Article: Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot

According to the Associates Press, "A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot." 

While this is a win for the authors, commenters note that companies have been training their AI systems on other data where creators/owners have not been compensated. This reminds me of the era when Google, Microsoft, and others were gobbling up books and other texts to train their search engines. Did all creators receive compensation then? Will all creators receive compensation now? 

Webinar: Still Standing: Fifty Years of the Copyright Act and the Path Ahead

 From the Copyright Clearance Center:

Date: 14 July 2026  
Time: 10:00 am EDT | 16:00 CEST 

Location: LinkedIn Live 

As it approaches its 50th Anniversary, how has the U.S. Copyright Act addressed an evolving world?

Join our panel of legal and copyright experts David Carson, Suzy Wilson, Pippa Loengard, and CCC's Catherine Zaller Rowland as they explore not only what the law says, but how it has adapted over the past half-century and how well equipped it is for the next wave of technological, legal, and market disruption.

This engaging session will feature: 

• How the U.S. Copyright Act has evolved since 1976 
• Areas where it is straining today under the impact of new technologies including AI 
• What the major challenges will be in the years ahead 

Register on LinkedIn! LinkedIn will tell you the time of the webinar in your time zone. This event is free.

 

Hello 2025! -- Looking back & looking ahead

2024 went by quickly and now we are at the start of another year. Happy New Year!  I haven't posted in a while and thought that I would provide a quick update.

Yesterday was Public Domain Day and you have likely seen news stories about it. The Morning Brew has a brief story which includes the possibility of horror movies being made with public domain works.  I hadn't considered that, but I can definitely imagine it and I expect it has already happened somewhere (perhaps memes or TicTic videos). 

By the way, Wikipedia has an interesting list of what passed into the public domain in the U.S. and in other countries. Of course, the Internet Archive (and others) have lists. Among the works now in the public domain is "Singing in the Rain" which was used in the disturbing film, "A Clockwork Orange" in 1971.

Many people are talking about the copyright and artificial intelligence (AI).  The U.S. Copyright Office is analyzing the issues around AI, but I wonder if that is moving too slowly given how AI is now all around us. Researchers at RAND have written the report, "Artificial Intelligence Impacts on Copyright Law" which I have found to be useful. 

I should say that I am not a huge user of AI, although it is being built into things that I use daily. Most times those AI "pop-ups" are annoying because I know what I am trying to do and AI is slowing me down. I have used AI intentionally to help me rewrite awkward text, but I don't do that frequently. I mostly use AI to generate images for me like the one above. In other words, I'm not an AI convert. However, I know that there are libraries experiment with AI to see how it can be of use, and that some people are true AI converts. 

I must say that I find ads for business products that use AI to be humorous because they have to state  that the products are hallucination-free. Did we ever think we would need to say that about a product we're using?

The  litigation Hachette v. Internet Archive concluded with the Second Circuit Court ruling against the Internet Archive, and the Archive deciding not to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. There is much that has been said and could be said about this court case. 

BTW Brewster Kahle and Kyle Courtney were interviewed by Chris Hayes during the summer (The End of Libraries as We Know Them?), which is about more than the litigation and worth listening to.  I always appreciate Kyle's perspective on libraries, copyright, and access to materials.

I need to mention the continued effort to ban materials in libraries and the push-back that is occurring on that.  For information on what has occurred, I suggest that you read EveryLibrary's report, "Wins, Warnings, and Ongoing Legislative Fights for Libraries in 2024."

While we have products being built or trained on digitized content, we will have organizations that need materials put into digital form, for example old church records. Yes, digitization is still needed. Depending on where you or your organization are in your digitization journey, consider reaching out to smaller institutions in your community and asking if they have information that needs to be preserved or if it would benefit them to have it available digitally.  Birth, death, baptism, bar/bat mitzvah, membership, or land records are all things that may still be in paper form.

