Meta & LibGen pirated millions of books for AI, including mine.

If you are an author, a publisher or even just a book fan, you may have heard about the controversy of digital piracy from no less than Meta a.k.a. Threads a.k.a. Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg seems to be happy to let robots all dig into pirated e-book copies of millions of books.

The whole process started with a scholarly aspect where professors and universities could share their papers. But The Atlantic recently exposed the fact that even fiction and nonfiction, memoir biography, books have all been called into the artificial intelligence brains that show them how to write in the style of other writers. I'm on that list.

This is just yet another evil tactic that Zuckerberg and the Meta tech bros have done and apparently gotten away with for now.

Many authors are talking about lawsuits and some suggest joining the Authors Guild. I was a member for several years and it was very helpful in several aspects of publishing. Sign up to protest here.

Unfortunately, with the class action lawsuits, one going back to 2023, there are so many authors involved that a payout would be minimal. But that's not exactly the point.

Update from Wired:

"Meta just lost a major fight in its ongoing legal battle with a group of authors suing the company for copyright infringement over how it trained its artificial intelligence models. Against the company’s wishes, a court unredacted information alleging that Meta used Library Genesis (LibGen), a notorious so-called shadow library of pirated books that originated in Russia, to help train its generative AI language models.

The case, Kadrey et al. v. Meta Platforms, was one of the earliest copyright lawsuits filed against a tech company over its AI training practices. Its outcome, along with those of dozens of similar cases working their way through courts in the United States, will determine whether technology companies can legally use creative works to train AI moving forward and could either entrench AI’s most powerful players or derail them."

You could also join the Copyright Alliance. I get their newsletters. They'll be probably doing some action or try to support authors in  some way.

Author Lawrence Nault shares an expansive write-up on the situation, and what you can do.

This is part of my own ongoing hunt for pirated versions of my books. Readers have downloaded a PDF or a zip file and casually go through the book without reviewing it or giving anything back to the authors they stole from.

Check out my post from 2020 about the strange YouTube account that had hundreds of audiobooks, including  one of mine, completely uploaded as videos. I still don't understand why this person or bot did it because there was no monetary value in doing it, but I single-handedly got it all shut down.

I'm certainly not gonna be able to take on the AI bots from Zuckerberg's Meta, I'm pretty disgusted to even post on Threads or Facebook these days. 

I will try to keep up on it, and if you're an author, join the fight.

Sinking the Pirates, Part 2: the Audiobook Edition

This is how I single-handedly shut down two thieving audiobook pirates on YouTube. Yes, thousands of illegally shared audiobooks are still on YouTube, converted to mp4s. If you're a fan of stolen property, piss off. If, however, you are an author, narrator, or a fan who respects artists, read on.

I've written about piracy before, of ebooks, back in 2013, after my fourth novel, Every Time I Think of You, had received a good amount of sales and publicity. It was also the time when I converted all four of my books published at the time, to ebooks for sale on various websites.

But I hadn't known, or forgotten, that hundreds, if not thousands, of audiobooks, converted to 'videos' with just the cover as a visual, are all over YouTube.

While looking up any posts about my seventh novel, Finding Tulsa, I checked for any mentions of the audiobook adaptations of Every Time I Think of You and its sequel, Message of Love, which I coproduced with talented voiceover actor Michael Wetherbee. Co-producing means we split the profits.

Imagine my surprise when I found a 'video' of Every Time... on YouTube! Wow, thanks. No, wait, it's not a review, but the complete seven-hour audiobook converted into a movie! WTF?

After saving link, making screencaps, and clearing the smoke blowing out of my ears, I reported it to YouTube. After only a few hours, it had been deleted. Then I found another copy on a different account with about 1500 other M/M (code word for 'gay' in the romance book world. Don't get started on that again). I reported that one, too, and noticed several others in the pirate's playlist/uploads had also been deleted. So at least a few other authors are aware of this problem.

Then I thought to contact a few other authors, but the list was too long. I posted a short account of the situation on a private writers' support Facebook group; no replies. Fine. You don't care, but I do.

So I went deep. I found contact emails for Amazon, Audible, ACX (the Audible program for creating audiobooks) and YouTube. Amazon's legal department replied within an hour. YouTube's autoreply was that they could only delete specific copyright claims from individuals.

Anyway, someone took this seriously, and the two YouTube accounts that had uploaded my audiobooks were completely deleted.

Gone. Wiped. Done. Gurl, bye.

In the words of Joan Crawford, "Don't fuck with me, fellas. This isn't my first time at the rodeo."

Get my money back
So, why did I go to all this trouble? Because I spent years writing these books, and worked for months with my narrators to complete these projects. And in the two weeks the pirated version of Every Time... was on YouTube, I noticed a sharp drop in sales of that title.

Further, if you count the 450 (one YouTube account) and 900 views on another, add about $5 to each view (our split royalty), that's $6,750. That is how much potential income we may have lost because of the scum that uploaded my one audiobook. 

Consider the multiple other authors, most of whom sell ten times more than mine, and it could be in the hundred-thousands. While it's impossible to track down the actual users, suing the creeps is still a hope.

The inane argument for condoning piracy is that it's 'good publicity,' it's 'good exposure.' That's baloney. I do marketing, I'm quite 'exposed,' literary-ily speaking (not in a Chris Evans way!).

For Finding Tulsa, I got a discount entry to the pricey NetGalley, where readers can get free copies of ebook editions, in exchange for reviews on GoodReads and/or Amazon.com. I also took up a request from Erie Gay News to give away audiobook access to my paired romance novels, and ebooks of Finding Tulsa.

The result was underwhelming in terms of reviews. Not only did I not get a single Thank You email from the winners, but perhaps two reviews resulted from the contest so far. The NetGalley deal got me six reviews so far.

This is all part of experiments I toy with for every book I publish, by myself or with small presses. In times like these, it's nearly impossible to get press, and being a member of the press, I know. At my job as an arts editor, I get more press release emails than ever before, with artists and producers in all genres desperate for attention. Some of them are offering free shows, readings and talks online. Others charge admission, an option they should have.

Writers who are indifferent to loss of sales from piracy must not be like most artists these days, who are unemployed or underemployed. 

But even if an author has, perhaps, a partner to support them, or they're so darn successful they don't care about losing a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a year from piracy, they should show support for fellow authors and narrators by sending complaints to the corporations, who sometimes respond and act swiftly.

So, here's the deal. Buy the damn audiobooks. Buy the books in whichever format you prefer. Buy them through Bookshop.org, and then post your reviews on (evil) Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes & Noble.

If you're a fan, but money is tight, ask for promo codes for any or each of my three audiobooks and I'll send them to you. In exchange, please post a review on Audible and/or Amazon.com. That's only fair.

Sinking the Pirates

One of the great things about having popular books is that they get read by a lot of people.

Not to get all Napster vs. Metallica again, but there comes a time when you have to stand up for yourself and your fellow artists when you see their and your stuff getting shared for free, without your consent.

And when it’s in the hundreds, we’re talking about rent money you’re losing.

So, when, in the midst of a title search, I added pdf and/or epub, mobi or ebook, I found web sites that do not sell my ebooks, but trade them, in the hundreds. If you're an author with a few ebooks out, you're probably getting bootlegged, too.