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> “By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other use
by loeg 2y ago
> “By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other users of pirated books,” the amended complaint notes.
> “Put another way, by opting to use a bit torrent system to download LibGen’s voluminous collection of pirated books, Meta ‘seeded’ pirated books to other users worldwide.”
It is possible to (ab)use the bittorrent ecosystem and download without sharing at all. I don't know if this is what Meta did, or not.
- butterandguns 2y agoHypothetically you could just not seed.
- loeg 2y agoRight, that's what I'm talking about. I.e. https://github.com/pmoor/bitthief https://github.com/pmoor/bitthief and similar.
- cactusplant7374 2y agoThat is probably exactly what they did if they were smart about it.
- qingcharles 2y agoI was (partly) responsible for obtaining recordings for a Very Large Online Streaming Service(tm). Sometimes the studios would send us trucks filled with CDs. Sometimes they didn't have any easily accessible copies of the albums and would tell us to just "get it however..." which often involved SoulSeek, Limewire, etc. We were not smart about it. We just found the stuff and hit download. To the point where there were days the corp Internet was saturated from too many P2P clients running.
- wongarsu 2y agoHowever since this is a civil case they don't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Meta seeded torrents. If they did use torrents the presumption would be that they used a regular bittorrent client with regular settings, and it would be on Meta to show they didn't do that.
- loeg 2y agoI am not commenting on any legal mechanics. Just technical details.
- anon373839 2y agoMeta can show this with testimony. (Employee: “I opened the settings and disabled sharing.”) This is a difficult theory for the plaintiffs to prevail on, since they would have no evidence of their own to contradict Meta’s testimony to keep the issue in play. Which is why they’re asking for client logs - and good luck with that.