Authors Guild legal staff and board members recently went to Washington, D.C., to urge US Congress to support legislation that would: * Require consent before AI training on copyrighted works and disclosure of what's already been used (CLEAR Act, TRAIN Act) * Establish that unauthorized AI training does not qualify as fair use (Sen. Blackburn's AI framework) * Create a private right of action for authors to sue developers who ingested their work without consent (AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act) * Mandate labeling of AI-generated content (Protecting Consumers from Deceptive AI Act) * Shut down foreign piracy sites that have devastated author income — and supplied much of the training data for major AI models (Block BEARD Act, Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act) The delegation included bestselling author and Guild member David Baldacci, a plaintiff in the Authors Guild’s class action against OpenAI; Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger; Director of Advocacy and Policy Umair Kazi; Chief Legal Officer Kevin Amer; Authors Guild President and author W. Ralph Eubanks; and Authors Guild Foundation Board and Guild Council Members Laura Pedersen, Adriana Trigiani, and Charles Graeber, one of the three named plaintiffs in the author class-action lawsuit against Anthropic that resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement, the largest copyright settlement in history. Several offices — including those of Sen. Schiff, Rep. Foushee, and Rep. Johnson — committed to follow up on specific legislative language. Read more about it and hear from the authors here: https://lnkd.in/eHpz_cJi
Authors Guild Urges Congress to Support AI Copyright Legislation
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Incredible work by the Authors Guild delegation. The historic $1.5B settlement with Anthropic proved that authors won't let their intellectual property be strip-mined, but litigation alone isn't a permanent fix. We need systemic, legislative guardrails. Requiring explicit consent, establishing data transparency, and ensuring fair compensation isn't about halting innovation—it’s about building a sustainable ecosystem where human creators can afford to keep creating. If you don't protect the source of the data, the entire system eventually starves. Huge respect to everyone fighting this fight in Washington!