Professors and Publishers File Amicus Briefs Supporting Authors in Meta AI Copyright Lawsuit
A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on e-books without permission.
Background
The lawsuit, Kadrey v. Meta, was filed by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who allege that Meta violated their intellectual property rights by using their e-books to train models, and that the company removed the copyright information from those e-books to hide the alleged infringement.
Amicus Brief
The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a breathtaking request for greater legal privileges than courts have ever granted human authors.”
“The use of copyrighted works to train generative models is not ‘transformative,’ because using works for that purpose is not relevantly different from using them to educate human authors, which is a principal original purpose of all of [authors’] works,” reads the brief. “That training use is also not ‘transformative’ because its purpose is to enable the creation of works that compete with the copied works in the same markets – a purpose that, when pursued by a for-profit company like Meta, also makes the use undeniably ‘commercial.’”
Support from Publishers and Copyright Alliance
The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, the global trade association for academic and professional publishers, also submitted an amicus brief in support of the authors on Friday. So did the Copyright Alliance, a nonprofit representing artistic creators across a broad range of copyright disciplines, and the Association of American Publishers.
Meta’s Response
Hours after this piece was published, a Meta spokesperson pointed TechCrunch to amicus briefs filed by a smaller group of law professors and the Electronic Frontier Foundation last week supporting the tech giant’s legal position.
Court Ruling
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria allowed the case to move forward, although he dismissed part of it. In his ruling, Chhabria wrote that the allegation of copyright infringement is “obviously a concrete injury sufficient for standing” and that the authors have also “adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed CMI [copyright management information] to conceal copyright infringement.”
AI Copyright Lawsuits
The courts are weighing a number of AI copyright lawsuits at the moment, including The New York Times’ suit against OpenAI.
Conclusion
The amicus briefs filed by professors, publishers, and the Copyright Alliance demonstrate a strong opposition to Meta’s fair use defense, which could have significant implications for the future of AI-generated content and intellectual property rights. The case will continue to unfold in the coming months, but the outcome could have far-reaching consequences for creators and consumers alike.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the lawsuit about?
A: The lawsuit, Kadrey v. Meta, alleges that Meta used copyrighted e-books to train its AI models without permission, and removed the copyright information to hide the infringement.
Q: Who is supporting the authors in the lawsuit?
A: A group of professors specializing in copyright law, the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers, the Copyright Alliance, and the Association of American Publishers have filed amicus briefs in support of the authors.
Q: What is Meta’s defense?
A: Meta claims that its use of copyrighted works for training its AI models is fair use, and that the authors lack standing to sue.
Q: What is the outcome of the lawsuit so far?
A: U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria has allowed the case to move forward, although he dismissed part of it, and ruled that the authors have adequately alleged that Meta intentionally removed copyright information to conceal infringement.
