News

Washington, DC and Chicago, IL – The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced a partnership with the technology company Vermillio to document and facilitate the removal of infringing copies of literary works from online sites, including a rapidly rising flood of unauthorized generative AI copies that substantially reproduce, mimic, and perform protected audiobooks. With Vermillio’s TraceID™ as a new high standard for protecting publishing IP in the era of generative AI, the milestone marks a pivotal moment for publishers aligning across the industry to safeguard authors’ works.

As part of its services, Vermillio will deploy TraceID to address infringing copies accurately and swiftly, with the goal of reducing the scale, duration, and cost of the damage suffered by publishers and authors in as close to real time as possible. This includes copyright abuses on both generative AI platforms and distribution platforms, such as YouTube. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for infringers to upload infringing files to popular hosting sites immediately after a lawful publication hits the market, if not contemporaneously, and for these sites to benefit directly or indirectly from the traffic.

“As we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the nation, we are proud to note that the American publishing industry has been there every step of the way,” said Maria A. Pallante, AAP President and CEO. “But today we have a system of infringement on the internet that is shocking and getting worse, calling for fresh thinking, sophisticated tools, and strong alliances. We are pleased to work with Vermillio in the effort to forge next-generation solutions for publishers, authors, and platforms.” 

AAP has a long record of organizing legal actions against entities that engage in industrial scale copyright infringement, including most recently a March 2026 lawsuit against the notorious pirate site Anna's Archive that seeks to profit from its stockpile by selling it to AI developers. Vermillio offers essential, supplemental strategies that will help to proactively remove copyright abuses, while also asserting control over how copyrighted content is used in AI systems. 

“As part of their comprehensive playbook, publishers are moving strategically from defense to offense in the AI era,” said Dan Neely, Co-Founder & CEO of Vermillio. “We need independent solutions, not ones owned by the very platforms seeking to monetize work that isn’t theirs. The publishing industry’s adoption of TraceID sends a clear signal that consent, control, and compensation must be foundational to the future of AI.” 

As part of its mission to empower humanity in the era of AI, Vermillio continues to partner with leading talent, studios, record labels, and more – including Sony Music and high-profile individuals like Steve Harvey – to protect them from IP theft and give them the opportunity to monetize their image and likeness by securely licensing their data. Vermillio previously announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with talent agency WME to protect its clients’ IP and likeness. On the heels of being named to the annual TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, Vermillio officially extended TraceID to individuals worldwide for free.

About The Association of American Publishers (AAP)

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize the publication of creative and intellectual expression in support of a vibrant, imaginative, and informed democracy. As essential participants in local markets and the global economy, our members invest in and inspire the exchange of ideas, transforming the world we live in one word at a time. AAP members include large, small, independent, educational, and scholarly houses who collectively publish the world’s preeminent authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Newbery Medal, Man Booker Prize, Caldecott Medal and Nobel Prize. Learn more at publishers.org.

About Vermillio

Vermillio is an AI licensing and protection platform with a mission to empower humanity to thrive in the era of Generative AI. Providing cutting-edge protection and control, Vermillio’s TraceID^TM – recently made available for free – enables talent and IP holders to take advantage of the benefits of Generative AI in a safe and secure environment while understanding where their valuable data is being used. Named to the 2025 TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, Vermillio is building the guardrails for a Generative AI internet to empower talent, studios, record labels, and more to protect and monetize their content. Co-founded by Dan Neely, who also made TIME’s list of 100 most influential individuals in AI, Vermillio’s team is led by experienced technologists who bring significant collective experience building AI software and scaled transaction systems. Learn more at vermill.io.

Media Contacts:

John McKay | jmckay@publishers.org

Sarah Rothman | Vermillio@ledecompany.com

On May 19, 2026, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a default judgment in Apress Media, LLC et al. v. Anna’s Archive and Does 1- 10, a major infringement suit against the notorious pirate site Anna’s Archive. 

The judgement levies the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 for each of the 130 Works in the suit and orders all domain name registries and registrars to disable access to Anna’s Archive domain names and prevent their transfer to anyone other than the plaintiffs. The judgement also directs international providers to stop hosting the site.

