in the ad, but more bafflingly, that they were not Le Creuset ads at all. The ads were part of a scam whereby users might pay for cookware they would never receive, or enter credit card details which could then be stolen or otherwise used for improper purposes. Compared to more traditional conceptions of advertising, the unfair advantages and harms caused by the use of Swift’s voice and likeness are much more difficult to trace. Taylor Swift’s likeness and voice were appropriated by scammers to trick the public into thinking they were interacting with Le Creuset advertising. 

It may be that the right of publicity as we know it (and as we discuss it in the Writing About Real People Guide) is not well-equipped to deal with these kinds of situations. But it seems to us that codifying the right of publicity in federal law is not the best approach. Just as Bette Midler had a viable claim under California’s right of publicity statute back in 1992, Taylor Swift would likely have a viable claim against Le Creuset if her likeness had been used by that company in connection with commercial advertising. The problem is not the “patchwork of state laws,” but that this kind of doubly-deceptive advertising is not commercial advertising at all. On a practical level, it’s unclear what party could even be sued by this kind of use. Certainly not Le Creuset. And it seems to us unfair to say that the creator of the AI technology sued should be left holding the bag, just because someone used it for fraudulent purposes. The real fraudsters—anonymous but likely not impossible to track down—are the ones who can and should be pursued under existing fraud laws. 

Authors Alliance has said elsewhere that reforms to copyright law cannot be the solution to any and all harms caused by generative AI. The same goes for the intellectual property-like right of publicity. Sensible regulation of platforms, stronger consumer protection laws, and better means of detecting and exposing AI-generated content are possible solutions to the problems that the use of AI-generated celebrity likenesses have brought about. To instead expand intellectual property rights under a federal right of publicity statute risks infringing on our First Amendment freedoms of speech and expression.

Why Fair Use Supports Non-Expressive Uses

Posted February 29, 2024

This post is part of Fair Use Week series, cross-posted at https://sites.harvard.edu/fair-use-week/2024/02/29/fair-use-week-2024-day-four-with-guest-expert-dave-hansen/

AI programs and their outputs raise all sorts of interesting questions–now found in the form of some 20+ lawsuits, many of them massive class actions.

One of the most important questions is whether it is permissible to use copyrighted works as training data to develop AI models themselves, on top of which AI services like ChatGPT are built (read here for a good overview of the component parts and “supply chain” of generative AI, reviewed through a legal lens).

For the question of fair use of AI training data, you’ll find that almost everyone writing about this question in the US context says the answer turns on two or three precedents–especially the Google Books case and the HathiTrust case–and a concept referred to as “non-expressive use” (or sometimes “non-consumptive use”).  This concept of non-expressive use and those cases have proven to be foundational for all sorts of applications that extend well beyond generative AI, including basic web search, plagiarism detection tools, and text and data mining research. Since this idea has received so much attention, I thought this fair use week was a good opportunity to explore what this concept is. 

What is non-expressive use? 

Non-expressive use refers to uses that involve copying, but don’t communicate the expressive aspects of the work to be read or otherwise enjoyed. It is a term coined, as far as I can tell, by law professor Matthew Sag in a series of papers titled “Copyright and Copyright Reliant Technology” (in which he observes that courts have been approving of such uses–for example in search engine cases–albeit without a coherent framework) and then more directly in “Orphan Works as Grist for the Data Mill” and later in an article titled “The New Legal  Landscape for Text Mining and Machine Learning.”  You can do much better than this blog post if you just read Matt’s articles. But, since you’re here, the argument is basically built on two propositions:  

Proposition #1: “Facts are not copyrightable”  is a phrase you’ll hear somewhere near the beginning of the lecture on copyright 101. It, along with the “idea-expression” dichotomy and some related doctrines are some of the ways that copyright law draws a line between protected content and those underlying facts and ideas that anyone is free to use. These protections for free use of facts and ideas are more than just a line in the sand drawn by Congress or the courts. As the U.S. Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft most recently explained: 

“[The]idea/expression dichotomy strike[s] a definitional balance between the First Amendment and the Copyright Act by permitting free communication of facts while still protecting an author’s expression. Due to this distinction, every idea, theory, and fact in a copyrighted work becomes instantly available for public exploitation at the moment of publication.” (citations and quotations omitted). 

