Art theft is most commonly thought of as highly-skilled master thieves stealing priceless, antique art off the wall of a great museum. These days, it’s an artist – in this case, an ‘author’ – who scrapes over 20,000 books off the internet to feed an AI enterprise he then charges customers for. It’s the definition of copyright infringement, to say nothing of wage theft. The Prosecraft disaster is the case example of the danger AI poses to the creative class, for reasons that are obvious, and others that aren’t.
On August 7th, a website called Prosecraft came to my attention. Prosecraft is the public-facing site for an AI software program called Shaxpir, which was using published novels to fleece customers by comparing their writing to established authors. The problem was, none of the tens of thousands of books – including three of my own – were on the site legally. They had been scraped, pirated, stolen off the internet, and were being used to not only train an AI program but also line to pockets of a man named Benji Smith.
This is copyright infringement on its face. Section 106 of the Copyright Act (Title 17 of the United States Code) makes clear that copyrighted material cannot be reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner. Period. This disclaimer features on the – wait for it – copyright page of every book in the United States.
This is what it says on mine:
Smith never obtained permission from me to use my books to feed his Shaxpir AI program, much less monetize in a scheme to gain access to even more fiction from young and inexperienced writers. He stole my creative work, profited from it, and then had the gall to masquerade as a victim once he’d been caught. There is plenty to say regarding AI and the creative arts. AI is an existential threat to authors. A horrific example is playing out right now with Jane Friedman, whose name is being put on AI-written books that are being sold on Amazon. There is nothing, it seems, she can do.
For an author – Smith has books on Amazon, I’ve no idea of their origin – to be the one to exploit other authors is sickening. Smith claimed in disingenuous tweets that he created the website to benefit other writers.
This is a lie. Serving authors is supporting their art and livelihood, both of which ‘this project’ undermines. Independent authors have next to no defense against any piracy, tech bros flooding the marketplace with AI shit, or the perception that they’re not ‘real writers.’ How can they combat the stigma of being lesser than traditionally published authors when a writer is stealing other people’s work? How can they protect themselves without agents, publishers, or other support systems?
Thankfully, the writing community banded together quickly and stormed the gates of his bullshit castle in the sky. By the end of the day, he took the website down, but not before twisting the situation around to make it seem he was the victim. To say nothing of attempting to force authors to make him take their books down – books he didn’t ask permission for – in a legally and ethically dubious move:
The onus was not on the author, and Smith’s request – surely crafted to provide him cover from what in the moment likely seemed days or weeks of delay tactics – would have held no water in court. His tweet was simply another example of trying to weasel out of doing the right thing.
Him taking the site is not the right thing. The right thing was never to exploit authors in the first place. Taking the site down was the least he could do. It bothers me that it took him so long to do so, and also, frankly, that this had gone on a long time. It shouldn’t have.
It’s also not the end.
Though the site went down, the damage is done. The Shaxpir program remains, as does Smith’s ability to profit from art theft. The damage is done and will continue. Legal remedies must continue as well.
Like many indie authors, I’m simply at the mercy of forces beyond my control. I rarely get angry or upset about too much of it, because what can I do? This made me very upset. I have worked my entire life. I have struggled. I have sacrificed. I have stood there while people belittled me and my art, my course in life, to my face. Everything I am and will likely ever have has gone into my writing.
And this guy shows up and just takes it.
It’s disgusting. It’s pathetic. It’s criminal in every sense of the word. Smith didn’t just steal my books. He stole Stephen King. J.K. Rowling. On and on. His lasciviousness merited attention from the Harper Collins legal department, and somewhere around 2 PM CST he must have understood the full weight of the words ‘class action.’ His ignorance is matched only by his greed.
Smith took the website down, posting a White Guy™ screed to try and make it seem like he was only trying to help. I link to the post reluctantly, but in fairness, it’s his side of things. He says he studied copyright law and felt his use fell under Fair Use, which is a laugh. Evidently, his ‘web crawlers’ as he called them failed to scrape the boilerplate off the copyright page I mentioned above. Smith illegally obtained books, commoditized them for his own benefit, without obtaining permission from the author.
“I only ever incorporated books that were published publicly,” he says. As opposed to… what? He only used books whose text could be easily found by ‘crawling’ the internet. Since few, if ANY of these books are completely available online, this means he pirated them or used means to subvert paywalls. The stats Smith is so clearly proud of in his mea culpa are informed by the entire book he scraped. Not a few lines, a few pages, a screenshot. The entire book. He stole it, and then he tried to sell it back to writers.
It’s reprehensible.
I am glad Prosecraft is gone. I’m still angry. I’m also proud. I’m even more proud of the #WritingCommunity and #indieauthors (and trad) who didn’t sit back, who didn’t shrug, who didn’t take the theft of their art, their blood, sweat, and tears lying down. There will be more Prosecrafts.
We have to stand tall.