My focus in 2024 continued to be on diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, (DEIAB) and anti-racism with Widerstand Consulting. 2024 had its challenges because of all the things happening around us (like politics). The question we are all asking is, "What will 2025 bring?"  I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that those doing DEIAB and social justice work need to be ready for whatever it is.  Personally, I believe that allies need bystander training and I hope communities will offer it.  There are many resources online about bystander training. These are a few videos that I have found useful:

• The 5 Ds of Bystander Intervention
• Bystander Campaign Video – Train Scenario
• How to safely intervene, report hate crimes
• That Girl At The Bar | #HowWillWeRespond | Women Safety | Bystander Intervention | Short Film | 2017
• C.A.R.E. | The 4 Steps of Bystander Intervention for Workplace Harassment

One of the things I have been doing regularly is writing articles for Widerstand's monthly newsletter which is free and available to all. I'm also posting frequently to Widerstand's LinkedIn page. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and following us on LinkedIn.

Well...that's my update! If we cross paths in 2025, please stop and say "hello!"

Library Futures launches C.A.T.S. (Copyright and Technology Scribblings)

This month, Library Futures launched its newsletter named C.A.T.S. (Copyright and Technology Scribblings). You can read their witty announcement and read the first issue (free).  C.A.T.S. will be published twice monthly and the modest subscription fee is tax deductible. Check the announcement for details!

By the way, the image to the right is from their first newsletter.

The Copyright Office announces Webinar on Copyright Essentials: Myths Explained

Below is the text from the Copyright Office about this webinar. Copyright myths abound, so this could be very interesting! Registration is required.

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The U.S. Copyright Office invites you to register to attend the upcoming online webinar, “Copyright Essentials: Copyright Myths Explained” on March 27, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. There is a lot of misleading information out there about copyright. Join us as the Copyright Office discusses what is and is not true when it comes to copyright. The Copyright Office wants to make sure you have the facts and know where to go if you need more information.

In this sixty-minute webinar, attendees will learn about the Copyright Office’s functions, copyright basics, and the Copyright Office’s educational resources. Register here.
Speakers:

• Jessica Chinnadurai, Attorney-Advisor, Office of Public Information and Education
• Laura Kaiser, Attorney-Advisor, Office of Public Information and Education

The Copyright Office aims to broaden public awareness of what the copyright system encompasses and how to participate. A cornerstone of our current strategic plan is Copyright for All, and the Copyright Office dedicates itself to making the copyright system as understandable and accessible to as many members of the public as possible.

Webinar: Copyright for Archival Newspapers

I received this email note. This event is open to the public.

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The PA Digital Rights team will host an event at the end of February on Copyright for Archival Newspapers. We hope to see many of you there. This event is open to the public, so please feel free to share the information with interested colleagues.

Copyright for Archival Newspapers

February 27, 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern, on Zoom (Please register in advance.)

Do you have copyright questions about digitizing archival newspapers? At this event, Ana Enriquez from the PA Digital Rights Team will cover how to check public domain status, analyze fair use, and assign rights statements, with a focus on newspapers published in the United States. This workshop will be an update and expansion of our 2019 module, Copyright for Archival Newspapers. To view that module in English and Spanish, visit our Rights Resources page.

Copyright Office Hosts Event in Celebration of Black History Month, “Hip-Hop Beyond 50: Protecting and Promoting Culture”

The following is from the U.S. Copyright Office. Sounds like an interesting event!

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The U.S. Copyright Office invites you to register to attend the upcoming Black History Month online event, “Hip-Hop Beyond 50: Protecting and Promoting Culture,” on February 21, 2024, at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. Hip-hop, a uniquely American art form rooted in African American culture, marked its official fiftieth anniversary in 2023. The musical genre has been popularized all over the world, encompassing MCing, DJing, breakdancing, graffiti art, beatboxing, and more. In this sixty-minute session, attendees will learn from the Copyright Office, industry experts, and practitioners about how hip-hop has influenced creators worldwide and about the Office resources available on sampling, interpolations, and beat stores. 

Guest speakers include 

• Dae Bogan – Head of Third-Party Partnerships at The Mechanical Licensing Collective  
• Jamila Sams – Founder and CEO of We Do it for the Culture™ and Go to Ms. Sams 
• Bruce Waynne – Grammy Award–winning music producer, publisher, and label executive; President of Vyre 
• Junious Brickhouse – Director of Next Level, Hip Hop Diplomacy Program 

Article: Is A.I. the Death of I.P.?

