13 ms·
Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues
- icase 7mo agopiracy is not wrong, no matter who does it.
- lukan 7mo agoThe world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
- elric 7mo agoBig companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.
- DeathArrow 7mo agoI haven't changed. I was pro 20 years ago and I am pro now.
- Ekaros 7mo agoJust need to get around to understand that on many subjects big companies are not uniform block... They all have their own goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers and state.
- dns_snek 7mo ago> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. The activists are against it because the big guys are exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these companies.
- armchairhacker 7mo agoPeople would care if Meta is allowed to torrent from Nintendo and they aren’t, because they’d care if Meta bought licenses from Nintendo and open models couldn’t get those licenses.
- gzread 7mo agoOpen models would just torrent Nintendo IP and train on it anyway.
- willis936 7mo agoIt's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
- GrinningFool 7mo ago2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible. For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to, with many justifications layered on top.
- gzread 7mo agothat's the same thing?
- cmiles74 7mo agoIt wedged distribution away from record companies. IMHO, that was a pretty big concern for them.
- kjkjadksj 7mo agoAnd in 2004 you had a tape deck with two bays meant for copying and none of your tapes or cds were real. You’d make copies from other people or even the radio or TV. People forget how piracy was actually the norm before the digital age attempted to crack down on it. Even just passing a book you enjoyed to a friend to read, can you even do that with ebook DRM?
- armchairhacker 7mo agoLLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales. The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t. Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoThe problem is that laws don't apply to these big companies but to the small guys. It isn't as if piracy has suddenly become legal for everybody. Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are different for everybody and that's what activists are worried about :)
- plutokras 7mo agoI have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country — and soon in Italy as well — all storage media sales include a small levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating content I don't feel like paying for. By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.
- jagged-chisel 7mo agoHow does that money get distributed? If I create a film, how they decide if I’m worthy enough to receive some of that money?
- progval 7mo agoThe way it works in France is that money goes to a company that collects it on behalf of all copyright holders. Its website does not offer any documentation as to how copyright holders can claim their share.
- imglorp 7mo agoThat sounds pretty shady. There's also the problem that most media generated globally is not French. Do they pretend to distribute the spoils globally?
- gzread 7mo agoIn reality the system in these countries is pure corruption. The beneficiaries are large corporations who see it as an extra revenue stream and that's it.
- lukan 7mo agoNot completely. I know some french musicians who are great artists, but are not mainstream enough to sell enough records - and they do get state money to continue their art (progressive/psychedelic music, nothing tame).
- vjk800 7mo agoIf Meta wins this, does it mean that pirating becomes legal again?
- actionfromafar 7mo agoProbably only if you are giving "back to Humanity" or something like that? :-D
- bytehowl 7mo agoSo seeding will be legally enforced? Nice.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoNo you must prove that you have at a minimum 100 hundred billion stock valuation! :-D Or else it doesn't count.
- jacquesm 7mo agoNothing has changed: the money flows in the same direction as before, that's the constant. The courts are just a diode in a rectifier.
- j-bos 7mo agoThe activists seem to be so blinded by disdain they can't even consider the value of the precedent if it goes theough.
- archagon 7mo agoSomehow I doubt the precedent will apply to common folk. There will be some obscene carevout like “piracy fair use for corporations training frontier models” and we’ll be even worse off than we were before.
- gzread 7mo agoActivists are against AI training, not bittorrent
- swed420 7mo agoYou're probably both right since activists are not a consistent monolith.
- sumeno 7mo agoIt's almost like things can be good or bad in different contexts
- candlemas 7mo agoBack in 2015 Twitter bragged that Periscope had been widely used the night before to pirate a pay-per-view boxing match. I thought that was odd. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-streaming-twitter-app-steals-the-show-on-boxings-big-night.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-stream...
- crazygringo 7mo ago> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists. And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company wants different things from a big guy book publisher.
- jMyles 7mo ago> Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists. ...uhhh, I mean, maybe my perspective is skewed because I largely run in bluegrass/deadhead circles, but the venn diagram of these two seems to be nearly a circle. https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
- tototrains 7mo agoIt is not strange. Power serves power. Power lies without consequence. This is consistent.
- 999900000999 7mo agoBilly downloading a copy of Game of Thrones because he's too poor to afford one, is radically different than super billionaires who just don't want to pay for a license. Meta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with impunity. I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
- Legend2440 7mo agoPolitics will make more sense once you realize that no one is really trying to have consistent principles. People (and corporations/politicians/neighborhood groups/unions/countries/whatever) are by and large for whatever they think will benefit them, and against what they think will hurt them.
- w4yai 7mo agoOh, how the tables have turned...
- heavyset_go 7mo agoI remember in the 90s and 2000s, the FBI would go after homeless people selling bootleg VHS and DVDs on the street lol
- ReptileMan 7mo agoSince the creation of the USA the only real crime a person could do was being poor.