The law has therefore recognized the distinction between expressive non-expressive works (for example, copyright exists in a novel, but not in a phone book), and that this distinction is so important that the Constitution mandates it. The exact contours of this line have been the subject of a long and not always consistent history, but has slowly come into focus in cases from  Baker v. Selden (1879) (“there is a clear distinction between the book, as such, and the art which it is intended to illustrate”) to Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone (1994) (no copyright in telephone white pages). 

Proposition #2: Fair use is also one of the Copyright Act’s First Amendment safeguards, per the Supreme Court Eldred. The “transformative use” analysis, in particular, does a lot of work in giving breathing room for others to use existing works in ways that allow for their own criticism and comment. It also has provided ample space for uses that rely on copying to unearth facts and ideas contained within and about underlying works, particularly when doing so in a way that provides a net social benefit. 

Transformative use, though not always easy to define in practice, favors uses that avoid substituting for the original expression, but that reuse that content in new ways, with new meaning, message and purpose. While this can apply to downstream expressive uses (e.g., parody is the paradigmatic example that relies on reusing expression itself), its application to non-expressive uses can look even stronger. This is why you find courts like the 9th Circuit in a case about image search saying things like “a search engine may be more transformative than a parody because a search engine provides an entirely new use for the original work, while a parody typically has the same entertainment purpose as the original work,” where search engines copy underlying works primarily for the purpose of helping users discover them. 

Fair use for non-expressive use

We now have several cases that address non-expressive uses for computational analysis of texts.   The three cases, in particular, are iParadigms v. ex rel Vanderhye,  in which the Fourth Circuit in 2009 analyzed a plagiarism detection tool that ingested papers and then created a “digital fingerprint” to match them to duplicate content using a statistical technique originally designed to analyze brain waves. The court there concluded that “iParadigms’ use of these works was completely unrelated to expressive content” and therefore constituted transformative fair use. Then in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust and Authors Guild v. Google, we saw the Second Circuit in successive opinions in 2014 and 2015 approve of copying at a massive scale of books used for the purpose of full-text search of those books and related computational, analytical uses. The court, in Google Books, fully briefed on the implications of these projects for computational analysis of texts, explained: 

As with HathiTrust (and iParadigms), the purpose of Google’s copying of the original copyrighted books is to make available significant information about those books, permitting a searcher to identify those that contain a word or term of interest, as well as those that do not include reference to it. In addition, through the ngrams tool, Google allows readers to learn the frequency of usage of selected words in the aggregate corpus of published books in different historical periods. We have no doubt that the purpose of this copying is the sort of transformative purpose described in Campbell.

Example from the Digital Humanities Scholars brief in the Google Books case,
illustrating one text mining use enabled by the Google Books corpus. 

So, back to AI 

There are certainly limits to how much of an underlying work can be described before one crosses the line from non-expressive to substantial use of expressive content. For example, uses that reproduce extensive facts from underlying works to merely repackage content for the same purpose as the original works may face challenges, as in the case of Castlerock Entertainment v. Carol Publishing(about Carol Publishing’s “Seinfeld Aptitude Test” based on facts from the Seinfeld series), which the court concluded as made merely to “repackage Seinfeld to entertain Seinfeld viewers.” And there are real questions (discussed in two excellent recent essays, here and here) about how the law may respond in practice to AI products, particularly ones where outputs look–or at least can be made to look–suspiciously similar to inputs used as training data.

How AI models work is explained much more thoroughly (and much better) elsewhere, but the basic idea is that they are built by developing extraordinarily robust word vectors used to represent the relationships between words. To do this well, these models need to train on a large and diverse set of texts to build out a good model of how humans communicate in a variety of contexts. In short, these copy texts for the purpose of developing a model to describe facts about the underlying works and the relationship of words within them and with each other. What’s new is that we can now do this at a level of complexity and scale almost unimaginable before. Scale and complexity don’t change the underlying principles at issue, however,  and so this kind of training seems to me clearly within the bounds of non-expressive use as approved already by the courts in the cases cited above that authors, researchers, and the tech industry have been relying on for nearly a decade. 

