Ban LLMs, AI programs and Gen AI content based on pirated Copyrighted materials.
The issue
Generative AI is ruining Creative Arts fields like writing, art and music by flooding the market with copyright infringing ‘AI slop’ and causing more harm than good in many areas of society (scams, harassment, deception, data centre pollution and now antique book destruction). So if they’re causing such harm, why are these AI programs tolerated when they haven’t been produced legally?
Reference for each of these problems:
*Impact on writing: ‘More than 15,000 Authors Sign Authors Guild Letter Calling on AI Industry Leaders to Protect Writers’
*Impact on art: ‘Artists stage mass protest against AI-generated artwork on ArtStation’
*Impact on music: ‘Make it fair. Don’t let AI steal our music.’
https://www.dontletaistealourmusic.com/
*AI slop: ‘AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=2s
*Scams: ‘AI scams explained: how AI-powered fraud works’
https://www.vectra.ai/topics/ai-scams
*Harassment: ‘AI-powered online abuse,’ United Nations
*Deception: ‘Why AI’s Growing Deceptive Abilities Are No Surprise’
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/why-ais-growing-deceptive-abilities-are-no-surprise/
*Data centre pollution: ‘Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom’
*Antique book destruction: ‘AI Is DESTROYING Books...’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoKQ7_VwJl0
*AI is causing all these problems for society, while their programs weren't even developed legally. Most Large Language Models, on which Artificial Intelligence programs are based, are produced with Pirated Copyrighted Materials.
*This piracy was mentioned at the U.S. Senate judiciary hearing into the AI industry in 2025, ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works,’ in the opening remarks by Chair Josh Hawley:
“The largest intellectual property theft in American history...
"AI companies are training their models on stolen material. Period. That is just the fact of the matter...
"We’re talking about piracy, we’re talking about theft. For years A.I. companies have stolen massive amounts of Copyrighted material from illegal online repositories. Now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regularly prosecute individuals who engage in exactly the same kind of behavior...
"The amount of material that we’re talking about is absolutely mindboggling. We’re talking about every book and every academic article ever written. Let me say that again, every book and every article ever written. Billions of pages of Copyrighted works. Enough to fill 22 libraries the size of the Library of Congress. Think about that: 22 Libraries of Congresses full of works. That is how much has been stolen and this theft was not some innocent mistake, they knew exactly what they were doing. They pirated these materials willfully.”
Reference: Senate Judiciary Hearing On 'AI Industry's Mass Ingestion Of Copyrighted Works'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3rLSWoYnis
*Other speakers at that hearing also testified about the piracy of copyrighted materials by AI companies:
“Every major large language model in commercial use today was trained on pirated books.” – D. Baldacci
“Evidence shows that Gen AI companies have willfully, knowingly and repeatedly trained on pirated materials.” – B. Viswanathan
“The largest domestic piracy of intellectual property in our nation’s history.” – M. Pritt
Reference: ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training,’ July 2025, U.S. Senate Judiciary
*AI programs might also be in breach of the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives authors an exclusive right to their own material:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
(U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8)
*Copyright holders have this exclusive right. However, most Large Language Models were produced using pirated copyrighted work, which was copied without the owner’s permission.
*******************************
Therefore, LLMs and AI programs
(built on pirated copyrighted materials)
and any content produced using LLMs and AI programs
(built on pirated copyrighted materials)
should be BANNED because they are ILLEGAL.
*******************************
*Including ChatGPT and other AI programs which trained on pirated copyrighted materials.
A 2024 Forbes article describes the training process of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT:
“any content accessible on the internet was considered fair game for training their large language models (LLMs). This included everything from pirated book archives and content behind paywalls to user-generated content from platforms like Reddit and copyrighted materials without explicit permission.”
Reference: Forbes, ‘Ex OpenAI Researcher: How ChatGPT’s Training Violated Copyright Law’
*As described above, OpenAI trained on pirated material and copyrighted content obtained without permission, to make ChatGPT. That means the program and any content produced with the program is ILLEGAL and should be BANNED.
