Icelandic Authors Among Victims In Massive Meta Theft

The chair of the Writers’ Union of Iceland says works by Icelandic authors are among those Meta downloaded from a pirate site to train its AI. The union is now considering the next steps in cooperation with European writers’ organisations, reports Vísir.

“It’s been two weeks since The Atlantic published a report revealing that in a lawsuit filed by screenwriters against Meta, communications and documents came to light showing that Meta, instead of negotiating for literary texts to train its AI, went to a torrent site and downloaded the whole lot,” said Margrét Tryggvadóttir, chair of the Writers’ Union of Iceland on the radio show Sprengisandur.

“On one hand, they stole around eight million books and 81 million academic articles… and they fed copyrighted material into the massive language model they’re using to teach it language and how language works,” she said.

The site used by Meta is called LibGen, a repository of illegally collected texts, similar to Pirate Bay and other piracy websites.

Margrét said that fortunately, Icelanders have not been heavily involved in such book piracy, possibly due to the country’s slow progress in adopting e-books.

“These documents clearly show that Meta acted with deliberate intent,” said Margrét. She explained that top executives approved the actions to save time and money rather than acquire books legally. “It seems completely unethical,” she added.

“We see that works by Icelandic authors are definitely included — especially our most popular and celebrated writers whose works have been translated into other languages. There may not be many books in Icelandic, but there’s a lot in languages like English and French,” she said.

The union is preparing a response

Margrét says the Writers’ Union is now working with European authors’ organisations to explore possible responses on the European level.

The union has asked Icelandic authors to check the database compiled by The Atlantic and to take screenshots if they find their work there. The union is collecting those records.

“What complicates things is that this is a global issue, and copyright law is very different in Europe compared to the United States,” she said.

“You’re completely unprotected against such a massive force. The Writers’ Union of Iceland doesn’t have the capacity to take legal action against one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies. We somehow have to move forward alongside others,” said Margrét.

This news story comes days after it was revealed that Storytel has been translating books with AI. “Translators are members of the Writers’ Union, and now they’re getting less work — and the work they do get is far more tedious because they’re mainly hired to proofread,” Margrét said.