The suit was filed on March 6^th of this year by thirteen publishing companies across the trade, educational, and professional and scientific publishing sectors, seeking permanent injunctive relief for the copying and distribution of millions of infringing files, both books and research journal articles. The works in the suit included an extraordinary scope of authorship, including bestselling titles and winners of the Nobel Prize, Man Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Newbery Medal, and Caldecott Medal.

Statement from Lui Simpson, Executive Vice President, Global Policy, Association of American Publishers

“We thank the court for this powerful decision, which sends a clear message that piracy will not be tolerated, and that pirate repositories like Anna’s Archive are the wrong place for big tech companies to acquire the high-quality content – including books and journals – that they need to develop powerful AI systems. Publishers will capitalize on this landmark decision in every way possible to disrupt and frustrate the piracy activities of this site. We believe that this action will further encourage the growth and development of the already robust legitimate market for licensing to AI systems, and speed the growth of a fair and open marketplace that will equally benefit both the tech and creative sectors.” 

The full default judgement can be found here.

About the Plaintiffs

Plaintiffs in Apress Media, LLC et al. v. Anna’s Archive and Does 1-10 include Apress Media LLC; Cengage Group; Elsevier Inc.; Hachette Book Group, Inc.; HarperCollins LLC; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; Bedford, Freeman, & Worth Publishing Group, LLC d/b/a Macmillan Learning; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC; McGraw Hill LLC; Pearson Education, Inc.; Penguin Random House LLC; Simon & Schuster, LLC; Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The plaintiffs, and other AAP member publishers, publish and curate the important, beloved, and award-winning works of many of the world’s most acclaimed authors as well as leading educators and experts in various educational, scholarly, and scientific fields. They are global leaders who partner with brilliant authors to deliver works that educate, inform, and inspire every type of reader. Moreover, these publishers are investing in artificial intelligence tools to improve business practices and reader experiences while maintaining emphasis on human authorship as the bedrock of creative and scholarly endeavor.

Today, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) released its StatShot report covering the first three months of 2026 reflecting reported revenue for Trade (Consumer Books), Education (combines PreK-12 Instructional Materials and Higher Education Course Materials), and Professional & Scholarly Publishing.

Total revenues across all categories for the first quarter of the year were up 0.9% as compared to the first three months of 2025, coming in at $2.9 billion.

Trade (Consumer Books) Revenues for First Quarter of 2026

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were up 0.2% during the first three months of the year, coming in at $2.2 billion. Within the Trade category, books for adults decreased 0.5% to $1.5 billion compared to the first three months of 2025 while books for children and young adults increased 2.6% to $560.7 million.

In terms of physical paper format revenues during the first quarter, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 6.5%, coming in at $760 million; Paperbacks were up 4.2%, with $796.2 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 75.6% to $5.2 million; and Special Bindings were up 21.6%, with $57.4 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were down 5% as compared to the first three months of 2025, for a total of $261 million. Digital Audio was up 15.9% for the first three months, coming in at $302.3 million in revenue. Physical Audio was down 11.4%, coming in at $1.3 million.

Trade (Consumer Books) Revenues by Month

January

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were down 4.5% in January, coming in at $754.8 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of January, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 11.3%, coming in at $263.1 million; Paperbacks were up 0.3%, with $272.3 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 68.5% to $3.6 million; and Special Bindings were down 3.4%, with $19.6 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were up 3.6% at $85.2 million for the month, and revenues from the Digital Audio format were up 5.9% for January, coming in at $94.1 million in revenue. Physical Audio revenues were down 32.1%, coming in at $500 thousand.

February

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were up 5.9% in February, coming in at $758.9 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of February, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were up 5%, coming in at $256.1 million; Paperbacks were up 7%, with $254.6 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 85.3% to $900 thousand; and Special Bindings were up 18%, with $18.2 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were down 13.1% at $90.9 million for the month, and revenues from the Digital Audio format were up 27.9% for February, coming in at $117.2 million in revenue. Physical Audio revenues were up 16.8%, coming in at $400 thousand.

