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I'm not sure if Meta did anything illegal in 2. either. I thought the copyright infringement was by the people who provided the copyrighted material when they

by Lerc 1y ago

I'm not sure if Meta did anything illegal in 2. either. I thought the copyright infringement was by the people who provided the copyrighted material when they did not have the rights to do so. I may be wrong on this, but it would seem a reasonable protection for consumers in general. Meta is hardly an average consumer, but I doubt that matters in the case of the law. Having grounds to suspect that the provider did not have the rights might though.

CyberMacGyver 1y ago
The source being illegal doesn’t make your use legal. Infact one could argue that it’s equally illegal or worse since a corporation knowingly engaged in illegal activity.
- Lerc 1y ago
  Well obviously, but the converse is also true. The source being illegal doesn't make your use illegal. In the eyes of the law it doesn't matter if something is better or worse, it's the law, it shouldn't be confused with morality. An act is illegal if the law says it is and isn't if it isn't. Just by being involved as a party does not make you culpable. Murderers are criminals, the murdered, less so. Choosing to be a party might not make you culpable. You may be an active participant but unaware of the law breaking (being defrauded). Or the law may explicitly state that you can engage with people committing criminal acts and reap the benefits so long as you don't break those laws (or encourage them to be broken) yourself. Some forms of journalism are protected in this way. Ultimately to have a case you have to state. 1. What law was broken 2. How an action by a party is in violation of that law. 3. That the action actually happened. The largest problem with this case is not that 3. is in doubt but showing which 1. and 2. they are talking about.
rixthefox 1y ago
> but it would seem a reasonable protection for consumers in general. The final say may ultimately come from the Cox vs Record Labels case from 2019 that is still working it's way through the appeal courts. If the record labels win their appeal, anyone who helped facilitate the infringement can be brought into a lawsuit. The record labels sued Cox for infringement by it's users. It's not out of the question that any ISP that provides Internet connectivity to Facebook could be pulled in for damages. For Meta these two cases could result in an existential threat to the company, and rightly so because the record labels do not play games. The blood is already in the water.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  So they promise to all their ISPs not to torrent again, and the ISPs keep accepting big piles of money to provide service? I don't see how that's a threat to Meta.
singron 1y ago
The original complaint alleges that the training process requires copying the material into the model and thus requires consent of the copyright holder. (Copyright protects copying but notably not use, so the complaint has to say they copied it in order to have standing). Then it says they didn't have consent. They also mention Books3, but they don't appear to actually allege anything against Meta in regards to it and are just providing context. I don't think it actually changes anything material about this complaint if Meta bought all the books at a bookstore since that also doesn't give you the right to copy the works. The original complaint is 2 years old though, so I don't really know the current state of argumentation. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569326/1/kadrey-v-meta-platforms-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569326/1/kadrey-v-met... Note that incidental copying (i.e. temporary copies made by computers in order to perform otherwise legal actions) is generally legal, so "copying" in the complaint can't refer merely to this and must refer more broadly to the model itself being a copy in order to have standing.
knowitnone 1y ago
So you're saying I can legally download movies as long as I don't provide them to others? Sweet!
blibble 1y ago
Blizzard managed to get a copyright infringement win against a defendant company that merely accessed their game client (IP) in memory: a cheat reading values of player position IP that had been previously loaded by Blizzard itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar....
- Lerc 1y ago
  That link says that 'win' was a summary judgement that was reversed upon appeal. It seems the case is ongoing, but the case against the company is not one of them committing copyright infringement, but that copyright infringement occurred that they encouraged, enabled, and profited from.
lsaferite 1y ago
Even if your belief that only the person *providing* the content is liable, do you honestly think a single person found all the content, downloaded it, directly trained the model themselves, and then deleted the content? If at any step the content was given or shared to anyone else for any reason, have they not converted into a provider themselves?
- Lerc 1y ago
  That in itself is a complicated issue, but I would suspect that this does not count as copyright infringement. The entity in possession of the data does not change, the copies and manipulation are performed by employees but at no time do they own what they are manipulating. If it were true that this constitutes a transfer of possession, then the targets for the lawsuit should be the individual employees, and I don't think anyone wants that.
  - lsaferite 1y ago
    I would counter that they were operating under the direction of the corporation and, as such, the corporation should be liable. But, I'm not a lawyer. My overall point is just that a corporation willfully violating copyright should be treated wholly differently than an individual. I still think that, regardless of any copyright violation by the corporation in acquiring the content, that training with the data doesn't (or shouldn't) somehow taint the resulting model.
    - Lerc 1y ago
      >I still think that, regardless of any copyright violation by the corporation in acquiring the content, that training with the data doesn't (or shouldn't) somehow taint the resulting model. Yes. Building the data set, acquiring the data set, training the model, using the model, and using the output of a model are all separate actions, it is not necessarily the case that any legal standing in one act transfers down the chain. It's certainly not going to be resolved by a single case.

by Lerc 1y ago

CyberMacGyver 1y ago

The source being illegal doesn’t make your use legal. Infact one could argue that it’s equally illegal or worse since a corporation knowingly engaged in illegal activity.

