Ron Does Stuff

A labor dispute against the University of the Philippines press, AI and publishing, and did you know Crunchyroll has a publishing arm? All that in this week’s edition.

University of the Philippines Press called out for unjust payment of services

In a Facebook post that went live on July 18 but was written on June 10, digital creator Rogene A. Gonzales called out the University of the Philippines (UP) Press for allegedly only compensating him with just P5,000 for working on ng Mahaba’t Kagyat na Buhay ng Indie Sinema from January to June 2023.

Rogene also revealed that he was also asked to rush-edit Observing the Filipino Family without being given extra pay for the extra work. He also revealed that he had been a contract of service (COS) worker for six years at the publishing house, without getting regularized or “even an upgrade to a UP Contractual status, which would have at least provided some benefits.” He then ended the post by declaring that he had raised a labor dispute against the UP Institute of Creative Writing and the UP Press.

Of course, the post garnered a lot of attention. As of this writing, it’s received 1,000 reactions and has been shared more than 400 times. The UP Press has also responded to it, sorta.

According to a post on the UP Press Facebook page, the publishing house would have preferred to have a face-to-face discussion with the persons involved, but now that the whole mess is on social media, they have to address it on social media. The publishing house shares that there was an attempt to have a discussion before that didn’t push through, and that there are relevant documents available to clear up any misunderstandings. UP Press also wrote that they are working to make the discussion happen.

Class action suit against Anthropic can proceed

Publishers Weekly reports that U.S. District Judge William Alsup has ruled that “three writers suing the AI company Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent all other authors whose books the AI company allegedly pirated to train its AI model as part of a class action lawsuit.”

Alsup is the same judge that ruled in June that what Anthropic’s AI is doing is “transformative enough” but believes that Anthropic using pirated books to train their model is a violation of copyright law.

Check out the Publishers Weekly article for more details on the ruling.

U.S. Senate conducts hearing on AI training

Here’s another report from Publishers Weekly: it looks like the US Senate is siding with the authors when it comes to the issue of AI and large language models (LLM).

In a hearing titled “Too Big to Prosecute? Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training”, Republican Josh Hawley had this to say:

“For all of the talk about artificial intelligence and innovation and the future that comes out of Silicon Valley, here’s the truth that nobody wants to admit: AI companies are training their models on stolen material.”

Present at the hearing were five witnesses, four of whom argued that what LLMs do to copyrighted work is not fair use. The fifth witness, Santa Clara University School of Law professor Edward Lee, told the Senate that it would be better to wait until the lawsuits against Anthropic and Meta are resolved before the Senate intervenes. Check out more details and quotes in the Publishers Weekly story.

HarperCollins acquires Crunchyroll Publishing in France and Germany

I straight up did not know that Crunchyroll also published manga, but apparently they do! Publishers Weekly reports that HarperCollins has bought the France and Germany–based manga publishing operations of the site I knew primarily as where to stream anime legally. Leadership of Crunchyroll France and Germany will remain in place, while an unspecified number of workers will join HarperCollins.