- sigwinch 7mo agoICE played an important role in those cases with long supply chains. Seems quaint now, but I think we should acknowledge any criminal who does not participate in a child abuse ring. Those counterfeit DVDs were not illegal content, just illegal storefronts. If today’s ICE or FBI uncovered such a ring, who would they call first?
- Sayrus 7mo ago> Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works. What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in minutes by the plaintiffs.
- Ekaros 7mo agoI can't believe that no one has ever tried that one before... So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted?
- Sayrus 7mo agoFrom my understanding, Meta's use of the pirated book was accepted as fair use and the plaintiffs admitted to no harm. In the case of pirated music and films, neither of those points are made. Copyright holders assume people who pirate would have bought the content, usually even assuming that one download is one lost sale. And I am not aware of a single case where watching or listening to pirated content was accepted as fair use. It is interesting to follow how this plays out for Meta and how that will impact future cases.
- Hamuko 7mo agoWe consumers just need BiTorrent clients that come with LLM training code incorporated, as that transforms the downloads into fair use (according to the very expensive Meta legal team).
- RobotToaster 7mo agoOne of the underlying issues is that punitive damages seem to be the norm in US courts. In the UK you can only claim for the actual damages incurred, which at most will be the profit you would've made on the sale of that book. Which makes most claims for private infringement uneconomical for corporations.
- 7mo ago
- bell-cot 7mo agoGut reaction: Judge needs to upload Meta's lawyers to jail cells, explaining "that's simply how the technology works".
- 9244284328 7mo ago[flagged]
- Imustaskforhelp 7mo agoIs this number that you have on your username your phone number and the text your name? Why would you sort of doxx yourself and how is it relevant to the thread? Are you a bot?
- wizzwizz4 7mo agoCould be doxxing someone else.
- villgax 7mo agoLiterally admitting to theft & whining about the modus which got them caught lol
- carlosjobim 7mo agoA related case: "Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B US to settle author class action over AI training" https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/anthropic-ai-copyright-settlement-1.7626707 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/anthropic-ai-copyright-sett...
- Havoc 7mo agoMeanwhile some kid downloads a song and gets lynched for it
- GaryBluto 7mo agoThe last time that happened in the US was over 18 years ago.
- david_shi 7mo agoAt some point, the contradiction of "law as something impartial" and "law bends to the whims of power" will need to be resolved.
- postepowanieadm 7mo agoBad news, it's already been resolved.
- senko 7mo agoWholly agreed. The way Disney &co coopted law to pack their coffers is a travesty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- armchairhacker 7mo agoEverything bends to power, by definition. And laws can’t be impartial because they’re not based in hard science: terms like “murder”, “assault”, “theft”, etc. are ambiguous thus up to interpretation (e.g. is a scam theft? If so, what defines a scam? If “lying”, what’s the difference from “misleading”, or if there’s no difference, what defines “misleading”…) My best idea for a solution is better education, so people don’t make bad laws then badly enforce them.
- gzread 7mo agoRight problem, wrong solution. You can't build something that doesn't bend to power, by definition. You have to take away the power.
- armchairhacker 7mo agoPower can only be redistributed. Education also bends to power (people can be “educated” via propaganda), but it’s harder because people have some level of critical thinking. You can only chain so many lies before they contradict each other or live experience.
- y0eswddl 7mo ago
- tormeh 7mo agoWe're reaching levels of "move fast and break things" previously only thought possible under laboratory conditions. Seriously? They couldn't be bothered setting upload speed to 0?
- chazburger 7mo ago[flagged]
- throawayonthe 7mo agocommunism is when the state protects interests of capital
- chazburger 7mo ago[flagged]
- dizzy9 7mo agoSome of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. The legal maximum was $150,000 per infringement: when a staffer leaked an early cut of the Wolverine movie, the studio could only sue for that much.
- jazz9k 7mo agoChildren can commit crimes too. It's funny, because now in the age of AI, many of the people that support piracy are now trying to stop AI companies from doing the same thing.
- bravetraveler 7mo ago'Same thing', hah. This was edited out, but I'm quoting it anyway: > I should trot out all of the justifications here. I'll start: personal use instead of profit. Certainly a difference, not convinced justification is required or even advisable.
- functionmouse 7mo ago[flagged]
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- mikkupikku 7mo agoA child stole a candy bar from my shop, time to bankrupt his whole working class family! ^ sociopathic legalists really do think this way.
- Shadowmist 7mo agoThat child was just a fan of chocolate!
- PLenz 7mo agoThis is the real reason the ultra rich are buying media companies. They expect the existing copyright laws to prevail in court and to either make significant revenue licensing IP for training or to take large stakes in AI companies in return for the IP. Only data is a moat, not algos, not compute.
- cmiles74 7mo agoSeems like a bad bet to me. It looks like authors are going to lose this case setting the precedent that you not only don’t need to license training data, obtaining it illegally (for free) is totally okay.
