Tag Archives: copyright

A thief in the night

By Hugh Andrew | Wed 23rd April 2025 - 8:38 am

Imagine if you will that you are sitting quietly in your house when you hear the door open. A man comes in and starts helping himself to your possessions. You remonstrate with him and he pays no attention. A quick phone call brings in the authorities but to your astonishment they arrive, ignore you, congratulate the thief and tell him that to incentivise him in his good work he will get a series of tax breaks.

It couldn’t happen here.

It is.

We are a publisher and recent months have seen a growing swell of complaints from our authors about theft of their texts without any permission. At least 7.5 million books without license or recompense into Artificial Intelligence systems, tens of millions of articles and shorter pieces. The action of the UK government is not to defend the intellectual copyrights and property of its citizens but to legislatively legitimise this theft with a generous dose of cream in tax breaks on top.