2 days Ago
The US current affairs magazine, The Atlantic, has had quite a week. You’ll have heard that their editor in chief was erroneously added to a group chat with senior American government officials where plans to conduct airstrikes on Yemen's Houthis were discussed, but that’s not all. On 20th March, they published a searchable database of over 7.
5 million books and 81 million research papers held on the copyright-pirate site, ‘LibGen’ which tech giant Meta has used to develop its Artificial Intelligence systems. AI is the future and, as with any form of emerging technology it must develop and, in this case, ‘learn.’ In essence, this means one of the planet’s wealthiest conglomerates has taken the unilateral decision to consciously ignore the intellectual property right of authors and publishers across the globe to effectively steal their work for commercial purposes.
Each book and paper represents hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of toil and creativity by people who work in one of the toughest and most competitive industries. What they produce should be properly protected by copyright laws to safeguard it against unauthorised use. Just because it’s words on paper doesn’t make it in any less need of protection than material goods or music.
It’s not public property there for the taking, especially not by mega-rich companies who seem to think the law is for others. I, and every author I know, has all their books on LibGen’s list of pirated works and are thus the victim of copyright theft. As this seemed to have started last year, there is probably little we can do about it, and don’t think for a second that this is an accident or oversight.
According to The Atlantic, Meta employees spoke with multiple companies about licensing books and research papers, but ‘they weren’t thrilled with their options.’ They report one research scientist writing on a company chat, ‘This seems unreasonably expensive,’ They cite a senior manager adding that this would be an ‘incredibly slow’ process: A director of engineering is said to have noted that, ‘..
. people don’t realize that if we license one single book, we won’t be able to lean into fair use strategy,’ a reference to a possible US legal defence for using copyrighted books to train AI. The UK Society of Authors have said, ‘it is not yet clear whether scraping from copyright works without permission is unlawful under the US fair use exception 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.’ And this isn’t a few rogue employees playing fast and loose with the law. According to The Atlantic and court records, Mark Zuckerberg himself gave the go ahead to download and use the data set; a decision taken at the highest level, with all the contrary arguments and law available and aired, to ‘pirate and be damned’ (my words, not his.
) In December, Hove MP and Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Peter Kyle, launched a consultation to legalise the bulk harvesting of creative product, seemingly pandering to Big-Tech’s desire to train AI in the UK. Patronisingly, the consultation is peppered with a desire to recognise and reward human creativity, whilst the preferred option does the polar opposite. The Government, who say they are committed to reducing bureaucracy and waste, recommend an ‘opt out’ where individual rights holders (authors and publishers who in the main are individuals or small businesses) shoulder the administrative burden of actively reserving their rights, rather than ensuring the affluent beneficiaries invest in their own developments.
This Thursday lunchtime, members of The Society of Authors are protesting outside Meta offices in Central London, delivering an open letter voicing their objection to the empire’s use of pirated material and their disdain of copyright laws. This will be backed up on the same day by authors flooding Meta’s social media channels with their vehement opposition to Zuckerberg’s company’s contempt for creatives. The UK copyright laws work and are there to protect writers and the like, yet this government, specifically one of the city’s MPs, would rather treat the fruits of their labour as a free commodity for all to peck at, punishing rather than rewarding human creativity as it claims.
Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Brighton-based Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which is now available in paperback..