*Many copyright infringement law suits against AI companies are working through American courts: 40+ cases as discussed in the July 2025 hearing; the number more than doubled over the next year to a total of 131 cases as of August 2026.
Source: (on the original image, each dot is a clickable link to the actual case) https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/ai-copyrightcase-timeline/
*There would have been no need for all these law suits if AI developers had decided not to use stolen data, and instead develop their programs in a legal way.
*But because they chose to develop their programs illegally, using stolen copyrighted data without the copyright owner’s consent, the programs and content based on pirated copyrighted materials should be BANNED because they are ILLEGAL.
*It is possible for these types of programs to be produced in a legal way. A few LLMs or AI programs have been developed legally, which of course are not included in this demand. Programs using ‘clean’ non-stolen data apparently includes the LLMs called C4C, Open License Corpus, KL3M, Common Pile and Common Corpus.
Reference: ‘Common Corpus: The Largest Collection of Ethical Data for LLM Pre-Training’
https://arxiv.org/html/2506.01732v3
*KL3M introduced itself in February 2024 as the ‘first Legal Large Language Model.’ So that means that LLMs before that were all illegal?
https://273ventures.com/kl3m-the-first-legal-large-language-model/
*Some Fairly Trained certified AI models are listed here:
https://www.fairlytrained.org/certified-models
The above programs should be how all LLMs and AIs are developed: legally, using data licensed or obtained with consent from creators.
But the other more widely used LLM/AI models, such as ChatGPT, which are based on pirated copyrighted materials, should be BANNED because they’re ILLEGAL!
*Content made from these illegally produced programs might not need to be deleted, because people using the program might be innocent. But this content based on pirated copyrighted materials should be BANNED from competing in the marketplace against creators of the copyrighted content which built the programs. Because that is not a Fair Use to compete with original creators.
*I’m not proposing this to be snooty by following the letter of the law. I’m doing this because Generative AI is causing far more harm than good in many areas of society. (Flooding the market with ‘AI slop,’ enabling scams, harassment, deception, data centre pollution etc.)
*Fortunately there is a simple solution: these AI programs which are causing such harm to creators, society and the environment were based on illegally obtained copyrighted materials, used without the copyright owner's permission, which makes them illegal, so the programs should be BANNED for being ILLEGAL!
*AI companies try to claim their copying of copyrighted content without permission (including from illegal sources) is ‘Fair Use,’ but they are wrong: they’ve twisted the notion of what Fair Use is supposed to achieve. Fair Use is meant to allow a small amount of copying for educational purposes and so on. Fair Use was not established to allow the widespread copying of the entire world’s copyrighted creative and academic material to compete with original creators in the marketplace! Which is what AI companies are doing. The notion that this could be Fair Use is absurd, it’s the complete opposite of Fair Use.
This was discussed in ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works’ by American Law Professor B. Viswanathan:
“Flooding the market with sub-par works that substitute for the original works; this is not what Fair Use was intended to achieve, or to facilitate.
“And the very fact that these companies are arguing, ‘We’re in good faith, we’re doing Fair Use purposes,’ to me, this shouldn’t even be a defense that they’re allowed to raise. But okay, they will raise it and it will be litigated. But, boy, this does not seem coincident with what Fair Use was ever meant to do.”
*She also points out that Fair Use is meant to have a “societally beneficial reason,” (such as in education):
“Fair Use, for those of you who don’t take my copyright class... is an affirmative defence: ‘Yes, I infringed, but I did it for a good reason.’ A societally beneficial reason.
“Alright, maybe creating a world repository of Generative AI companies is that. But it doesn’t seem to me that it squares with the other things that we think of as Fair Use. What’s well established Fair Use? Education, criticism, commentary, First Amendment purposes, that we consider valuable and necessary, that are done in good faith.”
