This looks actionable to me

Here’s a US publisher selling the rights to use the books it publishes to “train” AI — with no way for authors published by this publisher to opt out.

Even worse,

… another academic publisher, Taylor& Francis, the parent company of Routledge, over an AI deal with Microsoft worth $10 million, claiming they were not given the opportunity to opt out and are receiving no extra payment for the use of their research by the tech company.

Bold is mine.

That looks like theft to me. Publishers do not buy books. They license the rights to publish books, in specific ways, with specific limitations. If they don’t buy audio rights, they can’t make audiobooks available — the author can do that if they want to, because the author retains any rights that have not specifically been licensed by the publisher. That’s how it works. That’s the deal.

These publishers are just begging for a big class-action lawsuit, especially the publisher that isn’t paying the authors any compensation, but it definitely looks to me like ANY publisher that doesn’t offer a prominent opt-out option is putting itself at significant legal hazard.

I hope they get sued. I don’t think there’s any way they could win. Not that I’m an IP lawyer, or a lawyer of any kind, but I know darn well that publishers do not have the right to do anything they want with a book; they only have the rights specified in the contract signed by the author. This can’t be in there.

As a side note, it’s also obviously ethically wrong to use an author’s work this way without offering a way to opt out, and worse not to pay extra compensation — but it’s obviously wrong either way. The publisher’s staff responsible for this should be ashamed.

Every single author planning to sign a contract with a traditional publisher should make sure there’s a clause in their contract that specifies the publisher can’t use their books this way without specific permission to do so.

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