Friday, April 3, 2026

Digital Publishing Trends

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Copyright

18 articles tagged with “Copyright”

Publisher's desk with AI detection tool showing 73% probability score, CANCELLED stamp, and Publishers Weekly magazine
AI & Publishing

As AI Discourse Rages, Publishing Has More Questions Than Answers

The cancellation of Mia Ballard's horror novel Shy Girl by Hachette's Orbit and Wildfire imprints has forced a reckoning across the publishing industry. Publishers Weekly's definitive post-mortem finds that Penguin Random House was the only Big Five publisher willing to comment publicly, while researchers and literary agents warn that AI accusations are 'incredibly difficult to prove' and that the industry's contracts and detection tools remain wholly inadequate for the challenge ahead.

Publishers Weekly
AIHachetteShy Girl
Server room with amber warning light and monitor showing Library Genesis 81.7 TB — Meta BitTorrent infringement case
Legal & Policy

US Judge Allows New Contributory Infringement Claim in Authors vs. Meta — BitTorrent Seeding at Issue

Judge Vince Chhabria of the Northern District of California 'reluctantly' granted a motion by lead plaintiff Richard Kadrey to file a fourth amended complaint against Meta, adding a contributory infringement claim related to Meta's use of BitTorrent to acquire approximately 81.7 terabytes of pirated books — over 7 million titles — from shadow libraries including LibGen and Z-Library. Because BitTorrent requires users to 'seed' (upload) data to others while downloading, the authors argue Meta contributed to third-party copyright infringement. The judge granted the motion to protect absent class members but sharply rebuked the plaintiffs' lawyers at Boies Schiller Flexner for a 'pattern' of blaming Meta for their own litigation failures.

ChatGPT Is Eating the World
MetaCopyrightBitTorrent
Annotated song lyrics on paper beside glowing AI server rack — music publishers sue Anthropic for copyright infringement
Legal & Policy

Music Publishers File for Summary Judgment Against Anthropic — 'Copyright Infringement on a Massive Scale'

Universal Music Group, Concord, and ABKCO have filed a motion for summary judgment in San Jose federal court, asking a judge to rule that Anthropic's use of copyrighted song lyrics to train its Claude AI model constitutes copyright infringement 'on a massive scale.' The filing argues that Claude produces AI-generated lyrics that serve as market-diluting derivatives of the originals, directly challenging the tech industry's standard fair use defence. The case involves lyrics from at least 500 songs by artists including the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, and Beyoncé. A separate lawsuit by BMG against Anthropic was filed one week earlier.

Reuters
AnthropicUMGCopyright
White House at dusk with AI neural network nodes and copyright text floating above — AI fair use policy framework
AI & Publishing

White House Backs AI Fair Use, Calls for Collective Licensing Framework

The Trump administration's National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence reiterates that AI training on copyrighted material does not violate copyright law, while simultaneously calling on Congress to consider enabling collective licensing frameworks that would allow rightsholders to negotiate compensation from AI companies without incurring antitrust liability. The framework advises Congress not to take legislative action that would influence judicial determinations on fair use, leaving the question to the courts.

WilmerHale / White House National Policy Framework
AICopyrightWhite House
WSJ building and Meta campus connected by glowing data pipeline at night — $50M AI licensing deal
AI & Publishing

News Corp Strikes $50M-Per-Year AI Licensing Deal with Meta

News Corp has agreed to a multiyear AI content licensing deal with Meta worth up to $50 million per year, covering US and UK media properties including the Wall Street Journal and New York Post. The three-year minimum deal follows News Corp's 2024 OpenAI agreement worth more than $250 million over five years, and CEO Robert Thomson has signalled further licensing deals are imminent.