March

Trade (Consumer Books) sales were down 0.4% in March, coming in at $722.4 million. In terms of physical paper format revenues during the month of March, in the Trade (Consumer Books) category, Hardback revenues were down 11.5%, coming in at $240.9 million; Paperbacks were up 5.7%, with $269.3 million in revenue; Mass Market was down 80.5% to $700 thousand; and Special Bindings were up 70.2%, with $19.6 million in revenue.

eBook revenues were down 5.9% at $82.8 million for the month, and revenues from the Digital Audio format were up 13.4% for March, coming in at $91 million in revenue. Physical Audio revenues were up 1.4%, coming in at $400 thousand.

Religious Presses Down 1.4% First Quarter of 2026

Religious press revenues were down 1.4% during the first three months of 2026, coming in at $219.6 million. Hardback revenues were down 4.3% to $130.2 million in revenue, Paperback revenues were up 1.3% to $42.4 million, eBook revenues were up 0.5% coming in at $13.3 million, and Digital Audio revenues were up 2% at $12.5 million.

Professional & Scholarly Publishing Up 5.7% for First Quarter of 2026

Professional & Scholarly Publishing, including business, medical, law, technical, scientific, and other books were up 5.7% during the first three months of the year, coming in at $104.1 million.

Education Materials (combines PreK-12 Instructional Materials and Higher Education Course Materials) Up 3.2% for First Quarter of 2026

During January 2026, revenues from Education Materials were $211.1 million, down 4.8% compared with January 2025. In February, Education Materials revenues were $185 million, up 13.9% from February 2025. For March, Education Materials revenues were $113.7 million, up 3.4% compared with March 2025. Year-to-date Education Materials revenues were $509.7 million, up 3.2% compared to the first three months of 2025.

AAP’s StatShot

AAP StatShot reports the monthly and yearly net revenue of publishing houses from U.S. sales to bookstores, wholesalers, direct to consumer, online retailers, and other channels. StatShot draws revenue data from approximately 1,416+ publishers, although participation may fluctuate slightly from report to report.

StatShot reports are designed to give ongoing revenue snapshots across publishing sectors using the best data currently available. The reports reflect participants’ most recent reported revenue for current and previous periods, enabling readers to compare revenue on both a month-to-month and year-to-year basis within a given StatShot report.

Monthly and yearly StatShot reports may not align completely across reporting periods, because: a) The pool of StatShot participants may fluctuate from report to report; and b) Like any business, it is common accounting practice for publishing houses to update and restate their previously reported revenue data. If, for example, a business learns that its revenues were greater in a given year than its reports first indicated, it will restate the revenues in subsequent reports to AAP, permitting AAP in turn to report information that is more accurate than previously reported.

Distinguished Authors Speak to America’s 250th Birthday and the 50th Anniversary of the 1976 Copyright Act

On May 7th, the Association of American Publishers hosted its 2026 annual meeting celebrating the 250^th birthday of the United States and the rich publishing tradition that has been central to the nation since its earliest days. Also front and center were the copyright principles that remain integral to incentivizing and protecting works of authorship and a vibrant modern industry today.

Leadership Remarks

In welcoming members and guests, President and CEO Maria A. Pallante said: “It is my pleasure to open this meeting, which we convene in the 250^th year of the United States, on Zoom, which they most definitely did not have in 1776, although they did have —and deeply valued— authors, publishers, and innovators.” Ms. Pallante highlighted major inflection points of the past year, including a historic $1.5 billion dollar settlement pending against Anthropic; a suit by 13 AAP member companies in March against the notorious pirate site Anna’s Archive; and the class action suit filed earlier in the week by Elsevier, Cengage, Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, and author Scott Turow, against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg for industrial scale infringement and a trail of market harm from its Llama AI models. Observing that fair use is an equitable doctrine, Ms. Pallante said there is nothing equitable about what Meta has done. Additionally, she said it was time to revisit legislation that would block pirate sites from doing business in the United States, consistent with the laws of more than 50 countries.

Board Chair Tyrrell Mahoney, President of Chronicle Books, called it an honor to serve during such a momentous year. “I have experienced first-hand that this industry is strongest when working together to foster an enduring love of books,” she said. “Publishers were central to the founding of the country and are critical to its future; and we continue to honor and sustain that tradition because we believe in every generation of author, educator, and reader. Few enterprises have achieved such longevity and collective inventiveness.” She spoke eloquently about how “publishers helped build this country” by to the present day, “developing books for all ages and interests, alongside educational and scholarly works that span the limitless areas of human discovery and imagination.” In recognizing AAP’s Board and members, Chair Mahoney noted, “If the last 250 years show us anything, it is that publishing endures because it adapts…that is the work we celebrate today, and the commitment we carry forward together.”

