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reportedly set to begin as early as September 10, and can
still launch for works for which there is no permissions issue
(including, for example, Audible and Amazon–published
titles and public domain works). Titles from publishers who
were not part of the lawsuit could also be used in the pro-
gram, though it is possible that if a publisher contacts
Audible they may exclude their titles from the program until
the legal issue is resolved.
While a win for the plaintiff publishers in the short term,
it’s unclear what the stipulation means for the future—
the litigation may now move with less urgency, with the
exclusion of the publishers’ titles perhaps presenting a
path to a settlement or another agreement among the
parties.
James Grimmelmann, law professor at Cornell Tech and
Cornell Law School, said the stipulation sounded like part
of “a reasonable negotiated scheduling order” between the
parties. “I imagine that Amazon feels no urgency to launch
the feature across its entire catalogue,” he noted, “and is
perfectly happy to have the legal issue decided without
exposing itself to further risk.” —Andrew Albanesethe Complaint filed in this litigation) until the Court rules on
Publishers’ Motion for a Preliminary Injunction,” the filing
states, “or the motion is otherwise disposed of.”
In addition, a preliminary hearing that had been set for
September 5, has been moved to September 25. Audible
will file its response to the suit by September 13.
The Stipulation terms represent a minor victory for the
Association of American Publishers and a group of plaintiff
publishers (Chronicle Books, Hachette; HarperCollins;
Macmillan; Penguin Random House; Scholastic, and Simon
& Schuster) who had filed suit on August 23 in the Southern
District of New York to stop Audible from including their
works in the program’s upcoming launch without permis-
sion. In a statement at the time of the suit, AAP president
and CEO Maria A. Pallante accused Audible of “willfully
pushing a product that is unauthorized and interferes and
competes with established markets.”
In response, Audible has denied that the Captions pro-
gram, which scrolls a few words of an AI-generated tran-
scription alongside an audiobook’s narration in the Audible
app, violates any right or agreements. The program was
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