It was recently revealed by The Atlantic magazine that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has used LibGen, a vast database of pirated material, to train its AI models.
I received a notification about this from ALCS (Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society). Authors are paid from ‘secondary uses’, where someone uses a work already distributed — such as when schools photocopy books they own, or libraries lend books.
Royalties from ‘secondary rights’ are paid to writers through ALCS unless the royalties come from UK library lending when the Public Lending Right (PLR) pays them. The money I receive from ALCS is my share of any payments collected, less ALCS’ commission.
I made more this financial year from these payments than earnings from all the writing platforms that I use.
ALCS provided a link for checking authors’ works had been included in the LibGen database.
When I did a search, Managing the training Process was shown as being in the LibGen database. The results showed that my book has been published in the Journal of European Industrial Training. Further research showed that downloads of my book are being sold by Emerald Group Publishing. I probably get paid royalties for these, but I have checked with ALCS to make sure.
Check to see if your works are included on the LibGen database
Please note that the above link redirects you to The Atlantic via the ALCS’ site.
This is the second time this week that The Atlantic has hit the news. The first time was when one of its journalists was invited to an online security conference.
I am publishing this news on multiple platforms to give it a wide readership.