Join us for a free webinar on protecting your author brand and identity in the age of AI on WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 7 at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT! Register here:

The Authors Guild is asking that publishers voluntarily withdraw their claim from books that have been long out of print, regardless of whether there is proof that rights have formally reverted under the contract. Here’s why:

Co-hosted by the Authors Guild’s own Cheryl L. Davis, vice-president and co-founder of TRU (and an Emmy-nominated TV soap writer!) Register here:

The most important and necessary financial practice for authors is to create a separation between business and personal accounts. We’re showing you how:

Annie Dillard was the youngest woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, which she received in 1975 for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. A longtime member of the Guild, Dillard was very engaged on our advocacy issues around authors rights. We will miss her talent and support.

“Newly unsealed comments made in briefs filed by the tech giants reveal that executives knew they were illegally training their products on copyrighted books and that AI generated books would likely displace human-authored books in the market.“

But far more important – the documents also hammer home why the mass piracy for training purposes is not “fair use” under copyright law. Again and again, OpenAI and Microsoft acknowledged they were using copyrighted books to create new works that would compete directly with the originals. (6/7)

And that’s a capital D Disdain: “There will be a point where a bunch of artists express worry about what we’re doing here and we’ll likely ignore their concerns and release anyway.” (5/7)

Many documents reflect disdain for authors and their livelihoods. One early OpenAI staffer wrote “Our work in this area will make people unemployed” and another “The better we do . . . the more worried genre fiction authors will become about us substituting for them on Amazon.” (4/7)

Some of the evidence is just embarrassing. Like the statement recorded in OpenAI project notes: “We trained GPT-3 on pirated stuff! No sharing that!” (3/7)

The evidence our lawyers have uncovered shows these companies knew they were breaching copyright, knew it would put authors out of work, knew it would degrade American culture. And they simply didn’t care. (2/7)

The Authors Guild is grateful the Court has unsealed some of the most important filings in our case against OpenAI and Microsoft. (1/7)

3. Finally, we urge publishers to use the proceeds of the awards to invest in new and diverse books and programs to develop new voices.

2. Second, we call on all publishers to use a portion of their settlement proceeds to compensate those authors whose books were excluded from the settlement because their works were not registered on a timely basis, even though the publisher was required to do so.

1. First, we ask that publishers voluntarily withdraw their claim from books that have been long out of print, regardless of whether there is proof that rights have formally reverted under the contract.