Protest Meta's Theft of Irish Writing

Dear Minister,  

We are writing to you following the revelations arising from a court case in the US, that Meta used millions of copyright-protected works in order to train its AI model, Llama 3. These revelations were highlighted in The Atlantic on March 20, 2025 under the headline ‘The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem’.

At the very highest level, alleges The Atlantic, Meta decided that to seek permission and offer payment for the content would be too time-consuming and costly and that they would, instead, use the Library Genesis database, a pirate collection containing 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers.

The allegations have profound implications for Irish authors. Within a day of alerting its members, the Irish Writers Union had 53 responses by members whose works had been used to train the AI without their permission. Many noted figures in Irish life, such as President Michael D Higgins, are in that database, which can be searched here.

The IWU is encouraging members to make a formal, legal complaint to META demanding:

1. Immediate cessation of any use of my copyrighted material in your AI training processes until appropriate permissions are obtained.

2. Negotiation of fair and reasonable licensing terms should you wish to continue utilising my work.

3. Compensation for the past unauthorised use of [Name of Work] in your AI model training programs.

Meta must be held accountable, and while our individual members will pursue this, the Irish government should play its part in protecting its citizens from massive copyright infringement. 

We call upon you to communicate with Meta and insist that the rights, interests and livelihoods of authors are adequately protected. 

Specifically, we, the undersigned, call on you as Minister responsible for protecting EU copyright law from being violated in AI training to summon senior executives of Meta to provide a detailed response to the allegations that they have engaged in wholesale copyright infringement and to provide unequivocal assurances that they will respect the copyright of authors, not engage in unlawful conduct, and will pay authors for all historic infringements.