Keynote Addresses

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and historian Jon Meacham, who is also a scholar at Vanderbilt University, and distinguished copyright expert Paul Goldstein, a longtime professor at Stanford Law School, shared the keynoting honors before a virtual audience of nearly five hundred  publishing professionals of all levels who tuned in to watch, with the numbers even higher given that many houses organized group watch events for the historic meeting.

Mr. Meacham is the prolific, award-winning author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography; And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; and His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope. Speaking with his longtime editor Andy Ward, who is Executive Vice President and Publisher at Random House, Mr. Meacham drew on his latest book, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union (Random House). In reflecting on the invaluable role of publishers in our nation’s founding, Mr. Meacham commented that “there would be no constitutional republic without the published written word.” He noted that publishers made available the arguments of revolutionaries for “eyes and ears” so they could reach “minds and hearts and lead to action.” He also spoke to the fact that there was no mythical prior moment in history where everything was great, and the publishing community is especially well positioned to craft a better future through the power of speech.

Mr. Goldstein, one of the nation’s foremost authorities on both domestic and international intellectual property law, spoke in conversation with Maria Pallante about the legacy of the 1976 Copyright Act on its 50^th anniversary, including the people who drafted it, the courts that interpreted it, and the future legal landscape for copyright and AI. Mr. Goldstein is the author of twelve books including the influential five-volume legal treatise Goldstein on Copyright (Wolters Kluwer), and the acclaimed, general audience book Copyright’s Highway: From the Printing Press to the Cloud (Second Edition, Stanford University Press). His novel Havana Requiem: A Legal Thriller won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. He reminded attendees that “we had copyright in this country before we had a constitution” and that publishing was at its center. He predicted that in the battle over copyright and AI, the future would feature licensing, and that markets flooded by generative AI material are a growing, serious problem. In closing, Mr. Goldstein poignantly noted that “people want authenticity…and only a publisher can guarantee authenticity.”

Distinguished Public Service Award

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri received AAP’s Distinguished Public Service Award for his leadership on copyright policy and advocacy for authors and publishers against industrial scale copyright infringement by AI companies, which he has called “the largest intellectual property theft in American history.” The Award honors individuals who have made “outstanding contributions to the public good by advancing laws or policies that respect the value, creation, and publication of original works of authorship.”

A senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Hawley convened a watershed hearing in 2025 as Chair of the Crime and Counterterrorism Subcommittee, titled Too Big to Prosecute?: Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training. Brief video clips of the hearing, played during the annual meeting, are available here.

Sponsorships

AAP wishes to thank this year’s event sponsors Davis Wright Tremaine LLP; Industry Insights; and Total Compensation Solutions.

AAP | The Association of American Publishers represents the leading book, journal, and education publishers in the United States on matters of law and policy, advocating for outcomes that incentivize and protect works of authorship and the creative, intellectual, and financial investments that make them possible. As essential participants in local markets and the global economy, our members invest in and inspire the exchange of ideas, transforming the world we live in one word at a time. Find us online at www.publishers.org or on Twitter and Instagram at @AmericanPublish.

Today, five major publishing houses, Elsevier Inc.; Cengage Learning, Inc.; Hachette Book Group, Inc.; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC d/b/a Macmillan Publishers; and McGraw Hill LLC; and the best-selling author Scott Turow (the “Plaintiffs”); filed a putative class action lawsuit against Meta and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg (the “Defendants”), for willful infringement of millions of textual works, including literature, educational works, and scholarly articles, to develop Meta’s Llama large language models. The Plaintiffs bring claims on behalf of themselves and a proposed class of similarly situated copyright owners with similar claims against Meta and Zuckerberg.

This suit is a unified effort by companies across the academic, education, and trade publishing sectors seeking to hold Meta and Zuckerberg responsible for their broadly damaging, self-interested misconduct. As the complaint details, the Defendants willfully defied the constitutional principles and well-established contours of the Copyright Act, which serves the public by incentivizing, rewarding, and protecting creative and intellectual authorship.

