7 ms·

Judge rejects Meta's claim that torrenting is “irrelevant” in AI copyright case

73 points by Bluestein 1y ago

bigbacaloa 1y ago
[dead]
ngold 1y ago
Sorta not really. They said the plaintiff had a non relevant argument or something.
bawolff 1y ago
So the argument is that by torrenting ebooks, meta provided bandwidth to the torrent network, and thus provided (financial??!) benefit to pirate sites? I got to be honest, that sounds extremely weak to me. The benefit to the pirate site of joining the torrent swam seems like it would be extremely slight.
- packetlost 1y ago
  The argument is that distribution is the infringement. This is basically the only thing torrenters get charged with.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    That does not seem to be the argument that was presented in the article.
- Lio 1y ago
  The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer. If it’s fine for a large corp. like Meta to pirate books then it’s fine for everyone else. If it’s a crime for ordinary consumers then it’s a crime for Meta too. Especially as Meta aren’t doing this for charity. They train LLMs for their own gain.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    > The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer. Or "shadow library" or whatever you want to call it. The argument according to the article is that the entity that created the torrent, which also as far as i understand also operates a traditional website, benefits from meta's actions. I think that is really far fetched.
blitzar 1y ago
Surely it should be a whole separate copyright case with fines of up to $150,000 per work infringed.
- Schnitz 1y ago
  It’s crazy, yet so predictable, that while the system tries to bankrupt individuals for torrenting a single book or movie in this case the excuse “it was just to train an LLM” will fly. Imagine a private individual would argue that in court.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Ironically, the Llama models enable people to fine-tune on their own material. A lot of people are doing exactly this.
Incipient 1y ago
I'm not sure how llms count as fair use. It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Or that statistical representations are fair use? Or is it the generation aspect? I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself? I feel like this has really blown a hole in copyright.
- userbinator 1y ago
  One should also keep in mind the countless people who got much of their education from pirated books.
  - Arainach 1y ago
    That has nothing to do with whether LLMs are fair use.
  - bilekas 1y ago
    This seems to be a bad faith argument, although it would be amusing to see Facebook use it. "Your honor, it's fair use because students have downloaded educational books for years."
  - timeon 1y ago
    People can process only fraction of that while using much more time to do that. And I'm using 'process' here to meet you in your nihilist argument that these algorithms are same as humans. Which is pretty strange because people barely acknowledge similarities with other mammals but suddenly software is equal.
- 7speter 1y ago
  The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use. I’m not familiar with the facts of the case and IANAL, and its late, but how did the plaintiffs determine their books were being used for training of the llm? Was the model spitting out language that was similar or verbatim to their works?
vessenes 1y ago
Just read (most) of the ruling. The ruling is fine. The judge is not Alsop but he’s not technically incompetent either, which is good. The torrent comments in general are nothing to get het up about; in summary 1) Meta wanted to download but not upload libgen and Anna’s after they couldn’t find anyone with rights to license that would talk to them. 2) they didn't want to distribute; just download. An engineer put in evidence that they restricted seeding successfully. 3) late in the case Silverman et al claimed while they hadnt been seeding they had been leeching and that counts as distribution (?!) Judge commented as follows 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing 2. Nobody could get llama to spit out more than a 60 token quote from a plaintiff book; thus llama is not made for infringement 3. We will need more briefing on this leeching thing which it is alleged is a form of distribution. The judge lays out what he thinks a workable claim to get to the supreme court would be, which is that these llms defeat the purpose of our copyright laws by reducing the amount of human creativity and expression available to those who want to create economic value through creativity. Eg where will the jobs for biographers go? I will say that debate is an active topic worldwide right now and a good question, with answers ranging from: “this maximizes human creativity bro” to “laser printers disrupted lead type foundries, that was great” to “nobody will ever write again and we are murdering our creative class and burning down their craftsman mid century modern homes.” It seems to me this will get taken up next session with SCOTUS but also that it’s a little early; we just don’t know where this is going exactly. Either way, I expect our current judge will learn that leeching is precisely NOT seeding once the defense legal team has time to brief him.
- bilekas 1y ago
  > 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here. Also there is no conditions on the source of the content ? If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ? Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ? This whole thing just reeks of "rules for thee but not for me".
ggm 1y ago
When do the outputs cease to be a derived work?
- guappa 1y ago
  When you're rich.
JimDabell 1y ago
That’s one hell of a headline for a story about Meta winning summary judgement for most of the claims against them. You’d be forgiven for thinking Meta lost this case, going by the headline.
- detaro 1y ago
  It's not a story about Meta winning (that previous story is linked in the first sentence), but a story expanding on the part where they didn't. The headline is totally appropriate for that piece.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
hshshshshsh 1y ago
Wait. So I can pirate any stuff as long as I intend to train an LLM with it?
- 123yawaworht456 1y ago
  my brother in Christ, you can pirate any stuff for any reason.
  - hshshshshsh 1y ago
    Haha. I meant legally. In EU it's common to get fined for pirating movies.
- plopilop 1y ago
  I mean it seems clear that Meta did not pirate the content to watch/read it. However, I guess according to the ruling you could pirate anything you want (but no seeding), produce a shitty haiku based on what you pirated and then claim fair use.
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
  No, because the downloading was considered illegal. You can use any book or movie you bought to train an LLM though.
feverzsj 1y ago
Feels more of political purpose as AI is now a "national strategy".
bgwalter 1y ago
The system wants to destroy creativity and humans. The system wants artists and writers to depend on the patronage of the ultra rich who steal their output. We are back to feudal society, except that monarchs or their advisers at least had taste as opposed to the Nouveau riche.
Teslazar 1y ago
If this case reaches the Supreme Court, one key consideration is the potential pressure to support the growth of U.S. AI companies. Rather than imposing strict legal restrictions that could hinder their ability to compete globally, especially against companies in countries with more lenient regulations like China, the Court may be inclined to take a more permissive stance.