This recent New Yorker article may not be paywalled, so go read/skim it. While the article is ultimately about artificial intelligence and intellectual property rights, there are many examples in it that are not connected to AI. The article is full of good tidbits, such as:

Judicial competence is also an issue...To know why a Warhol silk screen counts as transformative, or to give musical definition to a song’s “feel,” you need a kind of expertise that most judges—most people—don’t have.

One book mentioned in the article is Who Owns This Sentence?: A History of Copyrights and Wrongs, which will be release on Jan. 23, 2024. (paid link) Amazon's description of the book states that it...

is an often-humorous and always-enlightening cultural, legal, and global history of the idea that intangible things can be owned, and makes a persuasive case for seeing copyright as an engine of inequality in the twenty-first century.

From its description, this sounds like a book that is both informative and fun. Yes, one of the authors is an attorney (Alexandre Montagu), whose area is intellectual property law.

An early version of MIckey and Minnie are in the public domain!

 Everyone is reporting on the fact that the ORIGINAL Mickey and Minnie Mouse are in the public domain. While this is good news, it is important to recognize that that this is not the Mickey and Minnie that we see today. So if you're going to use the public domain versions, make sure you understand what you're using.

The Morning Brew notes these two limitations:

• Only the original versions of Mickey and Minnie, as they appear in Steamboat Willie, are up for grabs. Character details introduced in later years, including their white gloves, Mickey’s classic red pants, Minnie’s polka dots, and their high-pitched voice, are off limits.
• Disney still has a registered trademark on Steamboat Willie Mickey as a company mascot, so folks who use the character’s likeness have to make it clear that their project isn’t an official Disney production.

And if you're looking for a version to use, check out Wikimedia. 

Duke University has a list of what else joined the public domain this year. Use them and enjoy!

Lowry’s Reports Inc. v. Legg Mason: Settled in 2003 and still relevant

This fall I had cause to refer someone to the court case Lowry’s Reports Inc. v. Legg Mason, and that made me realize that I had never mentioned it here. This post is to rectify that and so I can find information on it more easily in the future.

An employee at Legg Mason routinely made unauthorized copies of a newsletter from Lowry Reports and disseminated those copies to people within the company, who had not subscribed to the newsletter. If I remember correctly, Legg Mason failed to cease and desist, which made matters worse. In 2003, a jury ordered Legg Mason to pay $19.7 million in damages.

If someone in your organization wants you to copy a newsletter, for example, and disseminated it widely...perhaps even to do so routinely...ask them what their risk tolerance is and mention this court case to them. It only takes one person, who has received or seen a copy of the newsletter, to alert the publisher.  Is your organization okay with that risk?

Resources

• Justia. Lowry's Reports, Inc. v. Legg Mason, Inc., 271 F. Supp. 2d 737 (D. Md. 2003)
• Marketing Sherpa. (2003) EMail Newsletter Wins Big Copyright Lawsuit
• Baltimore Sun (2003) Jury orders Legg Mason to pay $19.7 million in copyright case
• LLRX. (2011) The Risky Business of Information Sharing: Why You Need to Care About Copyright
• Pillsbury Law. (2013) What You Should Know About Electronic Subscriptions and Copyright Law: A Best Practices Guide 
• Copyright Clearance Center. (2023) The Risky Business of Information Sharing. This white paper is by CCC, which offers licensing options.
  

U.S. Copyright Office Extends Deadline for Comments on Artificial Intelligence Notice of Inquiry

 From the U.S. Copyright Office:

The U.S. Copyright Office extended the deadline to submit comments in response to its August 30, 2023, notice of inquiry regarding artificial intelligence and copyright. The new deadlines will ensure that members of the public have sufficient time to prepare fulsome responses to the Office's questions so the Office can proceed with its inquiry with the benefit of a complete record of public input and feedback.

Initial written comments are now due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on Monday, October 30, 2023. Reply comments are now due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday, November 29, 2023.

The Federal Register notice announcing this extension and additional information, including instructions for submitting comments, are available at https://www.copyright.gov/policy/artificial-intelligence/. 

