Class Action Accuses Meta of Pirating Books to Train AI
Skip to comments
Five publishers and one author have filed lawsuit against Meta for deliberately pirating millions of books to train its AI model Llama. While symbolic, the suit also names Mark Zuckerberg for “personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.” The publishers include: Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage, and novelist Scott Turow.
The suit, filed in Southern District of New York, some of the allegations include:
- Meta illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from pirate sites and mass scraping of content from the internet.
- Meta knowingly violated copyright law to reproduce and distribute millions of copyrighted works without permission without compensating copyright authors and publishers.
- Meta removed copyright management information (CMI) “conceal its training sources and facilitate their unauthorized use.”
- Meta discussed with licensing options with publishers, but at Zuckerberg’s direction Meta abandoned negotiations and used piracy instead depriving creators of compensation.
The suit mentions many authors whose work was allegedly pirated, including The Wild Robot writer and illustrator Peter Brown. Because this suit is a proposed class-action lawsuit, any author with a ISBN, DOI, or ISSN, has claim on relief granted by the court either by the plaintiffs winning in court or party mediation. Based on the U.S. Copyright Act, Meta could be subject to $150,000 per work based on willful infringement, which this case alleges. Additionally, $2,500-$25,000 could be added for each case where Meta was found to have stripped CMI from the pirated works.
You can read the full complaint The Association of American Publishers website.
Comments 2