Blog – Authors Alliance

The NIH Public Access Policy: Implementation and Feedback

July 1, 2025

The NIH Public Access Policy is in effect as of July 1, 2025. In response, Authors Alliance and SPARC have created a form to collect information about challenges or questions faced by authors, librarians and their institutions in complying with the roll out of new public access policies by federal grant making agencies in compliance with the OSTP directive to make federally funded research freely available to the public immediately upon publication.

The Author-Library Alliance: Supporting Fair eBook Legislation Together

June 30, 2025

In May 2025, Connecticut’s legislature passed landmark legislation to address restrictive ebook licensing practices that limit libraries’ ability to serve the public. It aims to ensure ebook licenses align more closely with libraries’ core public interest mission of lending, access, and preservation. This represents a pivotal step toward safeguarding the role of libraries in the digital age. As more states consider similar measures, a key question arises: Should authors support these efforts? The answer is unequivocally yes— and here’s why.

Meta Wins on Fair Use for Now, but Court Leaves Door Open for “Market Dilution”

June 26, 2025

“Market dilution” suggests that “using copyrighted books to train an LLM might harm the market for those works because it enables the rapid generation of countless works that compete with the originals, even if those works aren’t themselves infringing.”

Anthropic Wins on Fair Use for Training its LLMs; Loses on Building a “Central Library” of Pirated Books

June 24, 2025

Yesterday, Judge Alsup released his decision on Anthropic’s motion for summary judgment in the fast-moving lawsuit it is defending, brought

Bonds, Beats, and Lawsuits: How Ed Sheeran Won

June 23, 2025

Structured Asset doesn’t make music nor aim to enrich our cultural life; instead, it uses copyright enforcement as a weapon against artists like Ed Sheeran, and turns a system meant to protect creativity into a mere vehicle for chasing profit.

What Happens if the AI Copyright Class Actions Settle?

June 20, 2025

As the high‑profile copyright lawsuits against AI companies proceed, the courtroom drama captures headlines. But I’ve long thought that settlement may be the real outcome to watch.

We may already be entering “settlement watch” territory in one of the fastest-moving AI cases, Bartz v. Anthropic.

Judge William Alsup. He presides over the Bartz v. Anthropic litigation.

Bartz v. Anthropic: Class Certification at Issue for Book Authors in AI Copyright Litigation

June 18, 2025

Back in October, I asked a simple but unresolved question: “Who represents you in the AI copyright suits?” Now, eight months later, we’re getting closer to an answer—at least for some authors. In Bartz v. Anthropic, one of the fastest-moving lawsuits over the use of copyrighted works to train generative AI systems, the plaintiffs have asked the court to certify a class of authors whose books were allegedly copied without permission.