73 points by Bluestein 1y ago

bigbacaloa 1y ago

[dead]

ngold 1y ago

Sorta not really. They said the plaintiff had a non relevant argument or something.

bawolff 1y ago

So the argument is that by torrenting ebooks, meta provided bandwidth to the torrent network, and thus provided (financial??!) benefit to pirate sites? I got to be honest, that sounds extremely weak to me. The benefit to the pirate site of joining the torrent swam seems like it would be extremely slight.

packetlost 1y ago
The argument is that distribution is the infringement. This is basically the only thing torrenters get charged with.
- bawolff 1y ago
  That does not seem to be the argument that was presented in the article.
Lio 1y ago
The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer. If it’s fine for a large corp. like Meta to pirate books then it’s fine for everyone else. If it’s a crime for ordinary consumers then it’s a crime for Meta too. Especially as Meta aren’t doing this for charity. They train LLMs for their own gain.
- bawolff 1y ago
  > The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer. Or "shadow library" or whatever you want to call it. The argument according to the article is that the entity that created the torrent, which also as far as i understand also operates a traditional website, benefits from meta's actions. I think that is really far fetched.

blitzar 1y ago

Surely it should be a whole separate copyright case with fines of up to $150,000 per work infringed.

Schnitz 1y ago
It’s crazy, yet so predictable, that while the system tries to bankrupt individuals for torrenting a single book or movie in this case the excuse “it was just to train an LLM” will fly. Imagine a private individual would argue that in court.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Ironically, the Llama models enable people to fine-tune on their own material. A lot of people are doing exactly this.

