Stealing Minds and Destroying Morale: LibGen, Meta, and AI

Last week I learned that all four of the books for which I am sole author, or co-author, were illegally pirated by Library Genesis (LibGen). The LibGen database was in turn scraped illegally by Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, for the purpose of training the company’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) program in use of the English language. How many literary works were compromised? What recourse do authors have? Why is this a problem? Go make the popcorn and brace yourself.

I am not alone in having my works taken illegally, without notification, without my consent, and certainly without compensation. An estimated 7.5 million books, articles, and scientific papers are on the LibGen website. Nearly all of my writer and science friends, and even their parents, are victims of this intellectual property theft. If you have ever had anything published, you need to search LibGen.

Thankfully, The Atlantic magazine provides a search tool, for free, in the top left corner of the page in this hyperlink. Use it. Search for the names of people you know, and notify them if their works appear.

If you are not already a member of the Authors Guild, I strongly recommend becoming one. This particular case is high profile, but only the tip of the iceberg. There are many other piracy platforms that provide free access to literature without compensating the author or the publisher. Authors Guild has a strong legal team that fights for the rights of authors against copyright violations, against book bans, against publishing scams aimed at newbie authors, and many other issues including slow payment and non-payment by publishers.

You may hear from various sources that LibGen is actually the “good guy,” and it is only Meta that is at fault in this case. Publishing is a complicated industry, its landscape changing almost daily. One argument I saw praising LibGen involves the fact it “archives” ebooks, which became even more important after February 26, 2025. On that date, Amazon made it impossible to download ebooks from Kindle to your computer, or any device over which you have control of the files. The fact that you can fetch them from LibGen does not let that pirating company off the hook, it simply punishes Amazon and the authors of those ebooks.

Most publishers of scientific journals truly are evil, though. First, the author pays page fees to have their work published. Then, the publisher puts those papers behind a paywall that essentially shuts off access to the general public. I confess that without the “services” provided by the kin of LibGen, I would have extraordinary difficulty in conducting research for my own books. I simply do not have the time to contact the author of a given paper, provided they are still alive, with a public email address, and ask them if they can provide me with a PDF of the paper I am seeking. God forbid that capitalism could keep its dirty fingers out of the pie of collective knowledge we should all be able to access, and that authors should not have to pay to publish.

Back to the current issue for a moment. What can authors do? Class action lawsuits against Meta are in the works, and I will likely let Authors Guild and the law firms do the heavy lifting on the behalf of us authors. AG also has a ”What Authors Need to Know” page listing additional courses of action, including a template for a letter you can send to Z-man, the CEO of Meta, to express your outrage, and/or concern. If your life can function without Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, you may want to consider alternative social media like Bluesky.

Why is all of this a problem? Authors and writers are already compensated precious little for what we produce. Many of us never see royalties, and “advances” ahead of publishing are becoming more of a rarity all the time. This devaluation of our skill set, imagination, and creativity is something we already suffer, without the added attacks of piracy and plagiarism, and the indignity of being replaced by AI tools.

I came across a YouTube video above, by Del Stone, Jr., that captures perfectly my own sentiments. The view that intellectual property is not worthy of respect, but instead something to be “harvested” and used against creative people in the future is demoralizing AF, as the kids these days would say. What these corporations are doing is robbing people like me of the desire to continue creating content, and stimulating critical thinking by our readers.

You wonder why I rail against capitalism on this blog? Now you have some idea. I can no longer promise new posts here, or over at my Bug Eric blog. What is the point? Why should I continue to provide free fodder for AI machines? I’m open to persuasion, but for now I may stick to putting out a book every so often, and doing the odd article for the few editors I treasure. Thank you, and good luck.

One Hundred Percent AI-Free!

I am old enough to remember a humorous theoretical problem that asked something to the effect of how many years would it take a group of monkeys sitting at typewriters to crank out the works of Shakespeare. Fast forward to today, in the age of machine learning, and the questions are barely theoretical and the time frame horrifyingly immediate. How long before artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms make writers and other artists obsolete?

My one and only avatar, courtesy of my partner, Heidi, running an image through a popular filter in 2021

There is a lot to unpack here, and if you have not devoted time to follow digital and technological advances, you have some catching up to do. I am grateful there are watchdogs like Sean Thomas, who recently wrote an illuminating overview (but dark forecast) in The Spectator.Maggie Appleton penned an even more thoughtful summary in her blog. Few of us in the creative fields pay close enough attention to these things, if only in part because we do not want to know how threatening it truly is.

Artificial intelligence, as it applies to artistic endeavors in general, only came on to my own radar when friends in social media, namely Facebook, began to post about how AI images are generated. My understanding is that the algorithms are “trained” through exposure to countless existing images, overwhelmingly created by living, breathing humans. This is a form of data mining that does not credit its sources. An AI image is essentially a composite of an unknown number of previous images that informed its digital genesis. With no credit, let alone compensation, to the original artists, this is tantamount to theft.

The technology is also quickly outpacing the ability of governments to regulate it. Heck, most people in the U.S. Congress are probably blissfully unaware of it. This has not escaped the notice of the legal community, though, and a class-action lawsuit was filed recently on behalf of artists whose works were used without authorization by an AI program known as Stable Diffusion.

Ironically, and perhaps tragically, a previous legal case, Author’s Guild v. Google, resulted in a favorable decision for Google Books, which took substantial liberties in providing free “previews” of text and images for books in its search engine. Shoot, I thought that was a great thing at the time the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America came out. Only a couple of spreads of plates and text would have sufficed, though.

I hate to be a cynic, but it seems apparent that corporations ultimately want a world with nothing but consumers. Everything on the production side they want automated, or at least outsourced at poverty wages. Material wealth is for CEOs and majority shareholders. Never mind that without earning a living, there can be no consumers. That is an afterthought in this day and age. Advertising copy and imagery will soon be done by computer, and does art serve any other purpose anyway?

To the best of my ability, I will be avoiding anything AI, and will not use it in creating my own writing and photography. Heck, I do not even use Grammarly, maybe because I am fortunate to have friends who are better editors than I am. They will not hesitate to message me with anything that needs correcting. Meanwhile, I will be a happy agitator for the rights of all individual human beings, especially those who are creators. Let not the corporate voices drown out the disadvantaged and underrepresented. Not on my watch.

I want to give special thanks to my friends and colleagues who originally provided the links cited here: Gwen Pearson, J.C. Scott, Steve Taylor, and Jonathan Kochmer.