Oh. And also, it’s fun to talk to you. Check out my substack. Blanche.substack.com. My 1982 collection of essays (I call them ‘pieces’, as in music)The Redneck Way of Knowledge, Knopf 1982, was reissued in 1997 by Vintage and is apparently going to going to be reissued again 2026.
Aren’t you dumping together fiction and poetry with nonfiction? Isn’t art a real thing? Copyright laws protect the author’s work not only from being copied but from being messed with and from being stolen. I don’t think Jefferson thought his land was a monopoly, but that seems more arguable than that a work of art is. I could list book after book after book whose integrity of language and of authorship MUST NOT be messed with. Monopoly is a false argument here.
There isn't a legal distinction between these different genres They all fall under copyright.
I could also list book after book of art that use the copyrighted works of others--think language poetry, zines, Jenny Holzer, bricolage, sampling in rap, etc etc. Lots of great art is also about using what has come before. Do we want laws so strict that they prevent artists and authors to create those works as well?
With sampling, this issue has been around for awhile and there have been many legal cases--it's something perennially debated, which was my point.
I don’t have a problem with sampling. It’s a form of respect. And I don’t have a problem with Shakespeare basing his plays on historical events. But you start messing with poetry by people like Adrienne Rich or T.S.Eliot and claiming you wrote it or that it’s accurate about their work, I got a problem with that. Lillian Hellman’s brilliant play “The Children’s Hour” had the storytelling heart ripped out of it in an early movie version. And I got a problem with that!
"poetry, zines, Jenny Holzer, bricolage, sampling in rap" All of these must get permission from copyright holders for any real or substantial use. If they don't, they may be in violation of copyright law
"create new works by building upon what's come before" Go ahead and build on my work all you want. Just don't copy me illegally. It's interesting to note the law takes your view, but from the opposite perspective. Weak copyright law would be a disincentive to original creation
I should probably mention here that I'm very worried about the future of the Internet Archive for this very reason. I definitely see a distinction between the IA and what Meta et al. are doing -- though I also recognize that there's a challenging legal distinction there. (At which point I'll play my "not a lawyer" card.)
Thanks Anne. What a circus the industry was. And still is, in a different way : ) In copyright, the thing to remember is this: Only your exact words in the exact order are absolutely protected. The rest is a gray area. Plots may well be vulnerable, so watch it, writers. If I may link my own post, I wrote about this kind of theft here https://richarddonnelly.substack.com/p/authors-own-it Thanks again Anne for your fine overview.
I get where you're coming from here.....but for me, as someone who has a couple of books in the database that Meta's been using to train its AI, the current situation feels like the worst of both worlds. I don't love seeing a pirated version of one of my books showing up on a sketchy-looking ebook site (which has happened), but at least that means that someone's.....reading them. Maybe. I don't love the normalizing of not paying for art - I have too many musician friends for that - but I get it, up to a point.
Whereas in the case of Meta, there's literally a large corporation saying that it needs access to everything everyone has written so that it can train a product it's put absurd amounts of money into, but also that the value of that writing is zip, zilch, nada....
Ebook piracy has been around forever and is gross, as is Meta using pirated sites to feed books to their LLMs. I'm not defending any of that.
But do the *words* you use in your book have monetary value? Do you own those words? Or do you own the expression of them, packaged into a form, in this case a book. Meta isn't publishing your book per se. They are taking the words you used. Again, not that I am defending this; I am just fascinated by the theoretical and legal issues around all of these.
I don't think I can claim ownership of words any more than a musician could claim ownership of notes....but I also think there's a middle ground in there.
The other area where this gets troubling for me is that a system that's eaten enough books could, in theory, compose "new" works in the style of an existing writer, and that leaves me especially alarmed for what that could mean for literary culture.
(To cite one theoretical example: someone looking for a novel akin to "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" could get AI to write the sequel Michael Chabon never did, as opposed to, say, checking out "Major Arcana.")
....though there's an interesting sidebar to all this, in that there's a certain style of experimental literature that could undermine LLMs; I'd imagine that an AI system trained on, I dunno, Ben Marcus's "The Age of Wire and String" might come up with some interesting answers to users' questions.
Yeah absolutely I see that. But I might have more faith in human ingenuity? I also imagine people doing some extremely killer cool shit (aka art) with what LLMs offer.
Honestly though I'm simply working through to figure out a position by looking at copyright history. Next up: Dickens and Twain! They were fiercely protective of their copyright.
"a pirated version of one of my books showing up on a sketchy-looking ebook site" How close is this "version" to your book? You might have a legal claim to royalties.
Just because it's resold for $0.00 doesn't absolve the theft. You are entitled to the market compensation regardless. Also there's lots of ways your work might be being monetized, starting with customer lists and brand expansion.
