Tuesday, April 1, 2025

April 1 Book Contest Winners

Photo of Robert Ellis, New York Times acclaimed author of the bestselling Lena Gamble and Detective Matt Jones thriller series.

 

Congratulations to Jackie G. from Hartford, CT, and Casey H. from Pasadena, CA, for winning this week’s Free Book Contest. Signed copies of City of Stones, the latest in the Matt Jones thriller series, are on their way.

This contest has been running on the 1st & 15th of each month since Aug 2018. To enter, please visit https://www.robertellis.net and leave us a note.

City of Stones on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08Z23T8CQ/


ROBERT ELLIS WRITERS BLOG

04/01/2025

https://www.robertellis.net

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Meta/Facebook/Mark Zuckerburg pirated millions of books

 

Photo of Robert Ellis bestselling author of the Lena Gamble and Detective Matt Jones thriller novels

Meta/Facebook/Mark Zuckerburg pirated millions of books

Last week The Atlantic published a search tool that allows authors to check if their works are in LibGen, an illegal pirate site AI companies copied for their AI systems. The list has more than 7.5 million books that were copied by Meta and other AI companies.

All of my novels were pirated without permission, notice or any payment whatsoever. In the spirit of writers-have-to-eat-too-including me-myself-and-I, and I-never-met-anyone-in-big-tech-who-was-cool, I wasn’t even offered a share in Meta or any AI company for the contribution I made but didn’t agree to.

Here are key links writers and readers might be interested in:

The Authors Guild – What Authors Need to Know

https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/

The Atlantic – Article

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/libgen-meta-openai/682093/

The Atlantic Search Tool

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

Hope this helps.

Robert Ellis, New York Times critically acclaimed author of crime fiction walking through the clouds with a factory in the background.

https://www.robertellis.net

ROBERT ELLIS WRITERS BLOG

03/23/2025