Publishers sue Meta over training Llama on pirated books and journals

Five major publishers and author Scott Turow have sued Meta. The accusation is a serious one: the company allegedly committed "one of the most massive copyright infringements in history" by training its Llama model on pirated copies of books and scientific journals.

How Llama was trained

Meta knowingly copied books and scientific journals from pirate sites (LibGen, Anna's Archive, Sci-Hub, Sci-Mag and others) and used the material to train Llama without the permission of authors and rights holders. The publishers say in the complaint that this was deliberate, not accidental.

The logic was simple: pirate sites provide content for free, while licensing costs money. Meta made the economically rational choice, bypassing legal channels for acquiring content and downloading directly from illegal sources.

This was not an isolated incident. The complaint describes a systematic process: finding pirate sites, downloading, and loading the material into the training dataset. The company knew what it was doing and did it on purpose.

Who filed the suit

The complaint was filed by five of the world's largest publishers:

• Macmillan — fiction, textbooks, scholarly publications
• McGraw Hill — professional literature and educational content
• Elsevier — scientific journals worldwide
• Hachette — one of the "Big Five" US publishers
• Cengage — educational content and textbooks

They are joined by author Scott Turow, whose bestsellers include "The Burden of Proof" and "Presumed Innocent".

This matters: it is not merely a corporate dispute over money. The complaint carries the separate voice of an author, which lends the claims legitimacy and emotional weight. It concerns not only corporate profits but also the rights of individual creators.

Why it matters

On the surface, this is a legal fight over money and copyright. In reality, it is about the rules of the game in the AI era. The question is simple: if Meta can download other people's content from pirate sites and train on it without consequences, why should authors and publishers trust that their work is protected?

The lawsuit sets a precedent: AI companies cannot appropriate creative content with impunity.

"This is one of the most massive cases of copyright infringement in

history," the complaint states.

What happens next

The litigation may last for years. Meta will likely defend itself by citing fair use, or by arguing that content from pirate sites is already publicly available. But such arguments look weak in this context: the company deliberately chose a source of illegal content, knew it, and made no attempt to negotiate.

Even if the trial drags on, the dynamics of the market are already shifting. Other AI companies (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic) will likely begin distancing themselves from the use of plainly illegal content and move to licensing. Publishers will demand compensation for the use of their works in training large models.

What this means

This lawsuit symbolizes the end of the era of quiet "free training" on other people's content. Such things used to happen in the shadows; now they are in public view. Two things will likely happen at once: some companies will strike deals with publishers and authors (and pay for data), while others will lose in court (and pay even more). In the end, the market will reshape itself around new rules. AI will not be a "free" technology; it will require licensing and payments. That may slow AI development, but it is fair to those whose work is used in training.

*Meta has been designated an extremist organization and is banned in Russia.