*However, the vast number of problems which AI is causing (scams, harassment, deception, flooding the market with ‘AI slop,’ loss of income for creators, journalists, academics and many other jobs, ‘AI fatigue,’ hallucinations, data centre pollution of the environment, antique book destruction) far outweigh any benefits.
More references for these problems:
*Scams: 'What Are AI Scams? A Guide for Older Adults'
https://www.ncoa.org/article/what-are-ai-scams-a-guide-for-older-adults/
*Harassment: Advox, 'How artificial intelligence can be weaponized for harassment'
*Deception: 'The Great AI Deception Has Already Begun'
*Loss of income: 'Artists brace as AI, the greatest theft in history, swamps us now'
https://michaelwest.com.au/artists-brace-as-ai-the-greatest-theft-in-history-swamps-us-now/
*Journalists: 'AI Theft Of Independent Journalism Is Now Common'
*Academics: 'Why Academics Are Burning Out Over AI'
*AI fatigue: 'AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it'
https://siddhantkhare.com/writing/ai-fatigue-is-real
*Hallucinations: Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)
*Data centre pollution: 'The Dangers of Data Centers'
https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/post/the-dangers-of-data-centers
*Book destruction: 'AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books'
In what way do these problems benefit society? Does AI have any benefits which it needed to steal the entire world’s copyrighted information to achieve? There may be useful applications of AI, but the companies could have built their programs on public domain information, without needing to break copyright law.
*For more information on why the use of pirated copyrighted materials isn’t ‘Fair Use’, as AI companies try to claim, with references of the society-wide harm which AI is causing, and mention of the huge number of campaigns, cases, complaints and criticisms against Generative AI, see my other protest:
Demand tech companies release all copyright holders data used in training of Generative AI
*Or you could search for the more than 1000 separate protests by other people here at change.org which relate to 'artificial intelligence,' such as the following examples:
Protect our stories from theft : protect our humanity
https://www.change.org/p/protect-our-stories-from-theft-protect-our-humanity
Stand Up for Creative Rights in the Age of AI -- Support the US Copyright Office
Ban And Put A Stop To Unwanted AI Data Centers In The U.S.
https://www.change.org/p/ban-and-put-a-stop-to-unwanted-ai-data-centers-in-the-u-s
Don't Let AI Drink Before The Human Race - We're Running Out
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-let-ai-drink-before-the-human-race-we-re-running-out
KEEP HUMANITY IN STORYTELLING! Support human narration of audiobooks!
https://www.change.org/p/keep-humanity-in-storytelling-support-human-narration-of-audiobooks
Stop AI Theft from Artists
https://www.change.org/p/artists-against-ai-theft
Don’t Let AI Profit From Music Without Paying Artists
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-let-ai-profit-from-music-without-paying-artists
Make destroying vintage books for AI a felony
https://www.change.org/p/make-destroying-vintage-books-for-ai-a-felony
Those are just a few examples of the harm to society caused by AI programs. This harm to society goes against the ‘societally beneficial’ principle of Fair Use.
So these LLM and AI programs based on ILLEGALLY PIRATED COPYRIGHTED information copied without their owner’s permission,
Are ILLEGAL and should be BANNED.
*Note: During the U.S. Senate judiciary hearing ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works,’ it was pointed out by Chair Josh Hawley that the FBI prosecutes individuals for similar acts of theft to those perpetrated by AI companies:
“For years A.I. companies have stolen massive amounts of Copyrighted material from illegal online repositories. Now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regularly prosecute individuals who engage in exactly the same kind of behavior using platforms like Limewire, or Napster in the old days, using a process called ‘Torrenting’. But have these big tech companies been prosecuted? No, of course not, they’re getting off scot-free.”
