Over 150 members of The Society of Authors gathered outside Meta’s Kings Cross office yesterday following allegations of the mass theft of authors' work.

What are the allegations against Meta?

The Atlantic recently revealed Meta’s use of the dataset Library Genesis ‘LibGen’ to train its AI model Llama 3. US Court documents show that Meta used one of the most notorious online shadow libraries of pirated works (including over 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers) as a way to quickly and cheaply access and exploit ‘high-quality LLM training data’. 

Authors and publishing creatives from across the UK, including multi-million selling household names Tracy Chevalier, Kate Mosse and Daljit Nagra, are demanding immediate answers from Meta bosses, branding them the #MetaBookThieves.  

Who is The Society of Authors?

With over 12,000 members, the Society of Authors is a UK trade union for writers, illustrators, and literary translators, founded in 1884, that advocates for the rights and interests of its members.

Chair of the Society of Authors’ Management Committee, Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, who is the bestselling crime writer Sam Blake said:

“Stealing our books is illegal, shocking, and utterly devastating for writers. A book can take a year or longer to write. Meta has stolen books so that their AI can reproduce creative content, potentially putting these same authors out of business. If Meta had broken into our houses and stolen our laptops we’d call the police – they can’t help us, so we’re calling on the government, our elected representatives, to help with this utterly reprehensible theft.”

The SoA Protest at Meta's HQ

Authors at the protest called for an inquiry into Meta, as well as calling for legal action against the tech giant.

The event’s organiser, author AJ West, a member of the Society of Authors, planned to deliver a letter of complaint to the Meta offices. Unfortunately for the protesters, the doors to the offices were locked and they were unable to deliver the letter in person.

West said despite being unafraid of “stealing” 7.5 million books, Meta was “afraid to accept one letter”. Chants of “open the doors” and “take the letter Meta” ensued, as they attempted to give the letter to employees entering the building.

"I was horrified to see that my novels were on the LibGen database and I’m disgusted by the Government’s silence on the matter. To have my beautiful books ripped off like this without my permission and without a penny of compensation then fed to the AI monster feels like I’ve been mugged. Authors have been too friendly for too long. Enough polite, it’s time to fight!"

Placards at the protest included “Get the Zuck off our books” and “I’d write a better sign but you’d just steal it”. The protesters eventually decided to post the letter to the offices instead.

Writer Nick Coveney said: “It displays cowardice, but it doesn’t surprise me. Big tech often operates like this."

West said: “Authors are not known for their direct action. What we’ve done today is a really important starting point to show that we can gather and make our voices heard. It is untenable that Prime Minister Starmer, Lisa Nandy and the government at large hasn’t acknowledged this wide-sweeping theft of protected IP. We need a dialogue with them, we need a dialogue with Meta, and then we need some form of compensation.

“They need to have an internal inquiry and then what we need is to take legal action...If we need a specific law on it then the government needs to act and introduce legislation immediately.”

In the US, Meta has appealed to the courts for a similar case against them to be dropped, citing the “fair use” defence, however, interviews conducted by The Bookseller suggested that the defence does not apply in the UK the same way that it does in the US.

With claims for compensation, cries to have the opportunity to request the removal of IP from Meta's data, authors are keen for clear guidelines, and laws in place to prevent this from happening again and again. With no AI training clauses appearing in contracts with publishers, we need to do more to protect our creative industries.

SoA Meta Protest © Adrian Pope

@Soc_of_Authors