Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement
Source: Slashdot
Background
Five major publishers—Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage—along with author Scott Turow have filed a lawsuit against Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The plaintiffs allege that Zuckerberg “personally authorized and actively encouraged” massive copyright infringement by using pirated books, journal articles, and web‑scraped material to train Meta’s Llama AI systems.
Lawsuit Details
- Filing date: May 5 (Tuesday)
- Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- Plaintiffs: The five publishers listed above and Scott Turow (individually)
- Defendants: Meta Platforms, Inc. and Mark Zuckerberg
The complaint claims that Meta and Zuckerberg:
- Illegally torrented millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from “notorious pirate sites.”
- Downloaded unauthorized web scrapes covering “virtually the entire internet.”
- Repeatedly copied this material to train Meta’s multibillion‑dollar generative AI system, Llama.
The suit characterizes the conduct as “one of the most massive infringements of copyrighted materials in history.” It also alleges that Meta deliberately circumvented copyright‑protection mechanisms and that the company had considered licensing the works before abandoning that strategy at “Zuckerberg’s personal instruction.”
The plaintiffs are seeking unspecified monetary damages and argue that the alleged conduct falls outside the fair‑use protections of U.S. copyright law.
Meta’s Response
Meta denies any wrongdoing and states it will fight the case. The company argues that courts have recognized AI training on copyrighted material as potentially qualifying as fair use.
References
- Variety report quoting the plaintiffs: “In their effort to win the AI ‘arms race’ and build a functional generative AI model, Defendants Meta and Zuckerberg followed their well‑known motto: ‘move fast and break things.’”
- Full lawsuit (PDF): Link to lawsuit PDF (replace
#with the actual URL)