The Great Meta Heist...
- John Dodd
- Mar 20
- 3 min read
The feeling you get when something is stolen from you is a strange one to be sure, that feeling of wanting to batter the feck out of whoever stole it, usually mixed with the sure and certain knowledge that almost certainly you’re not going to find whoever stole it, so best to get on with dealing with things and going on with life.
Except this time, we know who the thief is, and more importantly, we know what they’ve done with what they stole, and we know that I wasn’t the only person that was stolen from…
And that brings into sharp focus the question, when a thief takes something, and just sits there going, “There’s nothing you can do, I’ve got this,” and the worst thing is that you know, from where you sit, that there is nothing you can do…
For those wondering what I’m on about, I am, of course, referring to the great Meta theft of millions of books to train its AI, and the reasoning that even paying for a single book meant that they couldn’t use the “Fair Use” Defence, so it was better to not pay for anything at all and use a dodgy defence, rather than run the risk of millions of us reasonably asking them to pony up for what they took.
But wait, I hear you say, we’re using their product for free, surely they’re entitled to something in return…?
They are, they marketed their platform as free and that’s how it grew to the size it did, and they in turn are entitled to use anything else out there that we’ve given away for free, but not to take all the things that we worked hard on, in order to sell and maybe make a tiny amount of money.
And the worst of this?
Many of the books that I’ve seen that have been pirated were groundbreaking when they came out, sure, some of them have been imitated since, and that’s the way the world is, but now…
Now those stories are out there, and that means that all those people who can’t be bothered to do something of their own, all those who just want to write something like someone, in the hope that they will benefit from it, they’ll now be able to type in “Write a book in the style of…” and it will, but it misses the point of being a creative.
We never write the same thing twice, even those of us who have contracts to write something very similar to the last book because that’s what their readership wants, even those…
We never write the same thing twice.
So to all those fellow creatives out there, don’t be disheartened that they stole all our stories, don’t worry that someone will be using all your ideas, they’re not…
They can’t…
Because the greatest repository of ideas is still in our heads, there is no algorithm for true creative works, no formula to greatness, we all know that, just as we know that anyone copying someone else is already too late, that’s why you don’t write to what the market wants now, you write to what you want to write.
And they can’t copy that…
And up in ivory towers, where no human lives, where only the corporates live their empty lives high in the air, they fear, because people infinitely more creative than them, possessed of infinitely greater ability to consider possibilities and shape outcomes, whole legions of them, wait on the streets below, and with tools that no AI can predict…
They plan…
And if I happen across a book that contains Space Dragons, Time Travel, A Sisterhood in Space, A Rebellion leading to a Revolution, and a tyrant getting his comeuppance, well…
I’ll be sure to pay that generator a visit…
And in the meantime, don’t worry, but do get mad.
Very mad…
And If you’re not sure that you’ve had something stolen from you, check here…
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