Just in case this was an oversight, I used the above referenced quote from the U.S. Senate, and reported this 'largest IP theft in history' to the FBI:
46
The issue
Generative AI is ruining Creative Arts fields like writing, art and music by flooding the market with copyright infringing ‘AI slop’ and causing more harm than good in many areas of society (scams, harassment, deception, data centre pollution and now antique book destruction). So if they’re causing such harm, why are these AI programs tolerated when they haven’t been produced legally?
Reference for each of these problems:
*Impact on writing: ‘More than 15,000 Authors Sign Authors Guild Letter Calling on AI Industry Leaders to Protect Writers’
*Impact on art: ‘Artists stage mass protest against AI-generated artwork on ArtStation’
*Impact on music: ‘Make it fair. Don’t let AI steal our music.’
https://www.dontletaistealourmusic.com/
*AI slop: ‘AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zfN9wnPvU0&t=2s
*Scams: ‘AI scams explained: how AI-powered fraud works’
https://www.vectra.ai/topics/ai-scams
*Harassment: ‘AI-powered online abuse,’ United Nations
*Deception: ‘Why AI’s Growing Deceptive Abilities Are No Surprise’
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/why-ais-growing-deceptive-abilities-are-no-surprise/
*Data centre pollution: ‘Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom’
*Antique book destruction: ‘AI Is DESTROYING Books...’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoKQ7_VwJl0
*AI is causing all these problems for society, while their programs weren't even developed legally. Most Large Language Models, on which Artificial Intelligence programs are based, are produced with Pirated Copyrighted Materials.
*This piracy was mentioned at the U.S. Senate judiciary hearing into the AI industry in 2025, ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works,’ in the opening remarks by Chair Josh Hawley:
“The largest intellectual property theft in American history...
"AI companies are training their models on stolen material. Period. That is just the fact of the matter...
"We’re talking about piracy, we’re talking about theft. For years A.I. companies have stolen massive amounts of Copyrighted material from illegal online repositories. Now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regularly prosecute individuals who engage in exactly the same kind of behavior...
"The amount of material that we’re talking about is absolutely mindboggling. We’re talking about every book and every academic article ever written. Let me say that again, every book and every article ever written. Billions of pages of Copyrighted works. Enough to fill 22 libraries the size of the Library of Congress. Think about that: 22 Libraries of Congresses full of works. That is how much has been stolen and this theft was not some innocent mistake, they knew exactly what they were doing. They pirated these materials willfully.”
Reference: Senate Judiciary Hearing On 'AI Industry's Mass Ingestion Of Copyrighted Works'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3rLSWoYnis
*Other speakers at that hearing also testified about the piracy of copyrighted materials by AI companies:
“Every major large language model in commercial use today was trained on pirated books.” – D. Baldacci
“Evidence shows that Gen AI companies have willfully, knowingly and repeatedly trained on pirated materials.” – B. Viswanathan
“The largest domestic piracy of intellectual property in our nation’s history.” – M. Pritt
Reference: ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works for AI Training,’ July 2025, U.S. Senate Judiciary
*AI programs might also be in breach of the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives authors an exclusive right to their own material:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
(U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8)
*Copyright holders have this exclusive right. However, most Large Language Models were produced using pirated copyrighted work, which was copied without the owner’s permission.
*******************************
Therefore, LLMs and AI programs
(built on pirated copyrighted materials)
and any content produced using LLMs and AI programs
(built on pirated copyrighted materials)
should be BANNED because they are ILLEGAL.
*******************************
*Including ChatGPT and other AI programs which trained on pirated copyrighted materials.
A 2024 Forbes article describes the training process of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT:
“any content accessible on the internet was considered fair game for training their large language models (LLMs). This included everything from pirated book archives and content behind paywalls to user-generated content from platforms like Reddit and copyrighted materials without explicit permission.”
Reference: Forbes, ‘Ex OpenAI Researcher: How ChatGPT’s Training Violated Copyright Law’
*As described above, OpenAI trained on pirated material and copyrighted content obtained without permission, to make ChatGPT. That means the program and any content produced with the program is ILLEGAL and should be BANNED.
