Meta's latest legal wheeze is to insist that pirating books is fair use, actually

Meta’s latest legal wheeze is to insist that pirating books is fair use, actually | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show PC Gamer Clips Software Codes Coupons Movies & TV Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Hardware ‘We see everything’: Report says Meta’s AI smart glasses footage is reviewed by human contractors who see far more than they bargained for, which has led to a new lawsuit against the company AI ‘We shouldn’t have rushed to get this out on Friday’: OpenAI hastily amends the terms of its controversial deal with the US Department of War as CEO Sam Altman claims it’s been a ‘good learning experience’ AI AI-generated images still can’t be copyrighted as US Supreme Court declines to hear case Adventure Copyright trolling kept evidence of Japanese cult classic Cookie’s Bustle offline, until now Hardware Valve wins lawsuit against Rothschild and associated entities, with a jury agreeing they violated an anti-patent troll protection act Platforms Open-source game engine Godot is drowning in ‘AI slop’ code contributions: ‘I don’t know how long we can keep it up’ AI Microsoft uses plagiarized AI slop flowchart to explain how Github works, removes it after original creator calls it out: ‘Careless, blatantly amateuristic, and lacking any ambition, to put it gently’ AI Microsoft CEO warns that we must ‘do something useful’ with AI or they’ll lose ‘social permission’ to burn electricity on it Gaming Industry Microsoft says sure, it’ll hand over your encrypted data to the FBI: ‘The lesson here is that if you have access to keys, eventually law enforcement is going to come’ AI A human software engineer rejected an AI agent’s code change request, only for the AI agent to retaliate by publishing an ‘angry’ blog about him Games Epic ritually humiliates another Fortnite fraudster who was stealing and selling accounts AI A plague of AI-generated Homer Simpson cover songs is reportedly swamping a popular music file sharing network with the big yellow fella’s dulcet tones VR Creator of DMCA’d Cyberpunk VR mod takes ball and goes home, removing access to all his VR mods after receiving a second DMCA takedown from 505 Games and a warning from Patreon AI Steam updates AI disclosure form to specify that it’s focused on AI-generated content that is ‘consumed by players,’ not efficiency tools used behind the scenes Hardware The world’s largest manga piracy site has been shut down with its operator under criminal investigation PopularNEW: PC Gamer Clips!MarathonArc RaidersBest PC gearQuizzes Software AI Meta’s latest legal wheeze is to insist that pirating books is fair use, actually News By Rich Stanton published 9 March 2026 Rather than, y’know, outright theft. 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From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we’ve got you covered. Signup + Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Signup + An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter In order to help train its AI models, Meta (and others) have been using pirated versions of copyrighted books, without the consent of authors or publishers. The company behind Facebook and Instagram faces an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, and one in which it has already scored a major (and surprising) victory: The Californian court concluded last year that using pirated books to train its Llama LLM did qualify as fair use.That’s not the whole story, however, as Meta still faces the charge that it infringed copyright by downloading and sharing these books via BitTorrent (thanks, TorrentFreak).Meta obtained the books from so-called shadow libraries by using aggregators such as Anna’s Archive, and the nature of BitTorrent transfers means the company was both downloading the content and uploading it for other users. The authors bringing the case claim this is widespread and direct copyright infringement.Article continues below You may like Nvidia allegedly greenlit the use of pirated books from illegal sources to train its AI models, according to an expanded class-action lawsuit Meta knowingly earns ad money from ‘criminals and scammers’ claims UK gambling watchdog ‘The FTC will continue fighting its historic case against Meta to ensure that competition can thrive across the country’: FTC appeals 2025 antitrust ruling You’d think this case would be as open-and-shut as it gets, but never underestimate an army of high-priced lawyers. Meta has now come up with the striking defense that upl