Fair Use Week Webinar: Fair Use in Text Data Mining and Artificial Intelligence

Posted February 16, 2024
Text Miner, generated by MidJourney

Computational research techniques such as text and data mining (TDM) hold tremendous opportunities for researchers across the disciplines ranging from mining scientific articles to create better systematic reviews, or curated chemical property datasets to building a corpus of films to understand how concepts of gender, race, and identity are shared over time. Unfortunately, legal uncertainty, whether through copyright or restrictive terms of use can stifle this research. Recent copyright lawsuits, such as the high-profile cases brought against Microsoft, Github, and StabiltyAI underscore the legal complications.

So how can fair use allow for computational research techniques? Join us for this Fair Use Week webinar, co-sponsored with the the Library Copyright Institute, to find out! 

Wednesday, February 28, 2024
1pm – 2:30pm ET / 10am – 11:30 PT
Register here

We’ve written quite a bit about fair use in TDM and AI for research applications already, and the topic is certainly complicated. Join us for this event to hear live from legal experts and researchers. We plan to include substantial time for Q&A, so bring your questions! Panelists include: 

  • Dave Hansen, Executive Director, Authors Alliance
  • Rachael Samberg, Scholarly Communications Officer, UC Berkeley
  • Lauren Tilton, Claiborne Robins Professor of Liberal Arts and Digital Humanities, University of Richmond

Book Talk: Wrong Way by Joanna McNeil

Posted February 13, 2024

Join us for a VIRTUAL book talk with author Joanne McNeil about her latest book, WRONG WAY, which examines the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. McNeil will be in conversation with author Sarah Jaffe.

This is the first Internet Archive / Authors Alliance book talk for a work of fiction! Come for a reading, stay for a thoughtful conversation between McNeil & Jaffe about the labor implications of artificial intelligence.

February 29 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET
VIRTUAL

REGISTER NOW

WRONG WAY was named one of the best books of 2023 by the New Yorker and Esquire. It was the Endless Bookshelf Book of the Year and named one of the best tech books by the LA Times.

“Wrong Way is a chilling portrait of economic precarity, and a disturbing reminder of how attempts to optimize life and work leave us all alienated.”
—Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire

For years, Teresa has passed from one job to the next, settling into long stretches of time, struggling to build her career in any field or unstick herself from an endless cycle of labor. The dreaded move from one gig to another is starting to feel unbearable. When a recruiter connects her with a contract position at AllOver, it appears to check all her prerequisites for a “good” job. It’s a fintech corporation with progressive hiring policies and a social justice-minded mission statement. Their new service for premium members: a functional fleet of driverless cars. The future of transportation. As her new-hire orientation reveals, the distance between AllOver’s claims and its actions is wide, but the lure of financial stability and a flexible schedule is enough to keep Teresa driving forward.

Joanne McNeil, who often reports on how the human experience intersects with labor and technology brings blazing compassion and criticism to Wrong Way, examining the treacherous gaps between the working and middle classes wrought by the age of AI. Within these divides, McNeil turns the unsaid into the unignorable, and captures the existential perils imposed by a nonstop, full-service gig economy.

REGISTER NOW

About our speakers

JOANNE MCNEIL was the inaugural winner of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation’s Arts Writing Award for an emerging writer. She has been a resident at Eyebeam, a Logan Nonfiction Program fellow, and an instructor at the School for Poetic Computation.
Joanne is the author of Lurking: How a Person Became a User.

SARAH JAFFE is an author, independent journalist, and a co-host of Dissent magazine’s Belabored podcast.

Book Talk: Wrong Way by Joanne McNeil
February 29 @ 10am PT / 1pm ET
VIRTUAL
Register now!

A Copyright Small Claims Update: Defaults and Failure to Opt Out

Posted February 1, 2024

We’ve been tracking for a few years the new copyright small claims court known as the Copyright Claims Board. My last update was in September when I posted a summary of a paper I wrote with Katie Fortney summarizing data about the first year of operations of the court (thanks entirely to Katie for doing the hard work of extracting that data and sharing it in an easy-to-understand format). 

As explained then, the CCB has been slow in processing cases; it only entered a final judgment on the merits in one case when I last wrote. It has now issued a total of 18 final determinations, about half of which are default determinations (cases where the respondent failed to appear or refused to participate in the CCB process). The facts for most of these cases are not very interesting, but two of the most recent caught my attention. 

