Pulled into the World of AI Language Models

The Atlantic Monthly just published a searchable listing of works uploaded to the LibGen collection of pirated writing.

I found two things I wrote in that database: my book The Road to Concord and a book review published in the New England Quarterly.

The LibGen collection is based on material that was digitally published in some protected format, such behind a journal’s paywall or under some a form of DRM.

That means my first book, never published in electronic form, wasn’t there. It also means the database lacks everything I’ve written for the web, including this blog, the Boston 1775 blog, many articles, and a 600-page National Park Service study, even though (or because) those texts aren’t protected at all.

LibGen is a shadowy operation, apparently centered in Russia, though it receives material from all over the world. In December, a consortium of global publishers sued and shut down access to many LibGen domains. A US court also ordered LibGen to pay $30 million, but there’s no identified owner or manager to hold personally responsible.

In his article accompanying the Atlantic database, Alex Reisner reported on how the Meta corporation used all or part of that database to train its AI language model. The company decided that legal options would take, well, money and time.

Back in 2023 Reisner reported on a smaller pirated collection of 180,000 books called Books3 used by multiple companies for the same purpose. In fact, piracy appears to be so embedded in AI language programs that last year KL3M announced it was “the first Legal Large Language Model.”

As the Authors Guild reports:

Legal action is already underway against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other AI companies for using pirated books. If your book was used by Meta, you’re automatically included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action in Northern California without needing to take any immediate action. The court is first deciding whether Meta broke copyright laws, with a decision expected this summer, before officially certifying everyone as a class.

So I guess I’m involved in that lawsuit.

It seems clear to me that the LibGen operation breaks publishers’ legal licenses, in some cases to the detriment of royalty-earning authors. The downloading of that material by Meta and other corporations looks unethical, but I don’t know if any laws have been written that would make that act illegal.

Raskin Returns, the Sequel

As Publishers Weekly points out, there’s poetic irony in two previously unknown literary projects surfacing from the literary estate of Ellen Raskin, author of The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) and The Westing Game.

The industry organ reports:

International Literary Properties—a global company that invests in and manages literary estates—has acquired Raskin’s estate and, along with it, two previously unpublished manuscripts by the late author, including a sequel to her Newbery Award–winning mystery, The Westing Game. . . .

John Silbersack of the Bent Agency took on the role of Raskin’s literary agent nearly two decades ago, when Ellen’s daughter Susan Moore and son-in-law John first approached him to represent the estate. . . . Silbersack shared that at the time of Raskin’s death in 1984, “she had been working on—and had very nearly completed—a marvelous new story, very much in the vein of The Westing Game, titled A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese.

“Ellen’s practice was to rewrite and re-edit each prior chapter on the completion of a new chapter, so the earliest sections of the book were pored over time and again, while the very final chapters were more sketched out.” In an example of life imitating art, he said, “Ellen’s daughter, Susan, devoted herself to ‘solving’ the mystery and tying up all the loose ends, and the manuscript awaits a final polish and a worthy collaborator to bring it to a finale, which is at the top of our to-do list.”

Of the second book, a Westing Game sequel, he said, “Crafting a follow-up to one of the most beloved titles of all time is no small task. In conjunction with ILP, we’re currently in the process of bringing in another iconic middle grade author to work with us on this eagerly anticipated literary event. Watch this space!”

So in fact Ellen Raskin left two unfinished manuscripts, both needing considerable work by others to complete. A “global company” in now investing in those projects, seeking “a worthy collaborator” and “another iconic middle grade author” to make her notes publishable.

If Raskin told us anything, however, it’s to look beyond the surface. Back in 2012, Betsy Bird dug up a report from Publishers Weekly in 2007:

Stephanie Owens Lurie and Mark McVeigh at Dutton have acquired five books by Newbery Award–winner and The Westing Game author Ellen Raskin in a major six-figure deal negotiated by Alex Glass and John Silbersack at Trident on behalf of the Raskin estate. The books include two new puzzle mystery novels: The Westing Quest, a sequel to The Westing Game, and A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese, a never-before-seen manuscript nearly completed at the author’s death in 1984.

Bird then noted, “Years go by and not a peep is made about these books again.” Dutton reissued other Raskin titles in 2011. In the same year, the company announced A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese, issuing a brief blurb and an ISBN (9780525422914). But then that was pulled back.

The internet working as it does, lots of book websites (GoodReads, StoryGraph, Google Books, BooksWagon, etc.) sucked up the data attached to that ISBN and produced pages for A Murder for Macaroni and Cheese. So it already has the online profile of an out-of-print book when it’s never seen print at all.