Dave Hansen

a room full of copyright files in the library of congress

What is Happening with the Register of Copyrights?

In the news recently were several reports about the Supreme Court deferring a decision on whether President Trump can fire Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights. We have previously blogged about the origins of this lawsuit and why the lawsuit matters for authors, but the rapid developments over the past few months warrant an update. We explain below where the case now stands—and how it connects to two major Supreme Court cases that may shape the future of the US Copyright Office.

Large open room with large book display and man on an escalator

Big Ten Open Books: An Interview with Kate McCready (BTAA) and Charles Watkinson (UM)

Authors Alliance has had a longstanding interest in helping authors see their older books reinvigorated with new life by making them available online for free on an open access basis. One of the most exciting initiatives working on OA for backlist books is the Big Ten Open Books program. This post is based on a set of questions I posed to Kate McCready (Program Director for Open Publishing, Center for Library Programs at the Big Ten Academic Alliance) and Charles Watkinson (Director of University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan) about what the program is and how it works.

Bartz v. Anthropic: A Preliminary Look at What LibGen Books May Be Included in the Class Action

As readers are likely aware, the Bartz v. Anthropic AI lawsuit had a couple of major developments recently. Though the lawsuit was initially brought to address the legality of using copyrighted materials for training AI, the suit has now shifted its focus to Anthropic’s storage—without training use—of copies of books downloaded from LibGen and PiLiMi, two sites that share pirated copies of books and other materials.

An Updated NIH and Publisher Guidance: What Authors Need to Know about NIH’s Public Access Policy

In June, we published an FAQ for authors and librarians to give some guidance on how they might respond to NIH’s accelerated implementation of its public access plan, which requires immediate availability of sponsored research articles upon publication. Our FAQ from June is still good advice, but since then both the NIH and several publishers have updated their guidance and so we are giving some additional information about the latest here.

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