Oakes v. Heart of Gold Pageant System

The first case, Oakes v. Heart of Gold Pageant System Inc., highlights a concern from opponents of the CCB when it was being debated in Congress. Namely, the CCB’s ability to make default determinations could be a trap for the unwary defendants who don’t understand what the CCB is, what a case before it could mean for them, or what their rights are to opt out of a CCB proceeding. 

The facts are unspectacular: Oakes, a professional photographer represented by Higbee & Associates, filed a CCB complaint against Heart of Gold and its owner, Angel Jameson, for using photographs taken by Oakes on Heart of Gold’s Facebook page and in materials for events it sponsored. Oakes originally filed the claim in July 2022 and then refiled it in August 2022 with some corrections. Oakes then provided the CCB with the required proof of service (proof that Oakes had adequately informed Heart of Gold and Jameson of the CCB claim) in October 2022. 

At this point, the ball was in Heart of Gold and Jameson’s court; she could either respond and defend her use, or (if done within 60 days of service) opt out of the CCB proceeding altogether. Unfortunately for her, she did neither, which resulted in a default determination against her for $4,500. 

We learn in the final determination a little more about Jameson’s lack of participation. As the CCB recounts in its final default determination: 

“At multiple points in this procedural history, Jameson has contacted the CCB, and after communicating with staff, has affirmed each time her intent to not participate in this proceeding.”

“Jameson initially contacted the Board in response to this Zoom link, expressing her disbelief that the Board is a government tribunal.”

“Jameson then sent another email in response to the First Default, requesting an ‘official day in court.’”

“In a subsequent call with CCB staff in March, Jameson indicated that she would not participate.”

“Shortly after the order scheduling the hearing, Jameson contacted the U.S. Copyright Office’s Public Information Office, who placed her in contact with CCB staff. In a follow-up call, CCB staff again explained the proceeding and Jameson again affirmed that she would not participate in the proceeding.”

Jameson missed her opportunity to opt out early in the case – she had a sixty-day window to do so, as defined by CCB regulations. So, her protests later were ineffective to opt out, even though it seems clear that she did not want her case to be heard by the CCB. 

Joe Hand Promotions v. Dawson 

A second default determination case offers a slightly different view of how the CCB treats defaults. The facts are similarly straightforward: Joe Hand is a company that “specializes in commercially licensing premier sporting events to commercial locations such as bars, restaurants, lounges, clubhouses, and similar establishments.” Joe Hand had obtained the exclusive right to sell pay-per-view access to a boxing event–” Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury II,” to commercial establishments, including bars. Joe Hand provided evidence that a California bar, “Bottoms Up,” had shown the match without permission. 

Joe Hand (a frequent filer with the CCB, with 33 cases to its name) ran into a problem in this case, however, because it didn’t actually file its case against Bottoms Up, but instead against the individual that is listed on the bar’s liquor license and ownership documents, Mary Dawson. Even in Dawson’s absence, the CCB was unwilling to rubber-stamp Joe Hand’s claims against her. The final determination explained, 

Beyond the conclusory and clearly boilerplate allegations in the Claim that Dawson (and now-dismissed respondent Giglio) ‘owned, operated, maintained, and controlled the commercial business known as Bottoms Up Bar & Grill’ and ‘had a right and ability to supervise the activities of the Establishment on the date of the Program and had an obvious and direct financial interest in the activities of the Establishment on the date of the Program’ (Dkt. 1), Claimant offers absolutely no information linking Respondent to the infringement.” 

I will spare you the details, but the CCB went on to cite case after case explaining why courts have routinely rejected such boilerplate claims, and required plaintiffs to at least allege meaningful facts connecting an individual to an act of infringement.  Even in this default case where Dawson was not present to defend herself, the CCB put in the effort on her behalf. 

Takeaways

I have a few observations. In the first case, given that Jameson clearly did not want her case heard before the CCB, I think it would have been fair for the CCB to allow her a second chance to opt out. At least on the record we have available, there is no indication that the CCB offered her that chance.  Although the normal opt-out period extends only sixty days after service, the CCB opt-out regulations also state that “the Board may extend the 60-day period to opt out in exceptional circumstances and in the interests of justice.” 