- Aerroon 7mo agoDidn't Anthropic's case already set the precedent that training itself is fine? It's not like copyrighted novels are a large portion of human-generated text data. It's just the stuff that's easier to get because it's preserved in bulk. Video transcription has more or less been solved. Imagine how much data Google has in YouTube transcripts. And the longer these AI chat bots operate the more data they manage to collect for training as well (I think Google making it so you can easily upvote or downvote a response by the bot is a good idea).
- heavyset_go 7mo agoIIRC the Anthropic case was non-precendent setting for some reason that I don't remember
- zozbot234 7mo agoIf this happens then free and open content (the Wikipedia model, more or less) becomes a hugely impactful "commoditize the complement" play for the big AI and tech firms. Every good piece of open content is something that AI firms don't have to license from a proprietary supplier. And if models trained on entirely open content can write an acceptable "first draft" of something new, that's huge acceleration.
- gorbachev 7mo agoFeeling very conflicted right now. On the other hand, it'd be absolutely hilarious if they succeeded with this argument. VPN vendors would not find that as hilarious I bet. And on another the hypocrisy is mindboggling. I guess you can't blame the lawyers from going after every angle, but this is quite creative. But really I do just want to find out if money continues to buy justice. I sincerely hope Facebook loses and is found to have knowingly infringed on copyright of all the books in the lawsuit. At $150K per violation, I'd almost feel bad for the poor shareholders. Zuck would probably take full responsibility and fire tens of thousand of workers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 7mo agoI wonder how many of the torrent site whales are backed by big tech or industry. Some people share like petabytes of data on multiple sites. It's an insane amount.
- iririririr 7mo ago"i shoot them as it was fair use to taking their wallet. that's how the protocol work." how much you have to bribe a judge to even begin to consider saying that in a defense?
- AlienRobot 7mo agoEvery pirate website can claim fair use in its footer. Doesn't mean the judge will take it seriously.
- everdrive 7mo agoEveryone's pointing out the obvious hypocrisy here, but I think it's more interesting if Meta succeeds in making this argument: can I just steal any book I want and share it with anyone? Does the same apply to music, movies, TV shows, and video games?
- AlienRobot 7mo agoOnly if you are Facebook.
- luqtas 7mo agobut if i'm Facebook, can't i pay thousands books?
- unforgivenpasta 7mo agoI wonder if big companies will now start paying shadow libraries like annas archive for direct access, to minimize publicity of how training data was acquired, like Nvidia supposedly did? Few tens of thousands of dollars is a rounding error in Meta's bottom line but if this case goes anything like the Anthropic one, I would see it likely. Of course it wouldn't prevent authors from asking LLM's for content from their books and suing Meta again but I imagine authors would be less likely to with less evidence.
- Pannoniae 7mo agoThey already do....
- yieldcrv 7mo ago> the company argued that uploading pirated books to other BitTorrent users during the torrent download process also qualifies as fair use ... as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works. as someone that's disabled upload when I'm downloading copyrighted material via bittorrent for decades, it is absolutely a choice so there's that
- ChoGGi 7mo agoIs it weird that I'm on Meta's side for this?
- markus_zhang 7mo agoCan Meta fight Nintendo, too? Would love to see two legal Leviathans fight each other.
- dehrmann 7mo agoThis is a desperate defense. They're making it because they have to try something, but I doubt the court will buy it. This is a class action brought by authors, so while Meta has deep pockets, I expect this will actually settle, with named plaintiffs getting payouts authors will find big and the rest of the class getting scraps. If a major media company were the plaintiff, I'd expect this to get very expensive quickly.
- staplung 7mo agoI'm a little surprised Meta is even bothering to fight this. I mean the argument looks farcical to me be IANAL and weirder things have happened. If they do end up losing they'll have to pay however many millions to their law firms plus whatever the in or out of court settlement end ups being. And you just know that whatever they end up paying will be so tiny that it will just be seen as the cost of doing business. From a corporation's perspective it's always better to break the law and maybe pay a tiny fine (if you get caught and can't argue your way out of it) than it is to follow the law and miss out on profit/revenue/strategic advantage etc.
- tap-snap-or-nap 7mo agoCourts lose respect when their rules are not consistent and almost always favouring a legal fiction of a corporation being a person and a real person or any non-human specie on this planet as the lesser and a commodity. There must be a better way to maintain order and ensure progress.
- goldylochness 7mo agoit's interesting that meta is at the forefront of any legal battles for AI when they're not at the forefront of the technological race
- rrgok 7mo agoSo, when I steal a sandwich because I'm hungry and I don't have money, is it fair use? What can I do, this how the market works, right?
- globemaster99 7mo agoAaron swartz paid with his life for the same mission. just because some over zealous, psycho attorney called Carmen Ortiz decided to put him in behind the bars for life. I hope and wish that young man lived a prosperous life.
- tsoukase 7mo agoIt's insane that with enough money you can support any claim you like. You can prove rapists as innocents even in the most strict judicial system. That's not justice or democracy.
- heavyset_go 7mo agoThe law is a weapon to keep the peons in their place, justice does not exist unless you're rich. Look at plea bargain rates by demographics and you'll see it.