Lerc 1y ago
Well obviously, but the converse is also true. The source being illegal doesn't make your use illegal. In the eyes of the law it doesn't matter if something is better or worse, it's the law, it shouldn't be confused with morality. An act is illegal if the law says it is and isn't if it isn't. Just by being involved as a party does not make you culpable. Murderers are criminals, the murdered, less so. Choosing to be a party might not make you culpable. You may be an active participant but unaware of the law breaking (being defrauded). Or the law may explicitly state that you can engage with people committing criminal acts and reap the benefits so long as you don't break those laws (or encourage them to be broken) yourself. Some forms of journalism are protected in this way. Ultimately to have a case you have to state. 1. What law was broken 2. How an action by a party is in violation of that law. 3. That the action actually happened. The largest problem with this case is not that 3. is in doubt but showing which 1. and 2. they are talking about.

rixthefox 1y ago

> but it would seem a reasonable protection for consumers in general. The final say may ultimately come from the Cox vs Record Labels case from 2019 that is still working it's way through the appeal courts. If the record labels win their appeal, anyone who helped facilitate the infringement can be brought into a lawsuit. The record labels sued Cox for infringement by it's users. It's not out of the question that any ISP that provides Internet connectivity to Facebook could be pulled in for damages. For Meta these two cases could result in an existential threat to the company, and rightly so because the record labels do not play games. The blood is already in the water.

Dylan16807 1y ago
So they promise to all their ISPs not to torrent again, and the ISPs keep accepting big piles of money to provide service? I don't see how that's a threat to Meta.

singron 1y ago

The original complaint alleges that the training process requires copying the material into the model and thus requires consent of the copyright holder. (Copyright protects copying but notably not use, so the complaint has to say they copied it in order to have standing). Then it says they didn't have consent. They also mention Books3, but they don't appear to actually allege anything against Meta in regards to it and are just providing context. I don't think it actually changes anything material about this complaint if Meta bought all the books at a bookstore since that also doesn't give you the right to copy the works. The original complaint is 2 years old though, so I don't really know the current state of argumentation. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569326/1/kadrey-v-meta-platforms-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569326/1/kadrey-v-met... Note that incidental copying (i.e. temporary copies made by computers in order to perform otherwise legal actions) is generally legal, so "copying" in the complaint can't refer merely to this and must refer more broadly to the model itself being a copy in order to have standing.

knowitnone 1y ago

So you're saying I can legally download movies as long as I don't provide them to others? Sweet!

blibble 1y ago

Blizzard managed to get a copyright infringement win against a defendant company that merely accessed their game client (IP) in memory: a cheat reading values of player position IP that had been previously loaded by Blizzard itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzard_Entertainment,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDY_Industries,_LLC_v._Blizzar....

Lerc 1y ago
That link says that 'win' was a summary judgement that was reversed upon appeal. It seems the case is ongoing, but the case against the company is not one of them committing copyright infringement, but that copyright infringement occurred that they encouraged, enabled, and profited from.

lsaferite 1y ago

Even if your belief that only the person *providing* the content is liable, do you honestly think a single person found all the content, downloaded it, directly trained the model themselves, and then deleted the content? If at any step the content was given or shared to anyone else for any reason, have they not converted into a provider themselves?

Lerc 1y ago
That in itself is a complicated issue, but I would suspect that this does not count as copyright infringement. The entity in possession of the data does not change, the copies and manipulation are performed by employees but at no time do they own what they are manipulating. If it were true that this constitutes a transfer of possession, then the targets for the lawsuit should be the individual employees, and I don't think anyone wants that.
- lsaferite 1y ago
  I would counter that they were operating under the direction of the corporation and, as such, the corporation should be liable. But, I'm not a lawyer. My overall point is just that a corporation willfully violating copyright should be treated wholly differently than an individual. I still think that, regardless of any copyright violation by the corporation in acquiring the content, that training with the data doesn't (or shouldn't) somehow taint the resulting model.
  - Lerc 1y ago
    >I still think that, regardless of any copyright violation by the corporation in acquiring the content, that training with the data doesn't (or shouldn't) somehow taint the resulting model. Yes. Building the data set, acquiring the data set, training the model, using the model, and using the output of a model are all separate actions, it is not necessarily the case that any legal standing in one act transfers down the chain. It's certainly not going to be resolved by a single case.