*Many copyright infringement law suits against AI companies are working through American courts: 40+ cases as discussed in the July 2025 hearing; the number more than doubled over the next year to a total of 131 cases as of August 2026.
Source: (on the original image, each dot is a clickable link to the actual case) https://chatgptiseatingtheworld.com/ai-copyrightcase-timeline/
*There would have been no need for all these law suits if AI developers had decided not to use stolen data, and instead develop their programs in a legal way.
*But because they chose to develop their programs illegally, using stolen copyrighted data without the copyright owner’s consent, the programs and content based on pirated copyrighted materials should be BANNED because they are ILLEGAL.
*It is possible for these types of programs to be produced in a legal way. A few LLMs or AI programs have been developed legally, which of course are not included in this demand. Programs using ‘clean’ non-stolen data apparently includes the LLMs called C4C, Open License Corpus, KL3M, Common Pile and Common Corpus.
Reference: ‘Common Corpus: The Largest Collection of Ethical Data for LLM Pre-Training’
https://arxiv.org/html/2506.01732v3
*KL3M introduced itself in February 2024 as the ‘first Legal Large Language Model.’ So that means that LLMs before that were all illegal?
https://273ventures.com/kl3m-the-first-legal-large-language-model/
*Some Fairly Trained certified AI models are listed here:
https://www.fairlytrained.org/certified-models
The above programs should be how all LLMs and AIs are developed: legally, using data licensed or obtained with consent from creators.
But the other more widely used LLM/AI models, such as ChatGPT, which are based on pirated copyrighted materials, should be BANNED because they’re ILLEGAL!
*Content made from these illegally produced programs might not need to be deleted, because people using the program might be innocent. But this content based on pirated copyrighted materials should be BANNED from competing in the marketplace against creators of the copyrighted content which built the programs. Because that is not a Fair Use to compete with original creators.
*I’m not proposing this to be snooty by following the letter of the law. I’m doing this because Generative AI is causing far more harm than good in many areas of society. (Flooding the market with ‘AI slop,’ enabling scams, harassment, deception, data centre pollution etc.)
*Fortunately there is a simple solution: these AI programs which are causing such harm to creators, society and the environment were based on illegally obtained copyrighted materials, used without the copyright owner's permission, which makes them illegal, so the programs should be BANNED for being ILLEGAL!
*AI companies try to claim their copying of copyrighted content without permission (including from illegal sources) is ‘Fair Use,’ but they are wrong: they’ve twisted the notion of what Fair Use is supposed to achieve. Fair Use is meant to allow a small amount of copying for educational purposes and so on. Fair Use was not established to allow the widespread copying of the entire world’s copyrighted creative and academic material to compete with original creators in the marketplace! Which is what AI companies are doing. The notion that this could be Fair Use is absurd, it’s the complete opposite of Fair Use.
This was discussed in ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works’ by American Law Professor B. Viswanathan:
“Flooding the market with sub-par works that substitute for the original works; this is not what Fair Use was intended to achieve, or to facilitate.
“And the very fact that these companies are arguing, ‘We’re in good faith, we’re doing Fair Use purposes,’ to me, this shouldn’t even be a defense that they’re allowed to raise. But okay, they will raise it and it will be litigated. But, boy, this does not seem coincident with what Fair Use was ever meant to do.”
*She also points out that Fair Use is meant to have a “societally beneficial reason,” (such as in education):
“Fair Use, for those of you who don’t take my copyright class... is an affirmative defence: ‘Yes, I infringed, but I did it for a good reason.’ A societally beneficial reason.
“Alright, maybe creating a world repository of Generative AI companies is that. But it doesn’t seem to me that it squares with the other things that we think of as Fair Use. What’s well established Fair Use? Education, criticism, commentary, First Amendment purposes, that we consider valuable and necessary, that are done in good faith.”