It seems to me, given the newness of the CCB system, the small number of cases filed to date, and the relative lack of awareness among most people that the CCB is a legitimate government forum (Jameson expressed such doubt herself), the “interests of justice” may well dictate a more flexible approach at least at the outset of operations of the CCB. 

The CCB has demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to offer helpful guidance, flexibility, and multiple opportunities to claimants, and so respondents may have expected a similar approach to help them along through the process. At least in this case, we see a more stringent approach. An obvious takeaway for respondents then is to pay attention to notices about CCB claims and associated deadlines, and opt-out early on in the process if they think they don’t want their case heard there. 

The Dawson case, however, does show that the CCB isn’t willing to let claimants make unsubstantiated claims against absent respondents. Though Joe Hand is surely familiar with the process and it would have been easy for the CCB to accept its barebones allegations against Dawson as true, the CCB made the case itself–with ample legal support–that even claims against absent respondents require claimants to make a real case. 

Overall, these are just two cases,  so I don’t want to read into them too much. But it’s already looking like a large portion of CCB cases will be defaults (10 out of the 18 final determinations to date, and more than half of the existing active cases are trending in that direction). So, it’s good to keep an eye on how the CCB will treat these types of cases, given the risks they pose for unwary and uninformed respondents. 

Authors Alliance Submits Long-Form Comment to Copyright Office in Support of Petition to Expand Existing Text and Data Mining Exemption 

Posted January 29, 2024
Photo by Simona Sergi on Unsplash

Last month, Authors Alliance submitted detailed comments in response to the Copyright Office’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in support of our petition to expand the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemptions that enable text and data mining (TDM) as part of this year’s §1201 rulemaking cycle

To recap: our expansion petitions ask the Copyright Office to modify the existing TDM exemption so that researchers who assemble corpora of ebooks or films on which to conduct text and data mining are able to share that corpus with other academic researchers, where this second group of researchers qualifies under the exemption. Under the current exemption, academic researchers are only able to share their corpora with other qualified researchers for purposes of “collaboration and verification.” This simple change would eliminate the need for duplicative efforts to remove digital locks from ebooks and films, a time and resource-intensive process, broadening the group of academic researchers who are able to use the exemption. 

Our comment argues that the existing TDM exemption has begun to enable valuable digital humanities research and teaching, but that the proposed expansion would go much further towards enabling this research and helping TDM researchers reach their goals. The comment is accompanied by 13 letters of support from researchers, educators, and funding organizations, highlighting the research that has been done in reliance on the exemption, and explaining why this expansion is necessary. Our thanks go out to our stellar clinical team at UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic—law students Mathew Cha and Zhudi Huang, and clinical supervisor Jennifer Urban—for writing and submitting this comment on our behalf. We are also grateful to our co-petitioners, the Library Copyright Alliance and American Association of University Professors, for their support on this comment. 

Ambiguity in “Collaboration”

One reason the expansion is necessary is the uncertainty over what constitutes “collaboration” under the existing exemption. Researchers have open questions about what level of individual contribution to a project would make researchers “collaborators” under the exemption. As our comment explains, collaboration can come in a number of different forms, from “formal collaborations under the auspice of a grant, [to] ad hoc collaborations that result from two teams discovering that they are working on similar material to the same ends, or even discussions at conferences between members of a loose network of scholars working on the same broad set of interests.” But it is not clear which of these activities is “collaboration” for the purposes of the exemption. And this uncertainty has had a chilling effect on the socially valuable research made possible by the exemption. 

Costly Corpora Creation 

Our comment also highlights the vast costs that go into creating a usable corpus for TDM research. Institutions whose researchers are conducting TDM research pursuant to the exemption must lawfully own the works in question, or license them through a license that is not time-limited. But these costs pale in comparison to the required computing resources—a cost which is compounded by the exemption’s strict security requirements—and human labor involved in bypassing technical protection measures and assembling a corpus. Moreover, it’s important to recognize that there is simply not a tremendous amount of grant funding or even institutional support available to TDM researchers. 

Because corpora are so costly to assemble and create, we believe it to be reasonable to permit researchers to share their corpora with researchers at other institutions who want to conduct independent TDM research on these corpora. As the exemption currently stands, researchers interested in pre-existing corpora must duplicate the efforts of the previous researchers, incurring massive costs along the way. We’ve already seen indications that these costs can lead researchers to avoid certain research questions and areas of study altogether. As our comment explains, this “duplicative circumvention” can be avoided by changing the language of the exemption to permit corpora sharing between qualified researchers at separate institutions. 

