On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway explains a major development in the lawsuit against Anthropic, where a judge has allowed authors to proceed as a class in claims tied to piracy—potentially leading to significant damages, but only for those with timely registered U.S. copyrights. He also covers a Senate hearing questioning tech’s use of copyrighted works and a new Kindle Colorsoft model that reinforces Amazon’s continued interest in graphic novels.
Listen to the Podcast: Anthropic Lawsuit Advances
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to another week's Self-Publishing News.
There is one big story this week, which I very much hope to get right. I'm a little bit nervous because I don't want to get the details wrong, and that surrounds the rulings in the case against Anthropic over its training of AI on copyrighted material.
This is a case that you will have read about before and heard about before. I've covered the first ruling in the case, and the most recent ruling essentially states that the three authors who brought the case can serve as a class action, specifically a class action when it comes to allegations of piracy and potential benefit to authors, potential damages relating to that piracy.
This is obviously potentially huge news because what it is essentially saying is that those three authors can, as the judge put it, stand in for any eligible authors when it comes to findings in relation to piracy, and a case of that kind has been brought by those three authors subsequent to the original case.
Obviously, we don't have a ruling yet on issues of piracy in this case. The first ruling was about fair use, and in particular on whether the use that Anthropic put their training sets to could be considered transformative. To that extent, the judge found that indeed it was transformative and so fair use was applicable in this case.
Though the judge also pointed out that the way that the books had been obtained, if a case were to be brought around that, it might well be treated favorably because the books have been, many of them, taken from shadow libraries like Library Genesis, and in the ruling that we now have, it's not just Library Genesis, it's also what is known as Pirate Library Mirror.
I think they're calling this P-I-L-I-M-I; however you pronounce that.
Basically, what the judge has said is that there is a single class of eligible authors in this case, and they are authors whose works have been pirated by, or in relation to Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. So, if damages are awarded to that class of authors, then everyone in that class of authors will be eligible to those damages. So, that's obviously potentially massive.
Dan Holloway: If you remember when I first reported on what potential damages could be, we saw that they could run into the billions. It's huge amounts we are talking about, but there are some really important caveats here, hidden when it comes to this ruling.
Number one, it doesn't include books that were downloaded from other shadow libraries. So, in order to be part of the class involved in this class action, you would need to show that your works were downloaded specifically from one of those two shadow libraries, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
Second, if your books are downloaded from both places, you would only be able to claim damages once. So, everyone is either in or out of this class. They're not in it twice if their books are in both libraries, so there aren't double damages as it were.
The really important point that is going to affect a lot of indie authors is down to how the judge defines which authors are eligible. The judge in the case refers, I'm going to read the wording, “this case is limited to actual or beneficial owners”. So, in this case, that's authors. Obviously, it's other people to whom rights were assigned, but it includes authors. I'll continue the quote, “of timely registered copyrights in ISBN/ASIN-bearing books downloaded by Anthropic from these two pirate libraries.”
The key phrase there, “timely registered copyrights”. My understanding of that is that this refers to the very specific registering of copyright with the US Copyright Office, which is obviously very different from copyright law in other countries, and what it means to hold valid claim to copyright in other countries.
In the UK, you don't register copyright, you automatically hold all copyright rights the moment your work is published.
In the US, my understanding is that there are two degrees of it. You do have certain protections just by publishing your work, but in order to have full protection and in order to be included in this class, it seems that it is likely you'll have had to have registered your copyright with the Copyright Office, which is obviously quite a costly process, and that needs to have been done in a timely fashion.
My reading of the word timely there is, people reading this who think that means, I better go back and register all the books that when I searched for my titles on Library Genesis, I found them there, I really ought to go back and register copyright. That would not be timely.
Timely would be that you needed to register the copyright with the Copyright Office before those books were downloaded and became part of the shadow libraries.
So, it's potentially huge news, but it is also something that a lot of indies, in particular, are going to be disappointed not to find themselves as part of that class, because even though their books might be in those libraries, they also need to have been registered in this way.
As I say, that's my understanding. Obviously, there has been no ruling in the case as well, and in other cases things might be different. So, very much keep following this space. I will make sure I keep you updated on that.
That really is the main news this week, and I wanted to spell that out as clearly as I can, what my understanding is. Please do keep listening on that one.
AI Senate Hearing Focused on Creator Impact to Economy
Dan Holloway: There's also been some more AI news in the US. There was an AI Senate hearing a week or so ago, and it was called Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry's Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training.
Gosh, they love their titles, don't they? Maybe they need to get ChatGPT to suggest a snappier title.
Anyway, it was really interesting because this is a Senate hearing called by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, but it is very much not an obviously pro-tech agenda, and the representatives of the tech industry and tech interests seemed to have got quite a grilling from Hawley. In particular, they were being grilled over whether it is truly in US national interests to penalize US-based creators.
So, pointing out essentially what has tended to be a more European based argument in the past, which is that the creative economy is an important part of the economy too, and creators are an important part of the US economy.
It's something that we are used to in the UK. For the last 30 years or so, we've been talking about our creative industries as being the sort of economic powerhouse, often it seems even overshadowing the tech industry. Very much also the case in Europe. It's been less the case in the US, so it's really interesting to see that positioning in a platform like a Senate hearing.
Maybe not everything is moving in the tech industry's direction. So, that's definitely one to keep an eye on.
New Kindle Color Soft Release
Dan Holloway: Seemingly minor news in comparison to that is there is a new Kindle Color Soft. The Kindle Color Soft of course, came out last July, at the same time as Prime Day. It was the big hit of Prime Day, and really great news for anyone who wants to read graphic novels and therefore for people who want to write graphic novels and have them read on Kindle.
It gives a much better experience to those who are reading them that way. So, this was originally a massive hit. A new Kindle Colour Soft, at a slightly downgraded memory of 16 gigabytes, has come out at a lowered price point of $250.
It's almost as important for what it signals, which is that Amazon is still leaning into graphic novels and the specialist e-reader as a way of reading eBooks as for the actual thing itself.
Dan Holloway: So, that's feels like some bright and dare I say, colorful news on which to end.
I look forward very much to speaking to you again at the same time next week.