Wall Street Journal
News CorpMetaAI Licensing
Chicken Soup for the Soul books stacked beside a server room, gavel striking between them — AI Goes on Trial
Legal & Policy

Chicken Soup for the Soul Sues OpenAI and Seven AI Firms Over 'Single Act' Copyright Theory

Chicken Soup for the Soul has filed a copyright lawsuit in the Northern District of California against OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI, Perplexity, Apple, and Nvidia, alleging that the entire generative AI industry was built on a foundation of pirated books traced to a single 2018 LibGen download by an OpenAI employee. Over 1,000 authors representing more than 5,000 works have joined the action.

Publishers Weekly
AICopyrightLawsuit
European Parliament chamber in Strasbourg with blue and gold EU flags, dramatic lighting from above
Legal & Policy

EU Parliament Resolution Signals Shift on AI Copyright Territoriality, Proposes 5–7% Global Turnover Levy

The European Parliament adopted a non-binding Resolution on Copyright and Generative Artificial Intelligence on March 10, 2026, proposing that EU copyright rules apply to any AI system offered in the EU regardless of where it was trained. The resolution also suggests a retroactive flat-rate licensing fee of 5–7% of global turnover to compensate the creative industry. While not legally binding, the resolution signals the legislative agenda for the European Commission and could affect AI developers worldwide, including US-based companies.

Potomac Law
AICopyrightEU
Jack Conte speaking on a SXSW stage with a microphone, crowd visible in background, warm stage lighting
AI & Publishing

Patreon CEO Jack Conte Calls AI Companies' Fair Use Defence 'Bogus' at SXSW

Patreon CEO Jack Conte, speaking at SXSW, attacked AI companies for claiming fair use while simultaneously signing multimillion-dollar licensing deals with Disney, Condé Nast, Vox Media, and Warner Music. 'The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,' Conte said. 'If it's legal to just use it, why pay?' He argued that the selective application of licensing — to large rights holders but not individual creators — reveals a double standard that the fair use doctrine cannot legitimately sustain.

Fortune
AICopyrightFair Use
Westminster Palace reflected in the Thames at dusk, with a stack of books and a copyright symbol in the foreground
Legal & Policy

UK Government Scraps AI Copyright Exception, But Industry Warns Uncertainty Remains

The UK government's 125-page report on AI and copyright has officially dropped its preferred option of a broad copyright exception for AI training. Publishers Association CEO Dan Conway called it 'a step in the right direction,' but warned that 'potentially damaging avenues have not been closed down.' Society of Authors Chief Executive Anna Ganley called it 'a hard-won moment' while urging faster government action. Ed Newton-Rex of Fairly Trained cautioned that 'some form of copyright exception is still very much a possibility,' noting the report failed to explicitly state that training AI on copyrighted works without a licence is illegal.

Publishing Perspectives / The Bookseller
AICopyrightLegal & Policy
Publishing rights licensing panel at the London Book Fair 2026 with speakers discussing AI content licensing
Legal & Policy

LBF 2026: 'Rather Have a Bad License Than No License' — Publishers Urged to Enter AI Licensing Market

A panel at the London Book Fair titled 'Publishing Revenue Diversification Through Rights Licensing,' moderated by Roy Kaufman of the Copyright Clearance Center, urged publishers to actively enter the AI licensing market rather than waiting for litigation to resolve. The Publishers Association's 'Content Superpower' report found that the number of publishers active in the AI licensing market is set to double in 2026, with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) licensing now a meaningful and growing segment.

Publishing Perspectives
AI LicensingRightsCopyright
A gavel resting beside an open book with a glowing AI neural network visualization in a law library setting
Legal & Policy

Legal Update: AI Copyright Cases in 2026

A comprehensive legal update from Norton Rose Fulbright maps the rapidly shifting AI copyright landscape in early 2026. Key developments include the Supreme Court's denial of certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter (confirming human authorship as a copyright requirement), the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement of $1.5 billion on training data claims, and new discovery rulings in the OpenAI MDL establishing that ChatGPT logs are discoverable documents.

Norton Rose Fulbright
AICopyrightLegal