The purpose of cultivating works of authorship is to shed light on human experience, and the foundational purpose of the fair use doctrine in copyright law is to shed light on works of authorship. From its 18th century, English roots to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in AWF v. Goldsmith, the primary rationale for fair use is to permit ...
After Internet Archive (IA) lost its copyright infringement suit with major publishers this week, the organization wasted no time alleging that great harm has been done to society. As if it had the posts ready to go, IA alleged that research itself was in peril and even went so far as to shamelessly post on X that works by Orwell ...
IA asks this Court to bless the large scale copying and distribution of copyrighted books without permission from or payment to the Publishers or authors. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday affirmed that Internet Archive’s digital book lending model controlled digital lending (CDL) is not permitted by copyright law, including under the fair use exception. The outcome is a ...
In December 2021, New York Governor Hochul recognized that she must veto a bill that would have prescribed the manner in which publishers may provide eBooks to public libraries. It isn’t necessary to rehash the details of that legislation—I wrote several posts about eBook bills—but only to restate the reason for the veto: the law was unconstitutional. Why? Because state ...
The Authors Guild, of which I am a member, has filed an amicus brief asking the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a lower court ruling that Iowa’s book ban law is unconstitutional. And of course it is. The subject barely warrants legal examination because it is impossible to draft a content-focused general book ban law that does not ...
