Source: Waxy
John Koenig's poetic Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows—a culturally significant indie project built over years—became a target for wholesale AI training data theft, with multiple scraper sites republishing his work verbatim to feed language models. This is systematic IP extraction from niche creative work that can't afford legal defense, establishing a precedent where individual creators become training-set raw material for commercial AI companies. The incident exposes how "fair use" arguments collapse when applied to systematic, unauthorized harvesting at scale. Mid-tier creators now need to actively defend against being turned into AI training data.