Equity Issues

Worse still, not all institutions are able to bear these expenses. Our comment explains how the current exemption’s prohibition on sharing beyond collaboration and verification—and consequent duplication of prior labor—-”create[s] barriers that can prevent smaller and less-well-resourced institutions from conducting TDM research at all.” This creates inequity in what type of institutions can support TDM projects, and what types of researchers can conduct them. The unfortunate result has been that large institutions that have “the resources to compensate and maintain technical staff and infrastructure” are able to support TDM research under the exemption, while smaller institutions are not. 

Values of Corpora Sharing

Our comment explains how allowing limited sharing of corpora under the exemption would go a long way towards lowering barriers to entry for TDM research and ameliorating the equity issues described above. Since digital humanities is already an under-resourced field, the effects of enabling researchers to share their corpora with other academic researchers could be quite profound. 

Researchers who wrote letters in support of the petition described a multitude of exciting projects, and have built “a rich set of corpora to study, such as a collection of fiction written by African American writers, a collection of books banned in the United States, and a curated corpus of movies and television with an ‘emphasis on racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender diversity.’” Many of those who wrote letters in support of our petition recounted requests they’ve gotten from other researchers to use their corpora, and who were frustrated that the exemption’s prohibition on non-collaborative sharing and their limited capacity for collaboration prevented them from sharing these corpora. 

Allowing new researchers with new research questions to study these corpora could reveal new insights about these bodies of work. As we explain, “in the same way a single literary work or motion picture can evince multiple meanings based on the lens of analysis used, when different researchers study one corpus, they are able to pose different research questions and apply different methodologies, ultimately revealing new and original findings . . . . Enabling broader sharing and thus, increasing the number of researchers that can study a corpus, will allow a body of works to be better understood beyond the initial ‘limited set of research questions.’”

Fair Use

The 1201 rulemaking process for exemptions to DMCA § 1201’s prohibition on breaking digital locks requires that the proposed activity be a fair use. In the 2021 proceedings, the Office recognized TDM for research and teaching purposes as a fair use. Because the expansion we’re seeking is relatively minor, our comment explains that the types of uses we are asking the Office to permit researchers to make is also fair use. Our comment explains that each of the four fair use factors favor fair use in the context of the proposed expansion. We further explain why the enhanced sharing the expansion would provide does not harm the market for the original works under factor four: because institutions must lawfully own (or license under a non-time-limited license) the works that their researchers wish to conduct TDM on, it makes no difference from a market standpoint whether researchers bypass technical protection measures themselves, or share another institution’s corpus. Copyright holders are not harmed when researchers at one institution share a corpus created by researchers at another institution, since both institutions must purchase the works in order to be eligible under the exemption. 

What’s Next?

If there are parties that oppose our proposed expansion, they have until February 20th to submit opposition comments to the Copyright Office. Then, on March 19th, our reply comments to any opposition comments will be due. We will keep our readers and members apprised as the process continues to move forward.

Authors Alliance 2023 Annual Report

Posted January 23, 2024

Authors Alliance is pleased to share our 2023 annual report, where you can find highlights of our work in 2023 to promote laws, policies, and practices that enable authors to reach wide audiences. In the report, you can read about how we’re helping authors meet their dissemination goals for their works, representing their interests in the courts, and otherwise working to advocate for authors who write to be read. 

Click here to read the full report.

Hachette v. Internet Archive: Amicus Briefs on Non-Commercial Use

Posted January 19, 2024

Our last post highlighted one of the amicus briefs filed in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit, which made the point that controlled digital lending serves important privacy interests for library readers. Today I want to highlight a second new issue introduced on appeal and addressed by almost every amici: the proper way to assess whether a given use is “non-commercial.”

“Non-commercial” use is important  because the first fair use factor directs courts to assess “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.” Before the district court, neither Internet Archive (IA) nor amici who filed in support of IA paid considerable attention to arguing about whether IA’s use was commercial, I think because it seemed so clear that lending books for free to library patrons appeared to us a paradigmatic example of non-commercial use. It came as a shock, therefore, when the District Court in this case concluded that “IA stands to profit” from its use and that the use was therefore commercial. 

