March 25, 2025 - The Atlantic released an article on March 20th regarding LibGen, an illegal pirate site. While taking down pirating sites is often an endless pursuit, the fight against LibGen is unique in that AI companies have allegedly used it to train their AI datasets. Additionally, it has been alleged that Meta has used this illegal site to train their AI.
The Author’s Guild has provided information to publishers and authors on how to proceed: https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/
To help in this pursuit against AI companies, who are using (or have used) books without express permission and to protect our authors, City Owl Press is sending a DCMA takedown notice and official statement to LibGen, Meta, and any other companies that come to light regarding this issue.
Further our official statement regarding AI training hereby follows below:
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of a City Owl Press publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited without written consent from the publisher and the author.