Incipient 1y ago

I'm not sure how llms count as fair use. It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Or that statistical representations are fair use? Or is it the generation aspect? I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself? I feel like this has really blown a hole in copyright.

userbinator 1y ago
One should also keep in mind the countless people who got much of their education from pirated books.
- Arainach 1y ago
  That has nothing to do with whether LLMs are fair use.
- bilekas 1y ago
  This seems to be a bad faith argument, although it would be amusing to see Facebook use it. "Your honor, it's fair use because students have downloaded educational books for years."
- timeon 1y ago
  People can process only fraction of that while using much more time to do that. And I'm using 'process' here to meet you in your nihilist argument that these algorithms are same as humans. Which is pretty strange because people barely acknowledge similarities with other mammals but suddenly software is equal.
7speter 1y ago
The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use. I’m not familiar with the facts of the case and IANAL, and its late, but how did the plaintiffs determine their books were being used for training of the llm? Was the model spitting out language that was similar or verbatim to their works?

vessenes 1y ago

Just read (most) of the ruling. The ruling is fine. The judge is not Alsop but he’s not technically incompetent either, which is good. The torrent comments in general are nothing to get het up about; in summary 1) Meta wanted to download but not upload libgen and Anna’s after they couldn’t find anyone with rights to license that would talk to them. 2) they didn't want to distribute; just download. An engineer put in evidence that they restricted seeding successfully. 3) late in the case Silverman et al claimed while they hadnt been seeding they had been leeching and that counts as distribution (?!) Judge commented as follows 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing 2. Nobody could get llama to spit out more than a 60 token quote from a plaintiff book; thus llama is not made for infringement 3. We will need more briefing on this leeching thing which it is alleged is a form of distribution. The judge lays out what he thinks a workable claim to get to the supreme court would be, which is that these llms defeat the purpose of our copyright laws by reducing the amount of human creativity and expression available to those who want to create economic value through creativity. Eg where will the jobs for biographers go? I will say that debate is an active topic worldwide right now and a good question, with answers ranging from: “this maximizes human creativity bro” to “laser printers disrupted lead type foundries, that was great” to “nobody will ever write again and we are murdering our creative class and burning down their craftsman mid century modern homes.” It seems to me this will get taken up next session with SCOTUS but also that it’s a little early; we just don’t know where this is going exactly. Either way, I expect our current judge will learn that leeching is precisely NOT seeding once the defense legal team has time to brief him.

bilekas 1y ago
> 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here. Also there is no conditions on the source of the content ? If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ? Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ? This whole thing just reeks of "rules for thee but not for me".

ggm 1y ago

When do the outputs cease to be a derived work?

guappa 1y ago
When you're rich.

JimDabell 1y ago

That’s one hell of a headline for a story about Meta winning summary judgement for most of the claims against them. You’d be forgiven for thinking Meta lost this case, going by the headline.

detaro 1y ago
It's not a story about Meta winning (that previous story is linked in the first sentence), but a story expanding on the part where they didn't. The headline is totally appropriate for that piece.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

hshshshshsh 1y ago

Wait. So I can pirate any stuff as long as I intend to train an LLM with it?

123yawaworht456 1y ago
my brother in Christ, you can pirate any stuff for any reason.
- hshshshshsh 1y ago
  Haha. I meant legally. In EU it's common to get fined for pirating movies.
plopilop 1y ago
I mean it seems clear that Meta did not pirate the content to watch/read it. However, I guess according to the ruling you could pirate anything you want (but no seeding), produce a shitty haiku based on what you pirated and then claim fair use.
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
No, because the downloading was considered illegal. You can use any book or movie you bought to train an LLM though.

feverzsj 1y ago

Feels more of political purpose as AI is now a "national strategy".

bgwalter 1y ago

The system wants to destroy creativity and humans. The system wants artists and writers to depend on the patronage of the ultra rich who steal their output. We are back to feudal society, except that monarchs or their advisers at least had taste as opposed to the Nouveau riche.

Teslazar 1y ago

If this case reaches the Supreme Court, one key consideration is the potential pressure to support the growth of U.S. AI companies. Rather than imposing strict legal restrictions that could hinder their ability to compete globally, especially against companies in countries with more lenient regulations like China, the Court may be inclined to take a more permissive stance.