Following The Atlantic’s latest news item about the use of pirated books by META, owners of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp to train their AI tools, we’re sharing some advice from the Writers Guild on action writers in particular can take.
Thanks to The Atlantic, You can now search a snapshot of LibGen, the Pirated-Books database that Meta used here. This search tool is part of the magazine’s ongoing investigation into the Library Genesis data set.
A very quick search among the material included are works by many comic creators who will be familiar to fans, including Garth Ennis, Paul Gravett, Rik Hoskin, Rian Hughes, Pat Mills, Alan Moore, John Wagner – to name but a few.
Legal action is underway in the United States against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other AI companies for using pirated books to train their AI systems. The US-based Authors Guild states that if your book was used by Meta and you live in the US, you’re automatically included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action in Northern California without needing to take any immediate action.
That court is first deciding whether Meta broke copyright laws, with a decision expected this summer, before officially certifying everyone as a class. The Authors Guild has more information here.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported France’s leading publishing and authors’ associations have filed a lawsuit against Meta for allegedly using copyright-protected content on a massive scale without authorisation to train its artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
A group of Canadian media companies have filed a lawsuit against the AI giant for – you guessed it – copyright infringement (PDF Link), as has Asian News International – one of India’s largest news agencies.
In the UK, the Society of Authors, reporting on the news, commented: “According to The Atlantic, Meta argued that it could then use the US’s ‘fair use exception’ defence if it was challenged legally.
“It is not yet clear whether scraping from copyright works without permission is unlawful under the US fair use exception to copyright, but if that scraping is for commercial purposes (which what Meta is doing surely is) it cannot be fair use. Under the UK fair dealing exception to copyright, there is no question that scraping is unlawful without permission.
“As a matter of urgency, Meta needs to compensate the rightsholders of all the works it has been exploiting.
“This is yet more evidence of the catastrophic impact generative AI is having on our creative industries worldwide. From development through to output, creators’ rights are being ignored, and governments need to intervene to protects authors’ rights.”
The Writers Guild says it is aware that some of its members have found that their work has been used without their consent in LibGen. The WGGB have been campaigning and lobbying for increased protection for writers, to stop companies from taking their work without permission or payment.
You can find out what they’ve been doing and what you can do to help the campaign, on their campaign page.
The WGGB offers the following advice to British writers that, if you find your books in the LibGen database, or if you know that any AI system has detailed information about your work:
- Tell your publisher (and agent if you have one) – like authors, publishers are working to understand the scale of the issue. We are working with publishers and taking an industry-wide response. As part of the WGGB’s work in this area, they recently responded to the Government consultation on copyright and AI
- Send a letter to AI companies telling them that they do not have the right to use your books. Doing this via the Authors Guild website will help show solidarity with the legal action they are taking (the template letter on the Authors Guild website was originally in response to the Books3 database but you can still use it).
- If you are a member of WGGB, contact casework@writersguild.org.uk
We hope this is useful advice for the many creators out there who are, rightly, concerned by this.
This post was updated on Saturday 22nd March to add a link and comments from the Society of Authors
- About the Author
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes News
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