Society of Authors condemns ‘appalling’ use of pirated books in AI training

The American publication published a searchable database of more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. This data set, called Library Genesis or ‘LibGen' for short, is full of pirated material, and all of it has been used to develop AI systems by tech giant Meta.

According to the Atlantic, court documents show that staff at Meta discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully but instead chose to use stolen work because it was faster and cheaper and Meta argued that it could then use the US's ‘fair use exception' defence if it was challenged legally. The SoA released a statement that said: "Given that Meta Platforms, Inc, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has a market capitalisation of £1.147 trillion, this is appalling behaviour."

The organisation added: "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."