“Uncovering the Secret: Are Your Beloved Books Fueling the Next Generation of AI?”
“LibGen hosts more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers, making it one of the largest online libraries of pirated work in the world.” The federal court is contemplating class action status in pending litigation in the Northern District of California. It appears that Plaintiffs (Authors, et al.) are to be automatically included in this ongoing litigation unless they opt out. (The presiding Judge has yet to certify class action status.) The case boils down to a single question. “On Meta’s motion, the court dismissed all the claims with the exception of plaintiffs’ assertion that Meta’s alleged unauthorized copying of the plaintiffs’ books to train LLaMA constituted direct copyright infringement, which defendant (Meta) did not move to dismiss. The dismissal of all the claims save the negligence claim was granted with leave to amend; the negligence claim was dismissed with prejudice.” Until now, fines and injunctions against rogue, underground online libraries have been unable to constrain or deter their proliferation.
