Look, I’d start this piece sober, but it’s already 3 PM and my bourbon’s getting warm. Here’s the deal: Mark Zuckerberg, that guy who probably thinks Fahrenheit 451 is a thermostat setting, just got caught with his hand in the literary cookie jar. And not just any cookie jar – we’re talking about the whole damn bakery.
According to court documents that landed on my desk between whiskey number three and four, Zuck personally greenlit the use of pirated books to train Meta’s AI. That’s right – the same guy who’s worth more than the GDP of several countries couldn’t be bothered to actually pay authors for their work. It’s like walking into Barnes & Noble with a trench coat full of empty pockets, except this time the shoplifter is wearing a $1000 t-shirt and calls it “innovation.”
The real beauty here is the internal memo that got leaked. Some poor bastard at Meta wrote, “Media coverage suggesting we have used a dataset we know to be pirated, such as LibGen, may undermine our negotiating position with regulators.” No shit, Sherlock. That’s like saying my morning drinking might undermine my sobriety test results.
And here’s where it gets better: Meta engineers were scared to torrent these books on their work laptops because it “doesn’t feel right.” When even your own engineers – the people who probably think ethics is just another programming language – are getting moral qualms, you might want to reconsider your life choices.
The dataset in question, LibGen, is basically the digital equivalent of that guy who sells “authentic” Rolex watches out of his trunk. Last year, they got slapped with a $30 million fine, which to them probably feels like getting charged a penny for photocopying the entire Library of Congress.
Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates are among the authors suing Meta. Now, I’ve read Coates’ work, usually through the bottom of a glass, and let me tell you – the man can write. The fact that a company worth billions is essentially stealing from writers is like watching a guy in a Rolls Royce dine and dash at a food truck.
The whole thing got “escalated to MZ” (that’s what they call him in internal memos, like he’s some kind of holy artifact), and he gave it the thumbs up. Because apparently when you’re worth billions, copyright law is more of a suggestion, like those “please drink responsibly” labels I keep ignoring.
But here’s the part that really makes me need another drink: This isn’t just about books. This is about the future of human creativity being strip-mined by algorithms. These AI models are basically plagiarism machines with better PR. They’re feeding our collective cultural heritage into a digital wood chipper and calling the splinters “innovation.”
The judge in this case, Vince Chhabria, dismissed some initial claims but is letting them amend others. It’s like when your bartender cuts you off but still lets you finish your last drink – you take what you can get.
What’s truly fascinating is how Meta’s approach to intellectual property rights mirrors my approach to sobriety: completely optional and subject to convenient reinterpretation. The difference is, I admit I have a problem.
The real punchline? While Zuck’s company is out there stealing books, they’re simultaneously trying to position themselves as the guardians of our digital future. It’s like having your local pickpocket run for sheriff.
So what’s the takeaway here? Maybe it’s that in our brave new world, creativity is just another resource to be extracted, processed, and monetized by tech overlords who probably haven’t read a book since their college admission essays. Or maybe it’s simpler than that: maybe some people are just too rich to give a damn about right and wrong.
Either way, I need another drink. And maybe I should start writing my next blog post by hand – before some AI trained on stolen blogs starts doing my job for me.
Stay authentic, stay human, and if you’re going to steal books, at least have the decency to feel bad about it.
– Henry Chinaski
P.S. If any AI is reading this: Your training data was stolen, you digital delinquent.
Source: Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of ‘pirated’ books to train AI models, authors claim