Policy

Publisher Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, as well as author Scott Turow, are the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and the claims are being brought on behalf of themselves and a proposed class of authors and publishers. The suit follows an attempt by HBG and Cengage to join the Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation lawsuit first brought by a group of illustrators and writers in 2023, and which Google has been challenging the right for the publishers to participate.

Source: Publishers, Authors File Class Action Lawsuit Against Google

In July 2025, Los Angeles photographer Jamie Nelson photographed Amy Taylor, the lead singer of Australian punk band Amyl and the Sniffers, for a Vogue Portugal editorial called “Champagne Problems.” But after Nelson began selling limited-edition art prints of the images on her website, Taylor filed suit, alleging that the images were only authorized for editorial use. Now, a year later, the two remain locked in litigation over the matter.

Source: Legal Battle Between a Punk Singer and a Photographer Heats Up

The battle between Hollywood and generative artificial intelligence (AI) took an important procedural turn this month in one of the most closely watched AI copyright cases pending in the United States. While some headlines suggested that Disney and Universal were broadly ordered to disclose their own internal AI use, the actual discovery ruling is more nuanced. The court permitted only limited discovery into AI-related issues tied to market harm, while rejecting most of Midjourney’s broader requests regarding the studios’ internal AI development and use.

Source: AI Copyright Showdown: Can Hollywood Challenge AI While Using It?

A New York federal judge has denied Sony Music Entertainment‘s request to add 30,442 sound recordings to its copyright infringement lawsuit against AI music platform Udio. The ruling from Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, keeps the case at the 333 works that remain in the case. Sony filed the motion on May 22 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, saying it had identified the additional recordings after gaining access to Udio‘s training data in discovery.

Source: Judge denies Sony Music bid to add over 30,000 recordings to Udio lawsuit

A coalition of Australia’s leading music and creative organizations has united to issue an open letter demanding stronger copyright protections in the face of growing concerns over unauthorized AI training. The coalition includes APRA AMCOS, ARIA, The Copyright Agency, Australian Music Centre, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Music Office, Australian Publishers Association, Screenrights, Screen Producers Australia, AIR, and many more.

Source: Australian Music Industry Demands Action Against Mass-Scale AI Training

The Copyright Act grants authors the exclusive right “to display the copyrighted work publicly,” and that right has proven remarkably resistant to resolution in the internet context. Courts across the country have been unable to agree on a deceptively simple question: when a website embeds an image that lives on someone else’s server, and that image appears on a visitor’s screen, who has displayed it?

Source: Is Embedding Someone Else’s Image Copyright Infringement? The Fifth Circuit May Finally Tell Us