The Court’s reasoning was odd. While it recognized that IA “is a non-profit organization that does not charge patrons to borrow books and because private reading is noncommercial in nature,” the court concluded that because IA gains “an advantage or benefit from its distribution and use” of the works at issue, its use was commercial. Among the “benefits” that the court listed: 

  • IA exploits the Works in Suit without paying the customary price
  • IA uses its Website to attract new members, solicit donations, and bolster its standing in the library community.
  • Better World Books also pays IA whenever a patron buys a used book from BWB after clicking on the “Purchase at Better World Books” button that appears on the top of webpages for ebooks on the Website.

Although almost every amici addressed the problems with this approach to “non-commercial” use, three briefs, in particular, added important additional context, explaining both why the district court was wrong on the law and why its rule would have dramatically negative implications for other libraries and nonprofit organizations. 

First, the Association of Research Libraries and the American Library Association, represented by Brandon Butler, make a forceful legal argument in their amicus brief about why the district court’s baseline formulation of commerciality (benefit without paying the customary price) was wrong: 

The district court’s determination that the Internet Archive (“IA”) was engaged in a “commercial” use for purposes of the first statutory factor is based on a circular argument that seemingly renders every would-be fair use “commercial” so long as the user benefits in some way from their use. This cannot be the law, and in the Second Circuit it is not. The correct standard is clearly stated in American Geophysical Union v. Texaco Inc., 60 F. 3d 913 (2d Cir. 1994), a case the district court ignored entirely.

ARL and ALA then go on to highlight numerous examples of appellate courts (including the Second Circuit) rejecting this approach such as in the 11th Circuit in the Georgia State E-reserves copyright lawsuit: “Of course, any unlicensed use of copyrighted material profits the user in the sense that the user does not pay a potential licensing fee, allowing the user to keep his or her money. If this analysis were persuasive, no use could qualify as ’nonprofit’ under the first factor.” 

Second was an amicus brief by law professor Rebecca Tushnet on behalf of Intellectual Property Law Scholars, explaining both whycopyright law and fair use favor non-commercial uses, and how IA’s uses fall squarely within the public-benefit objectives of the law. The brief begins by highlighting the close connection between non-commercial use and the goals of copyright: 

The constitutional goal of copyright protection is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts,” Art. I, sec. 1, cl. 8, and the first copyright law was “an act for the encouragement of learning,” Cambridge University Press v. Patton, 769 F.3d 1232, 1256 (11th Cir. 2014). This case provides an opportunity for this Court to reaffirm that vision by recognizing the special role that noncommercial, nonprofit uses play in supporting freedom of speech and access to knowledge. 

The IP Professors Brief then goes on to highlight the many ways that Congress has indicated that library lending should be treated favorably because it furthers objectives of supporting learning, and how the court’s constrained reading of “non-commercial” is actually in conflict with how that term is used elsewhere in the Copyright Act (for example, Sections 111, 114, and 118 for non-commercial broadcasters, or Section 1008 for non-commercial consumers who copy music). The brief then goes on to make a strong case for why the district court wasn’t only mistaken, but that library lending should presumptively be treated as non-commercial. 

Finally, we see the amicus brief from the Wikimedia Foundation, Creative Commons, and Project Gutenberg, represented by Jef Pearlman and a team of students at the USC IP & Technology Law Clinic. Their brief highlighted in detail the practical challenges that the district court’s approach to non-commercial use would pose for all sorts of online nonprofits. The brief explains how nonprofits that raise money will inevitably include donation buttons on pages with fair use content, rely on volunteer contributions, and engage in revenue-generated activities to support their work, which in some cases require millions of dollars for technical infrastructure. The brief explains: 

The district court defined “commercial” under the first fair use factor far too broadly, inextricably linking secondary uses to fundraising even when those activities are, in practice, completely unrelated. In evaluating what constitutes commercial use, the district court misapplied several considerations and ignored other critical considerations. As a result, the district court’s ruling threatens nonprofit organizations who make fair use of copyrighted works. Adopting the district court’s approach would threaten both the processes of nonprofit fundraising and the methods by which educational nonprofits provide their services.