The AI Lawsuit
Maybe this has been in the media. If so, I haven’t seen it, although the Authors Guild doesn’t want it kept secret. But the people who own the media probably do because they aren’t covering it, although they cover every other aspect of AI.
I found out about it in a piece of spam, and of course I didn’t add the link; where the link was is underlined. The spam read,
Dear Steve,
We're reaching out because our cross-reference of three shadow library indexes (LibGen, Z-Library, Books3) against U.S. Copyright Office records identified these pirated titles as likely yours:
Mars, Ho!
AI companies may have illegally downloaded millions of copyrighted works from pirated libraries, building trillions of dollars in value on models trained on authors' pirated books. ClaimsHero has partnered with Freedman Normand Friedland and Stris & Maher to file copyright claims against major AI companies, and for works registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, authors may seek statutory damages for willful infringement of up to $150,000 per work, per defendant.
We work on contingency: we cover all upfront costs and only get paid if you do. We've already filed for Pulitzer Prize winner John Carreyrou and Chicken Soup for the Soul, with claims in preparation for more than 1,000 other authors and publishers.
Verifying your works takes about 3 minutes: Verify My Works
If you have any questions, just reply to this email.
“These one pirated titles?” Certainly a cheaply designed database form letter sent by an unsophisticated or bored IT guy.
Now, I get Phishbait almost daily at my mcgrewbooks address and have been on the internet since 1997 when I was finally able to get on without a credit card. I’m used to spam and phishing. Some are professionally done, but hilarious to me, like the Wells Fargo email about a credit card, when the real thieves at that bank, not the thieves phishing, stole my house in 2009 and there’s no way in hell they’ll ever get my business again. Illinois’ Attorney General sued them over it and I got $1700 out of it.
The point is, I’m not about to click a link in an email from a stranger; I’m not stupid (I later found that the link for “verify my works” opted you in to their scam). So I googled the firm, thinking the firm was probably real but the email almost certainly fake.
The rabbit hole Google led me down was deep, indeed. The law firm was real, and the spam was real. But the whole thing was crooked; I suspect that they are secretly being paid by the AI billionaires.
The beginning of the story was a class action lawsuit by the Authors Guild against most of the AI owners, who had been using copyrighted books to train their AI despite many (most?) like me who are vehemently against their practices. If they want me to program their damned computers they can pay me for it, like the Illinois government did for my work for decades.
The AI “people” (if I may call them that, if not then “criminals” will do) dug into the underworld of the Dork Web, that the press always misspells, for “pirate” databases of copyrighted books, conspiratorially paying their partner criminals for the stolen work. Yes, breaking into someone else’s computer is wrong, and taking their data is stealing.
So apparently the Arizona lawyers who call themselves “Claims Hero,” are trying to bugger up the Authors Guild lawsuit by luring away possible claimants.
My latest book, Journey to Madness, is partly about this. In it, all art, music, and literature are produced by AI, and four human musicians change it. I see a future where robots do all the work while the rest of us sing and play guitar and write books and paint and sculpt and learn and invent.
The Epstein Class sees an oligarchy where there are lords, ladies, serfs, peons, and little people who must follow their rules, while they themselves have no rules to follow, being above all rules. I hate that kind of SF, but, er, sometimes I write it.
Declaration of Independunce
Canceling Paramount
Errors Science Fiction Writers Make
Our Fascist Media’s Lies
The Weather
EV Myths
Why don’t these exist?
The Culture War
The Federal Extortion
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