Don't Steal this Book

A cross-posting from my Cultural Geography blog.

A new book I contributed to was published today, but it's a different kind of book.

The book is called 'Don't Steal this Book' and was handed out at the London Book Fair.

The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.

AI companies are building their products by copying millions of books without permission or payment.

The UK government is considering legalising this large-scale theft. We urge them to rule this out. AI companies should pay for books, like everyone else.

If they don’t, this is what we’ll be left with: empty pages, writers without pay, and readers deprived of the next book they’ll love.

From the Guardian article above:

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.

The organiser of the book, Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the AI industry was “built on stolen work … taken without permission or payment”.

He added: “This is not a victimless crime – generative AI competes with the people whose work it is trained on, robbing them of their livelihoods. The government must protect the UK’s creatives, and refuse to legalise the theft of creative work by AI companies.”

Several of my books have been stolen by AI, including 'Why Study Geography'.