Thank you to a fellow ALLi team member for passing along what will be the penultimate story of 2025. One of the things that has been so notable about the news this year has been the sheer number and diversity of copyright issues and lawsuits I’ve covered.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The natural conclusion of each and every one of them has been a fairly straightforward and ultimately not very useful “this sets no precedent” or “it is unlikely we can extrapolate too much from this,” which makes chasing copyright infringements feel a little like whack-a-mole.
This is the backdrop against which the creation of the Copymight (not a typo!) Coalition has happened, not to be confused with existing groups such as the Copyright Alliance. The Copymight Coalition sets out, according to an article in Plagiarism Today, with two principal objectives.
Litigation and Collective Action
The first is AI litigation. This would include lawsuits and takedown requests.
The second is achieving collective licensing agreements, allowing rights holders to take advantage of collectively bargained agreements with tech companies for using their rights-protected work. It would work similarly, the article notes, to the way performing rights holders are able to benefit from collective agreements when their work is played in public spaces.
Why It Matters for Indies
The Copymight Coalition aims very much at helping independent authors, which is why I have shared the news of its inception. The article notes the difficulties that indies often face on matters of copyright when it comes to having their voices heard.
One of the Copymight Coalition’s first tasks, it notes, is to drive increased registration of copyright in the US, particularly among authors outside the US. This is, of course, very much a hot topic after the ruling on the constitution of the class in the Anthropic case.
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