HILLEL ITALIE , AP; Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege
"The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg and Meta “followed their well-known motto ‘move fast and break things’” by illegally drawing upon a massive trove of books and journal articles for Llama."
Chloe Veltman, NPR ; Scott Turow's latest real-life legal thriller: Suing Meta for copyright infringement
""All Americans should understand that the bold future promised by A.I., has been, to paraphrase the investigative writer Alex Reisner, created with stolen words," said Turow in a statement to NPR. "It is all the more shameful that these violations of the law were undertaken by one of the richest corporations in the world."
According to the complaint, Meta "briefly considered licensing deals with major publishers" but changed its strategy in April 2023. The question of whether to license or pirate moving forward was "escalated" to Zuckerberg, after which, the complaint alleges, Meta's business development team received verbal instructions to stop licensing efforts. "If we license once [sic] single book, we won't be able to lean into the fair use strategy," a Meta employee is quoted as saying in the complaint.
"It's the most flagrant copyright breach in history," said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger in a statement to NPR. "And these voracious tech companies need to be held accountable.""
Maegan Vazquez, The Washington Post; Publishers sue Meta, claiming it violated copyrights in training AI with their books
"The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest in a string of lawsuits brought by publishers, authors, artists, photographers and news outlets aimed at forcing tech companies to compensate them for using their works to train their AI models. The plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit that the AI model’s ability to quickly produce knockoffs and summaries of copyrighted books threatens the livelihoods of publishers and authors.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that the company would “fight this lawsuit aggressively.”
“AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use,” the spokesperson said.
The publishers’ complaint states Meta distributed millions of copyrighted works without authorization and without compensating authors or publishers, claiming that Zuckerberg “personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.” They also claim that Meta removed copyright notices and copyright management information from the works used to train the AI model, known as Llama."
Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; Even More Authors, Publishers Sue Meta Over Copyright in AI Training: What's Different Now
Meta won a previous AI lawsuit brought by authors. Publishers are taking a different route this time.
"New lawsuit, same questions
Copyright is one of the most contentious legal issues around AI. Tech companies like Meta need high-quality, human-created data to build and refine their AI models. Nearly all of this material is protected by copyright. That means tech companies have to enter into licensing agreements or defend their use of the content as fair use under a provision of copyright law.
Meta and Anthropic have both won previous cases in lawsuits brought by authors, successfully defending their fair use. Anthropic agreed to settle some piracy claims with authors for $1.5 billion, or about $3,000 per pirated work. Both judges warned in their decisions that this won't be the result in every lawsuit...
One of the biggest considerations in these cases is whether tech companies' use of copyrighted books will make it harder for human authors to sell their work or otherwise affect the marketplace."