The Copyright Office webpage entitled "Copyright and Artificial Intelligence" contains a lot of useful information and I encourage you to look at it.  One of the resources on that page is "Artificial Intelligence: The Copyright Connection" from 2021. I think the questions asked by Steve Andreadis are still at the center of this discussion:

• How are artists, scientists, and businesses inspired by the technological advances of AI? 
• When AI produces a creative work, is the expression owned by human or machine? 
• What is owed to creators of AI input data from a copyright or moral rights perspective? 
• What ethical implications are involved in selecting a data set and building an AI system?

If you have thoughts on these and other questions regarding AI and copyright, consider submitting them to the Copyright Office.

Article: Generative AI is Disruptive, But More Copyright Isn’t the Answer

This article appeared in a recent Public Knowledge email and it seems appropriate to post because of the ongoing questions about generative AI (GAI). The article covers:

1. The training data
2. The training process
3. User inputs

I'm sure the last section on "Expanding Copyright Law Won’t Protect Artists from GAI’s Disruption" will attract your attention.

Copyright and artificial intelligence is worth keeping an eye on, but when you do that recognize that the law isn't going to suddenly change. As I said to someone on Friday, the law changes slowly. It also changes purposefully. Right now, we all still studying what AI means to creators and how the law can help (or hurt) the situation.

Article: A Book Is a Book Is a Book—Except When It’s an e-Book

Likely you have been reading about the Hachette v. Internet Archive litigation. This is an article that you might want to add to your reference list on the topic. This article by Maria Bustillos starts with an analogy:

Buying a book should be no different from buying an apple. When you buy an apple, the farmer can’t show up in your kitchen later and decide your time is up, and you’ve got to pay for it again. It’s yours forever—to eat, or paint in a still life, or cut up for a kid’s snack. And thanks to the first sale doctrine of copyright law, codified by Congress in 1909, the books on your shelves are yours forever, too, in exactly the same way your apple is; you’re free to read them (or not), loan them to friends, or sell them to a used bookshop, without restriction. Copyright law balances the public good—our collective right to access information—with the rights it grants to authors and inventors.

Are you intrigued? You can read the entire article on The Nation website.

Starting Oct. 23: U.S. Copyright Law in the Library: A Beginner's Guide

I want to let you know that I’ll be teaching a course on U.S. copyright law in libraries this fall/winter. This is a course that I have taught before through ALA eLearning (and always with updates).

Do you - or someone in your library - need to know more about copyright? This course will guide you through the basics of copyright law and provide you with the foundation to become your library's copyright expert. Each week, we’ll explore how copyright law informs what libraries, library staff, and patrons can do with their materials and how you can stay up-to-date as copyright law and practice evolves. No previous experience or knowledge is required.

This course starts on Monday, October 23 and runs for 7 weeks (which includes a one-week break for Thanksgiving). You can register on ALA eLearning. Bulk and institutional pricing is available.

If you have any questions and/or are interested in bulk pricing, you can contact the folks at ALA Continuing Education at ce@ala.org.

Library Futures: Copyright Booth to Go!

A few weeks ago, Library Futures released their 2022 Annual Report, which is a website that links to other resources.  Library Futures had an amazing 2022 including submitting 3 amicus briefs, hosting 18 webinars, and producing 3 research papers.

One thing that caught my eye is that:

Community Fellow Emily Finch converted the American Library Association Conference copyright booth into a portable Open Educational Resource that can be used anywhere.

You know that copyright questions often fall into specific categories and this handout captures that idea, while also provide using advice and pointing to other resources. 

Yes, use it! It's an Open Education Resource (OER), which means it is meant to be used and shared.

Article: What generative AI means for copyright

Rachel Alexander's opening text to this article gets at our fears:

Creatives are worried about being thrown out of a job by generative AI, while artificial intelligence developers leave themselves open to copyright infringement claims by training their AI on unlicensed material.

Her article is written from a UK perspective but does touch on approaches being used in the U.S. and EU. And if you're wondering why you should read it, this should capture your attention:

Generative AI presents a new scenario on which to apply questions that copyright has been grappling with for centuries such as: Who can be an author? What is original? What constitutes ‘fair dealing’ with a protected work? 

