With both Christmas and New years falling on the first, I was seriously tempted to skip this link post twice. The I remembered how much I liked doing it.

Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.

• Here’s the story behind that photo of a school board president getting sworn in on a stack of banned books.
• Apple is offering to pay news publishers $50 million to use their stories to train Apple’s AI.
• Do you remember the author who published a Lord of the Rings fanfic and then sued because Amazon’s prequel had details in common? He got his comeuppance.
• Here are the five dumbest copyright stories of 2023.
• Mickey Mouse entered the public domain with the start of the new year. Here’s what you can do with him.
• There’s a problem with the study that showed print reading has a greater impact on comprehension than digital reading: It compares reading print books with reading (for example) social media.