At issue in this case is the protection of invaluable intellectual property that belongs to authors and publishers, including tremendous works of fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, memoirs, and poetry, as well as educational works and scholarly articles that span thousands of subject areas and research developments. This case is the first AI action brought by major publishing houses, who have their own story to tell about Meta’s flagrant violation of their rights. The Plaintiffs seek to protect the integrity and enforceability of the copyright laws on which publishing and the public depend.

The complaint describes how Defendants stole millions of copyrighted works, at Zuckerberg’s direction, and then built a multibillion-dollar empire on the backs of publishers and authors. It describes how Meta, at Zuckerberg’s behest, downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet, including content that is available only by subscription, and torrented countless protected books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites, such as LibGen and Anna’s Archive. The Plaintiffs explain that Meta’s decisions to infringe were deliberate and expedient. Meta chose to live by its motto of “move fast, and break things,” and now must be held accountable for what it broke, including the copyright laws.

As detailed in the complaint, Meta’s infringement harms the Plaintiffs and their markets for books and journal articles in multiple ways, including by undermining licensing markets and creating, in effect, “an infinite substitution machine.” It also alleges that Mark Zuckerberg, as Meta’s founder, chairman, CEO, and controlling shareholder, “is the guiding force behind Meta AI” and personally authorized and explicitly directed the infringement.

The case, captioned as Elsevier Inc. et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc. and Mark Zuckerberg, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The Plaintiffs seek monetary and injunctive relief against Defendants, including an order to destroy all infringing copies in defendants’ possession or control.

Key excerpts from the Complaint:

• In their effort to win the AI “arms race” and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Mark Zuckerberg followed their well-known motto: “move fast and break things.” They first illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from notorious pirate sites and downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet. They then copied those stolen fruits many times over to train Meta’s multi-billion-dollar generative AI system called Llama. In doing so, Defendants engaged in one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history.
• While AI technology may be new, the legal principles at the center of this case are not. Copyright law applies to AI companies and their leaders, including Defendants, with the same force as every other company that has complied with these laws for decades. If left unaddressed, Defendants will continue to infringe Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s rights, cause broad and lasting damage to the publishing industry and authors, and weaken the incentive to create that is at the core of the Copyright Act. These facts are not a referendum on AI technologies, but rather their greedy and irresponsible deployment.
• Meta deliberately targeted books and journal articles because they possess characteristics uniquely useful to large language model (“LLM”) development, including length, narrative coherence, structural consistency, and professionally edited expression. Unlike fragmented and low-quality internet text, books train models on how to generate outputs that sustain complex arguments, develop characters and themes over time, organize material across chapters, and generate long-form prose that mirrors the quality and cadence of human-authored works. Journal articles are uniquely useful to LLM development for many of the same reasons: they form a highly curated, professional, trusted, and authoritative system of the expression of scientific research, built by the collaboration of leading scholars and publishers over centuries.
• The risk of Llama competing with texts written by human authors for sales and attention is not theoretical—it’s happening. One user describes prompting a “100-chapter fictional book” from “a single prompt using Llama 3.1 70B!” and celebrates that Llama can “Write entire scientific papers” and “Write entire educational textbooks (will those still be needed?).” Another writer released three books in three months and accidentally left in the published text an AI prompt asking it to “rewrite” passages “to align more with” the work of a specific, published author identified by name. Yet another prolific writer, who markets herself as an international bestseller and Amazon Top 10 seller, published 171 books in the last seven years and left a similar AI-prompted snafu in a published book.
• The harm from Defendant’s infringement is not limited to competing outputs. It also occurs at the point of ingestion, where Defendants copied copyrighted works as inputs to build a valuable commercial system without consent or compensation. That conduct appropriates the economic value of the works, eliminates a legitimate licensing market, and allows Defendants to free-ride on investments they did not make. This is precisely the type of harm that copyright is designed to prevent.

The Plaintiffs are represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP; Debevoise & Plimpton LLP; and Keller Rohrback L.L.P. These firms will work on the case on behalf of the putative class and plan to seek appointment as class counsel to represent all class members.

