Ahead of a long-anticipated assessment from the British government on artificial intelligence and copyright law, thousands of authors joined a collaborative protest book, the Guardian reported.
Its title — Don't Steal This Book — was an apparent reference to activist Abbie Hoffman's 1971 anti-establishment classic, Steal This Book.
While the new edition arguably shares some of the anti-capitalist themes of Hoffman's work, it is markedly different in terms of content — consisting simply of a list of their names.
The tome was distributed at the London Book Fair on March 10, ahead of UK officials weighing in on AI training and copyrighted material by March 18. The protest was organized by Ed Newton-Rex, an advocate and founder of the group Fairly Trained.
Newton-Rex maintained that AI models have been "built on stolen work [which was] taken without permission or payment" by technology firms.
"This is not a victimless crime," he told the Guardian. "Generative AI competes with the people whose work it is trained on, robbing them of their livelihoods. The government must protect the UK's creatives, and refuse to legalise the theft of creative work by AI companies."
Authors, artists, and actors were among the first to raise public objections at the onslaught of AI, with novelists whose work was used to train models leading the pack.
However, copyright is far from the only area of friction amid widespread AI integration, which has upended education, the workplace, and aspects of day-to-day life. AI investment accelerated in 2025, and along with it came the construction of new data centers.
Not long after that, people living near data centers began to complain of noise and air pollution. But the disruptions haven't been limited to areas immediately adjacent to data centers, as their massive energy demands have apparently driven up electric bills across the country.
Promising AI applications have emerged, such as crop yield optimization, water management, and advanced weather forecasting. But positive social impacts may be undermined by unchecked AI development and disregard for social, economic, and ecological consequences.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 On March 6, the House of Lords' Communications and Digital Committee "published a detailed and rather damning report" on UK creatives and the effects of generative AI, according to the European law firm Fieldfisher, advising the British Government to consider stronger protections.
Don't Steal This Book succinctly acknowledges these impacts on the book's back cover.
"The UK government must not legalize book theft to benefit AI companies," it asserts.
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