Surprise: Elsevier is Suing Meta For You?

Today in the Southern District of New York, Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, and McGraw Hill — joined by novelist Scott Turow and his company S.C.R.I.B.E., Inc. — filed a class action against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg over the use of copyrighted works to train Meta's Llama models. The complaint has six counts: reproduction by torrenting, reproduction from web-scraped datasets, reproduction during training, distribution by torrenting, contributory infringement against Zuckerberg personally, and removal of copyright management information under DMCA §1202(b).

A Box Full of Teeth

John and Craig welcome back Katie Dippold (Widow’s Bay, Ghostbusters) to ask, what advice would you give to your younger self? They revisit the writers they used to be, offer specific guidance to each one, and demystify everything from “Why isn’t a producer calling me back?” to “Should I join that sorority?” Most importantly, we […]

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Scriptnotes, Episode 733: Learning Comedy, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August, and this is episode 733 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Over the years, we’ve talked about comedy a lot on the show, both for film and […]

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US Copyright Office Will Raise Termination Fee 126%?

Authors Alliance submitted a comment to the US Copyright Office in response to its proposed fee schedule (Docket No. 2026–2). […]

Tiger King 2: The Tenth Circuit Sequel on Fair Use in Documentary

In May 2024, we filed an amicus brief urging the Tenth Circuit to rehear Whyte Monkee Productions v. Netflix. The previous decision was disastrous for documentary filmmakers, historians, and anyone else who uses photographs, movie clips, or other works as historical reference points or for illustration. That’s because the court previously took the position that fair use generally disfavored uses that didn’t directly comment or criticize creative aspects of the underlying work. This meant that all sorts of common uses that engaged with the subject of an underlying work rather than its artistic content were now in jeopardy. It came to this conclusion based on what was, in our view, a significant misreading of the Supreme Court’s recent guidance in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.

The Public Interest Corpus: Final Report and Path Forward

We are releasing today the final report of the Public Interest Corpus project. A stable, citable version is here: The Public Interest Corpus: A Framework for Implementation. Because we want to encourage additional feedback, we’re also sharing a version here that allows you to comment.

The report is the product of more than a year of work supported by the Mellon Foundation, in which we asked how research libraries can make books data available for AI training and computational research in ways that serve the public interest, rather than reinforcing the existing concentration of access to texts among a small number of well-resourced commercial actors.

Learning Comedy

John welcomes five-time Emmy-winning writer Ali Barthwell (Last Week Tonight) to ask, can writers learn to be funny? Drawing from her time as a teacher at The Second City, they look at what writers can learn from sketch and improv, and how to reliably find ways to make an audience laugh. We also celebrate the […]

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I Made You a Mixtape (Secs. 1001–1010)

A levy in exchange for an exemption was a novel idea, and it had some merit in theory. In practice, I think the main lesson of the AHRA is that a future levy scheme is probably ill-advised. But regardless, before Congress considers changing the law, it should make sure it understands the law it is changing.

Scriptnotes, Episode 731: Avoidance and Other Anti-Quests, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August. Craig Mazin: Oh, my name is Craig Mazin. John: This is episode 731 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Often on this podcast, we talk about characters heading […]

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Scriptnotes, Episode 730: A Frank Conversation About Screenwriting, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here. John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is episode 730 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. This week, Craig and I are still both off on our adventures, but fingers crossed we should […]

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What I learned from a year of Highland Pro

One year ago, we launched Highland Pro. I was confident in the app itself, having put it through its paces over its multi-year development journey. I’d written dozens of scripts and novels in Highland over the years, and knew that Highland Pro was the best version we’d ever made. Our beta testers loved it, too. […]

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Something Very Bad is Going to Happen

John welcomes writer/showrunner Haley Z. Boston for a post-mortem on her terrifying new series, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen. They look at how the series evolved from initial idea through production, her experience as a first-time showrunner, the special relationship between women and horror, and how she constructs terror on the page. We […]

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