*However, the vast number of problems which AI is causing (scams, harassment, deception, flooding the market with ‘AI slop,’ loss of income for creators, journalists, academics and many other jobs, ‘AI fatigue,’ hallucinations, data centre pollution of the environment, antique book destruction) far outweigh any benefits.
More references for these problems:
*Scams: 'What Are AI Scams? A Guide for Older Adults'
https://www.ncoa.org/article/what-are-ai-scams-a-guide-for-older-adults/
*Harassment: Advox, 'How artificial intelligence can be weaponized for harassment'
*Deception: 'The Great AI Deception Has Already Begun'
*Loss of income: 'Artists brace as AI, the greatest theft in history, swamps us now'
https://michaelwest.com.au/artists-brace-as-ai-the-greatest-theft-in-history-swamps-us-now/
*Journalists: 'AI Theft Of Independent Journalism Is Now Common'
*Academics: 'Why Academics Are Burning Out Over AI'
*AI fatigue: 'AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it'
https://siddhantkhare.com/writing/ai-fatigue-is-real
*Hallucinations: Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence)
*Data centre pollution: 'The Dangers of Data Centers'
https://www.environmentalhealthproject.org/post/the-dangers-of-data-centers
*Book destruction: 'AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books'
In what way do these problems benefit society? Does AI have any benefits which it needed to steal the entire world’s copyrighted information to achieve? There may be useful applications of AI, but the companies could have built their programs on public domain information, without needing to break copyright law.
*For more information on why the use of pirated copyrighted materials isn’t ‘Fair Use’, as AI companies try to claim, with references of the society-wide harm which AI is causing, and mention of the huge number of campaigns, cases, complaints and criticisms against Generative AI, see my other protest:
Demand tech companies release all copyright holders data used in training of Generative AI
*Or you could search for the more than 1000 separate protests by other people here at change.org which relate to 'artificial intelligence,' such as the following examples:
Protect our stories from theft : protect our humanity
https://www.change.org/p/protect-our-stories-from-theft-protect-our-humanity
Stand Up for Creative Rights in the Age of AI -- Support the US Copyright Office
Ban And Put A Stop To Unwanted AI Data Centers In The U.S.
https://www.change.org/p/ban-and-put-a-stop-to-unwanted-ai-data-centers-in-the-u-s
Don't Let AI Drink Before The Human Race - We're Running Out
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-let-ai-drink-before-the-human-race-we-re-running-out
KEEP HUMANITY IN STORYTELLING! Support human narration of audiobooks!
https://www.change.org/p/keep-humanity-in-storytelling-support-human-narration-of-audiobooks
Stop AI Theft from Artists
https://www.change.org/p/artists-against-ai-theft
Don’t Let AI Profit From Music Without Paying Artists
https://www.change.org/p/don-t-let-ai-profit-from-music-without-paying-artists
Make destroying vintage books for AI a felony
https://www.change.org/p/make-destroying-vintage-books-for-ai-a-felony
Those are just a few examples of the harm to society caused by AI programs. This harm to society goes against the ‘societally beneficial’ principle of Fair Use.
So these LLM and AI programs based on ILLEGALLY PIRATED COPYRIGHTED information copied without their owner’s permission,
Are ILLEGAL and should be BANNED.
*Note: During the U.S. Senate judiciary hearing ‘Examining the AI Industry’s Mass Ingestion of Copyrighted Works,’ it was pointed out by Chair Josh Hawley that the FBI prosecutes individuals for similar acts of theft to those perpetrated by AI companies:
“For years A.I. companies have stolen massive amounts of Copyrighted material from illegal online repositories. Now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security regularly prosecute individuals who engage in exactly the same kind of behavior using platforms like Limewire, or Napster in the old days, using a process called ‘Torrenting’. But have these big tech companies been prosecuted? No, of course not, they’re getting off scot-free.”
Just in case this was an oversight, I used the above referenced quote from the U.S. Senate, and reported this 'largest IP theft in history' to the FBI:
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Petition created on 10 August 2026