Read the full complaint here.

About the Plaintiffs

The named plaintiffs are publishers Cengage Learning, Inc.; Elsevier Inc.; Hachette Book Group, Inc.; Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC d/b/a Macmillan Publishers; McGraw Hill LLC; and author Scott Turow.

The publisher plaintiffs publish and curate the important, beloved, and award-winning works of many of the world’s most acclaimed authors as well as leading educators and experts in various educational, scholarly, and scientific fields. They are global leaders who partner with brilliant authors to deliver works that educate, inform, and inspire every type of reader.

Author plaintiff Scott Turow is the author of 14 bestselling works of fiction, including Presumed Innocent, Innocent, Identical, Testimony, and The Last Trial. His books have been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, and have been adapted into movies and television projects.

About the AAP

The Association of American Publishers is the publishing industry’s law and policy advocate, with a particular focus on copyright and freedom of expression issues. In keeping with its nonprofit mission, AAP provides legal expertise and information to its members and serves as a trusted resource on important industry developments that affect publishers and authors. As this class action moves forward, AAP will help share legal and procedural information. The five publishing plaintiffs in this case are all members of the organization and if successful would represent a class that includes many if not all AAP members as well as other copyright owners.

Statements

Maria A. Pallante, President and CEO, AAP:

“The Association of American Publishers enthusiastically supports this important class action which abundantly illustrates that Meta made calculated decisions to enrich itself with literary properties that it did not create and does not own, when instead it could have partnered with publishers and authors. In this 250th year of the United States, let’s remember that creators and innovators have always worked together to achieve public progress, by inspiring, educating, informing, and empowering human beings. Meta’s mass-scale infringement isn’t public progress, and AI will never be properly realized if tech companies prioritize pirate sites over scholarship and imagination.”

Scott Turow, Author:
“All Americans should understand that the bold future promised by A.I., has been, to paraphrase the investigative writer Alex Reisner, created with stolen words. It is all the more shameful that these violations of the law were undertaken by one of the richest corporations in the world.”

Philip Moyer, President and CEO, McGraw Hill:
"We believe artificial intelligence has had and will increasingly have an important role in education and learning. But we also believe in protecting the foundational intellectual property rights of human authors around the globe who create original content. There is a vibrant market for AI companies to license intellectual property, and it is well established that AI models can be built and innovation can flourish without violating these rights.”

Jon Yaged, CEO, Macmillan Publishers:
"The Copyright Act has long been the foundation for safeguarding intellectual property. That protection is needed now more than ever. It is unconscionable that one of the world’s most valuable companies chose to steal millions of works from creators for its own self-enrichment. By joining this suit alongside industry peers and authors, Macmillan Publishers is sending a clear signal that we will fight to protect our authors’ works and the established trust we have with our readers.”

David Shelley, CEO, Hachette Book Group:
“Copyright is the bedrock of all creative industries. Meta, and Mark Zuckerberg, chose not to compensate rights holders for the use of their works and, instead, downloaded pirated works to train their models in contravention of the long-standing copyright principle that creators must be compensated for their works. Sanctioning such a wholesale theft would be devastating to all authors and to the entire publishing industry. So I'm proud that we'll be standing up in this fight next to our long-time author Scott Turow, who has been not only an enduring talent in our industry, but also a strong advocate for authors throughout his career.”

Youngsuk Chi, Chairman, Elsevier:

“We believe deeply in the promise of AI, and in the importance of building it on a foundation that respects authors, upholds trust, and sustains the global research and healthcare ecosystem. This action reflects a simple principle: that those who create and invest in the expression of knowledge should be supported by clear and consistent protections.”

Michael Hansen, CEO Cengage:

“Artificial intelligence presents an immense opportunity. We see its impact in education today, expanding access, improving outcomes and better connecting learning to work. We fully embrace the potential of AI to deliver on the long-awaited promise of personalized learning. Strong intellectual property protections are fundamental to the innovation that makes this progress possible. As AI evolves, it must be developed and deployed in ways that respect and uphold these protections. The path forward is about building and scaling AI technologies responsibly, ensuring that the value created is shared fairly and that the integrity of published content remains strong for audiences everywhere.”