Authors Guild

History

The original Authors League of America was organized with headquarters in New York City in order "to protect the rights of all authors, whether engaged in literary, dramatic, artistic, or musical competition, and to advise and assist all such authors". In 1921, the Dramatists Guild of America split off as a separate group to represent writers of stage and, later, radio drama.

Past council presidents of the Authors Guild have included the novelists Pearl S. Buck, Rex Stout, Scott Turow, Douglas Preston and Madeleine L'Engle, the biographers Anne Edwards and Robert Caro, the journalists Herbert Mitgang and J. Anthony Lukas, the children's book author Mary Pope Osborne, and the historians William Shirer and Robert Massie. In 2014, the guild's members elected Roxana Robinson as president and Judy Blume as vice president. In 2023, the guild's members elected Maya Shanbhag Lang as president and Mary Bly as vice president.

The guild has been a persistent critic of controlled digital lending.

Legal cases

Freelancers' suit

In June 2014, the guild announced final approval of an $18-million settlement of a class-action suit it brought in 2000, along with the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the National Writers Union and 21 freelance writers. The suit claimed that major electronics databases such as Lexis-Nexis had violated the rights of thousands of freelancers. Their work had originally appeared in newspapers and magazines including The New York Times and Time magazine and had then been resold to the databases without the writers' permission.

The publishers had argued that the databases constituted a fair "revision" of the original print articles, but the United States Supreme Court ruled in June 2001 that the writers must be compensated for their digital rights. Further litigation and negotiation led to a settlement that provided payments to the freelancers of up to $1,500 per article. The specific amount depended on whether (and, if so, when) an infringed article had been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Google Books

Main article: Authors Guild v. Google

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, together with Herbert Mitgang, Betty Miles and Daniel Hoffman, filed a class action lawsuit against Google for its Book Search project. According to the Authors Guild, Google was committing copyright infringement by making digital copies of books that were still protected by copyright. (Google countered that their use was fair according to US copyright law.)

On October 28, 2008, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced that they had settled Authors Guild v. Google. Google agreed to a $125 million payout, $45 million of that to be paid to rightsholders whose books were scanned without permission. The Google Book Search Settlement Agreement allowed for legal protection for Google's scanning project, even though neither side changed its position about whether scanning books was fair use or copyright infringement. The Settlement also would have established a new regulatory organization, the Book Rights Registry, which would be responsible for allocating fees from Google to rightsholders.

The settlement between the Authors Guild and Google was rejected in 2011 by a judge at the district court level, who thought the settlement was not in the authors' best interest.

In October 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with Google citing fair use and that the scanned and posted excerpts works do not harm the authors by having parts of the books online.

In late December 2015, the Authors Guild filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court against Google in their long-standing battle over whether copyright laws allow for the search engine to scan and post excerpts from books for the Google Books service,

On October 16, 2015, the Second Circuit "rejected infringement claims from the Authors Guild and several individual writers, and found that the project provides a public service without violating intellectual property law." The Authors Guild petitioned the US Supreme Court,-- which in April 2016 declined to review the case, leaving the lower court's decision standing.

HathiTrust

Main article: Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust

From 2012 to 2015, the Authors Guild was involved in a legal case regarding HathiTrust, a similar service to Google Books allowing the searching of copyrighted scanned books and the displaying of snippets. As in the Google Books case, this was found to be fair use, and the case was dropped.

NEH

In May 2025, the guild filed a class action lawsuit against the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as well as Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) officials for terminating $175 million in committed grants from Congressional funds. According to the filed lawsuit, the mass termination was considered to be "not only utterly unexpected and unprecedented—it was flagrantly unlawful", as these actions directly violated the Administrative Procedure Act.

References

References

1. (2016-05-05). "General Counsel Job, the Authors Guild Inc.". [[Copyright Society of the U.S.A..
2. "Authors Guild".
3. [[Doreen Carvajal]]. (1998-04-27). "Authors Guild Tries to Block Proposed Merger of 2 Publishers". [[The New York Times]].
4. (2011-02-11). "The Ebook Royalty Mess". The Authors Guild.
5. (1912-12-17). "Authors' League Launched". The New York Times.
6. [https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/11-2-16%20Turow%20Testimony.pdf Testimony.pdf]
7. "A Week to Remember: Rex Stout".
8. Turow, Scott. (2013-04-08). "Opinion {{!}} The Slow Death of the American Author". The New York Times.
9. "Douglas Preston".
10. (1981-02-28). "Authors Guild Elects Two to Top Positions". The New York Times.
11. LeComte, Richard. (2009). "Writers Blocked: The Debate over Public Lending Right in the United States during the 1980s". Libraries & the Cultural Record.
12. "Authors Guild Council".
13. "Herbert Mitgang, Former Authors Guild and Authors League Fund President, Dies at 93".
14. Haberman, Clyde. (1997-06-07). "J. Anthony Lukas, 64, an Author, Is Dead". The New York Times.
15. "Profile - Mary Pope Osborne - The Authors Guild".
16. (1955-12-15). "AUTHORS GUILD ELECTS; William Shirer Is Chosen as President for Next Year". The New York Times.
17. "Robert Massie, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who popularized Russian history, dead at 90".
18. "Authors Guild Members Elect Maya Shanbhag Lang President".
19. "Authors Guild Members Elect Maya Shanbhag Lang President".
20. Masnick, Mike. (2019-01-31). "Authors Guild Attacks Libraries For Lending Digital Books".
21. [[Felicity Barringer]] and [[Ralph Blumenthal]]. (2001-03-19). "Big Media v. Freelancers: The Justices at the Digital Divide". The New York Times.
22. [[Linda Greenhouse]]. (2001-06-25). "Court Sides with Freelancers in Electronic Rights Case". The New York Times.
23. "Copyright Class Action Settlement Website". Copyright Class Action Settlement Website.
24. "FAQs".
25. Taglioli, Dan. (2011-03-23). "Federal judge rejects Google Books settlement". Legal News and Research Services, Inc.
26. Mullin, Joe. (2015-10-16). "Appeals court rules that Google book scanning is fair use". [[Ars Technica]].
27. Tsukayama, Hayley. (2015-12-31). "The Authors Guild files to take Google to the Supreme Court". [[The Washington Post]].
28. (October 16, 2015). "Google book-scanning project legal, says U.S. appeals court". Reuters.
29. "We trust that the Supreme Court will see fit to correct the Second Circuit’s reductive understanding of fair use....", Authors Guild, Oct. 16, 2015, [https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/2nd-circuit-leaves-authors-high-and-dry/ "2nd Circuit Leaves Authors High and Dry"] (Press Release).
30. (April 18, 2016). "Challenge to Google Books Is Declined by Supreme Court". The New York Times.
31. Albanese, Andrew. (8 January 2015). "Authors Guild Drops HathiTrust Case".
32. Francesca Aton. (May 13, 2025). "The Authors Guild Sues the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Government Efficiency". ART News.
33. Sam Skolnik. (May 13, 2025). "Authors Guild Sues Humanities Endowment Over Canceled Grants". Bloomberg Law News.