Information Age, which published this article, has a number of stories on generative AI.  If that is a topic you are following, you may want to follow Information Age.

Article: The Smithsonian Puts 4.5 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Use

This Open Culture article is from April, but sharing good news about public domain images is something that shouldn't be bound by time. (In other words, better late than never!)  Smithsonian Open Access provides now provides new platforms and tools, which give "easier access to more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo." (Smithsonian) Note that you can search and retrieve only images that have CC0 licenses (free of copyright restrictions).

This is a collection that is worth bookmarking and using! Consider how you can connect images from the past to events that are happening today, which could help you broaden the media that you are using.

Controlled Digital Lending and Libraries: A follow-up to Hachette v Internet Archive

Right now libraries are under pressure from several different forces including those who want to limit access to specific topics (e.g., critical race theory, LGBTQ, parts of U.S. history, etc.) and publishers who are focused on what a library is, digitization, and digital books. You might feel like hiding your head in the sand, but not is not the time for that. Knowing what has happened and what is happening is important.  

It is with that in mind that I'm sharing these posts/articles that provide links to articles/commentary on the on Hachette v Internet Archive decision. Read them, skim them, save them for later...just don't ignore this, because we can't have publishers using this decision as a further step in limiting what libraries can do.

• Publishers Weekly. (March 2023) Hachette v. Internet Archive: All Our Coverage. 
• Laura Gibbs. (April 2023) The Battle for Libraries Has begun. 
• Gary Price (March 2023) Judge Issues Opinion in Hachette Book Group, Et Al v. Internet Archive, Et Al; Plaintiffs Motion For Summary Judgment Granted

 

 

Article: Born to be authors: the copyright of the child

This article - Born to be authors: the copyright of the child - describes a prospective research project by Dr. Maria Mercedes Frabboni, from the University of Sussex. She presented this prospective project at the 2022 Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference.  

I think that we rarely talk about children as creators who may hold copyright in their words, so I'm thrilled to see that Dr. Frabboni is focused on this.  My belief is that we need to teach children to value and respect each other's work as a step towards then teaching them about copyright. Would I teach a five year old about copyright law? No, but I would teach that child about the value of their creativity and the creativity of others. As that child gets older, they will be able to learn more about their rights in their work and the rights of others. If taught well, then we would have adults who are much more knowledgeable about the law. (Wouldn't that be awesome!)

I look forward to hearing more about Dr. Frabboni's research. I hope it is widely circulated!

New Book: Complete Copyright for K–12 Librarians and Educators, Second Edition

Can you have too many copyright books? Perhaps not!

Written by Carrie Russell, who worked with copyright law for over 20 years, this new edition of Complete Copyright for K–12 Librarians and Educators, Second Edition is scheduled to be release this spring (so any day?). Its description is:

Reflecting the dominance of digital technologies and networks across much of the country, this timely update of Russell's handbook demonstrates how school librarians and educators can effectively advance learning while respecting intellectual property law.

Particularly in places of learning, technology is all-pervasive; because everyone is always making copies, copyright is center stage. And copyright law, when misapplied or misinterpreted, affects not only the way that you teach but even what you teach. With decades of experience interpreting the intricacies of copyright law as it pertains to librarianship, Russell is the ideal authority to address the concerns of librarians, teachers, and teaching librarians who work in the K–12 environment. Her book will encourage you to stop allowing your fear of copyright issues to limit how and what you share or teach, and instead be more involved in shaping copyright law to better serve your learning community. Through scenario-based discussions, it covers key topics such as

• the reasons librarians and teachers have so many misconceptions about copyright, and why understanding copyright is a process, not a one-time event;
• recent legislative and policy developments that impact schools and libraries; 
• situations often encountered by educators, such as using copyrighted material in class assignments, digital lesson plans, bulletin board displays, social media, school plays, and band performances and talent shows;
• the use of licensed content in a variety of settings;
• what constitutes "fair use," so that you can be empowered by knowing exactly what's possible within the law; and
• guidance on making long-term strategic decisions and developing copyright policies.

The book is priced at $54.99 (ALA members, $49.49). Pre-ordering is available through the ALA website.