Oh. And also, it’s fun to talk to you. Check out my substack. Blanche.substack.com. My 1982 collection of essays (I call them ‘pieces’, as in music)The Redneck Way of Knowledge, Knopf 1982, was reissued in 1997 by Vintage and is apparently going to going to be reissued again 2026.
Aren’t you dumping together fiction and poetry with nonfiction? Isn’t art a real thing? Copyright laws protect the author’s work not only from being copied but from being messed with and from being stolen. I don’t think Jefferson thought his land was a monopoly, but that seems more arguable than that a work of art is. I could list book after book after book whose integrity of language and of authorship MUST NOT be messed with. Monopoly is a false argument here.
There isn't a legal distinction between these different genres They all fall under copyright.
I could also list book after book of art that use the copyrighted works of others--think language poetry, zines, Jenny Holzer, bricolage, sampling in rap, etc etc. Lots of great art is also about using what has come before. Do we want laws so strict that they prevent artists and authors to create those works as well?
With sampling, this issue has been around for awhile and there have been many legal cases--it's something perennially debated, which was my point.
I don’t have a problem with sampling. It’s a form of respect. And I don’t have a problem with Shakespeare basing his plays on historical events. But you start messing with poetry by people like Adrienne Rich or T.S.Eliot and claiming you wrote it or that it’s accurate about their work, I got a problem with that. Lillian Hellman’s brilliant play “The Children’s Hour” had the storytelling heart ripped out of it in an early movie version. And I got a problem with that!
"poetry, zines, Jenny Holzer, bricolage, sampling in rap" All of these must get permission from copyright holders for any real or substantial use. If they don't, they may be in violation of copyright law
and that fact could be seen as a disincentive to creativity for people wanting to create new works by building upon what's come before them.
"create new works by building upon what's come before" Go ahead and build on my work all you want. Just don't copy me illegally. It's interesting to note the law takes your view, but from the opposite perspective. Weak copyright law would be a disincentive to original creation
I should probably mention here that I'm very worried about the future of the Internet Archive for this very reason. I definitely see a distinction between the IA and what Meta et al. are doing -- though I also recognize that there's a challenging legal distinction there. (At which point I'll play my "not a lawyer" card.)
I can see both sides of the IA debate as well! It's maddening, really.
Thanks Anne. What a circus the industry was. And still is, in a different way : ) In copyright, the thing to remember is this: Only your exact words in the exact order are absolutely protected. The rest is a gray area. Plots may well be vulnerable, so watch it, writers. If I may link my own post, I wrote about this kind of theft here https://richarddonnelly.substack.com/p/authors-own-it Thanks again Anne for your fine overview.
I get where you're coming from here.....but for me, as someone who has a couple of books in the database that Meta's been using to train its AI, the current situation feels like the worst of both worlds. I don't love seeing a pirated version of one of my books showing up on a sketchy-looking ebook site (which has happened), but at least that means that someone's.....reading them. Maybe. I don't love the normalizing of not paying for art - I have too many musician friends for that - but I get it, up to a point.
Whereas in the case of Meta, there's literally a large corporation saying that it needs access to everything everyone has written so that it can train a product it's put absurd amounts of money into, but also that the value of that writing is zip, zilch, nada....
I don't like it, is what I'm saying.
Ebook piracy has been around forever and is gross, as is Meta using pirated sites to feed books to their LLMs. I'm not defending any of that.
But do the *words* you use in your book have monetary value? Do you own those words? Or do you own the expression of them, packaged into a form, in this case a book. Meta isn't publishing your book per se. They are taking the words you used. Again, not that I am defending this; I am just fascinated by the theoretical and legal issues around all of these.
I don't think I can claim ownership of words any more than a musician could claim ownership of notes....but I also think there's a middle ground in there.
The other area where this gets troubling for me is that a system that's eaten enough books could, in theory, compose "new" works in the style of an existing writer, and that leaves me especially alarmed for what that could mean for literary culture.
(To cite one theoretical example: someone looking for a novel akin to "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" could get AI to write the sequel Michael Chabon never did, as opposed to, say, checking out "Major Arcana.")
....though there's an interesting sidebar to all this, in that there's a certain style of experimental literature that could undermine LLMs; I'd imagine that an AI system trained on, I dunno, Ben Marcus's "The Age of Wire and String" might come up with some interesting answers to users' questions.
Yeah absolutely I see that. But I might have more faith in human ingenuity? I also imagine people doing some extremely killer cool shit (aka art) with what LLMs offer.
Honestly though I'm simply working through to figure out a position by looking at copyright history. Next up: Dickens and Twain! They were fiercely protective of their copyright.
"a pirated version of one of my books showing up on a sketchy-looking ebook site" How close is this "version" to your book? You might have a legal claim to royalties.
This was just a link to what I assume was an epub of one of my novels for free download; there wasn't any reselling involved.
Just because it's resold for $0.00 doesn't absolve the theft. You are entitled to the market compensation regardless. Also there's lots of ways your work might be being monetized, starting with customer lists and brand expansion.