5 ms·

So, does this mean that people can simply argue in court now (if they were to be prosecuted for downloading media via bittorrent) that it is fair use if they us

by ohbleek 7mo ago

So, does this mean that people can simply argue in court now (if they were to be prosecuted for downloading media via bittorrent) that it is fair use if they used it to train a local model on their machine?

bsenftner 7mo ago
Of course not. It is just yet another example of a 7-8 figure expensive attorney and their billions dollar corporation wasting everyone' time, tax payers dollars, and demonstrating that the law applies to us and not them. I expect them to just stop showing up in court in time. What can the court do when these people own the people that write the laws?
- Ekaros 7mo ago
  There really should be some type of panel for frivolous legal arguments. If they are used by corporation all of the lawyers, leadership and shareholders involved are thrown into jail. Could even get jury on this and have them give majority opinion.
  - post-it 7mo ago
    That seems like a bad idea to me.
yorwba 7mo ago
People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use. If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
- dotancohen 7mo ago
  It has been often said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    And a lawyer.
  - qingcharles 7mo ago
    Judges often roll this line out, but in criminal court I've seen some defendants get epic deals by going without a lawyer [0] since absolutely nobody in the justice system wants to deal with the guy who has no idea what he's doing and is going to make the most bizarre arguments about being a sovereign citizen. So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible. [0] I don't like to say "represent yourself." I once angered a judge by pointing out that you can't "represent yourself, you are yourself."
    - wfurney 7mo ago
      Interesting point that I haven't thought about before, thanks for sharing.
      - shmeeed 7mo ago
        I find it interesting as well. I'm also 100% sure it's absolutely terrible legal advice.
    - otterley 7mo ago
      > So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible. With a guilty plea. They don’t walk away without a conviction.
      - qingcharles 7mo ago
        Of course, but it's sometimes a better deal for the defendant than if they had spent their money on private counsel.
    - trinsic2 7mo ago
      There's lots of wiggle room if you know how to start with the proper standing. The problem, from my perspective is: if you are trying to get away with wrong doing, or if you are legitimately being harmed by the law as it's being applied. If you are asking questions or making statements. Everything the court says is a legal determination, everything you say can be used against you,. Im sure a lot has changed no with much criminality in the justice system and government.
- thisislife2 7mo ago
  Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and the government, the judges rule on the axiom, "Show me your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the law, and I will rule".
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- _heimdall 7mo ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, the relevant copyright laws aren't limited to enforcement when money exchanged hands.
  - moron4hire 7mo ago
    No, but it does matter how much money the alleged infringer has. Property law is mostly concerned with protecting the rich from the poor, so when a rich person violates the property of a poor person, the courts can't allow the inversion of purpose and will create something called a "legal fiction," which is basically the kind of bending-over-backwards that my children do to try to claim that they didn't break the rules, actually, and if you look at it in a certain way they were actually following the rules, actually.
    - gzread 7mo ago
      This sort of thing used to be heavily downvoted on HN. How the site has changed in the last year.
      - moron4hire 7mo ago
        Yes, the VC-backed startup ecosystem that was the origin of this website does rely on propagating the myth that we live in a meritocracy to ensure it has enough cheap labor to build prototypes that its anointed few can acquire at rock bottom pricing. But we've been through enough cycles of it now that we've started seeing the patterns.
        WalterBright 7mo ago
        > rock bottom pricing Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it. Browsing in a thrift store can be very enlightening!
        Terr_ 7mo ago
        > Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it. Is a human life literally worthless, because they never pay to be born? The map is not the territory, the price is not the value.
- chongli 7mo ago
  maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water. Many judges take a dim view of expensive lawyers trying to pull the wool over their eyes with sophisticated but fallacious arguments. You have to deal with a lot of BS to be a long-standing judge, so it seems like resistance to BS may be selected for among judges.
  - kube-system 7mo ago
    Sorting BS from non-BS is pretty much the daily job description for a judge.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
  > maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water. The thing everybody ignores about this is context. Suppose you upload a copy of a work to someone else over the internet for <specific reason>. Is it fair use? That has to depend on the reason, doesn't it? Aren't there going to be some reasons for which the answer is yes? The "problem" here is that the reason typically belongs to the person downloading it. Suppose you're willing to upload a copy to anyone who has a bona fide legitimate fair use reason. Someone comes along, tells you that they have such a reason and you upload a copy to them. If they actually did, did you do anything wrong? What did you do that you shouldn't have done? How is this legitimate fair use copy supposed to be made if not like this? But then suppose that they lied to you and had some different purpose that wasn't fair use. Is it you or them who has done something wrong? From your perspective the two cases are indistinguishable, so then doesn't it have to be them? On top of that, they're the one actually making the copy -- it gets written to persistent storage on their device, not yours. It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader and not the non-fair-use downloader who is doing something wrong is some combination of "downloading is harder to detect" and that then the downloader who actually had a fair use purpose would be able to present it and the plaintiffs don't like that because it's not compatible with their scattershot enforcement methods.
  - fc417fc802 7mo ago
    > It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. But of course that would seem to apply to Facebook here in equal measure.
    - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
      > Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. That's something the industry made up out of whole cloth. If someone sells ski masks that can be used for both keeping the wind off your face when you're skiing and hiding your face when you're committing burglary and has no means to know what any given person intends to do with it, are you really proposing to charge the department store as an accomplice? The way that would ordinarily work is that you could charge them if they were e.g. advertising their masks as useful for burglary. But now where are we with someone who doesn't do that?

by ohbleek 7mo ago

bsenftner 7mo ago

Of course not. It is just yet another example of a 7-8 figure expensive attorney and their billions dollar corporation wasting everyone' time, tax payers dollars, and demonstrating that the law applies to us and not them. I expect them to just stop showing up in court in time. What can the court do when these people own the people that write the laws?

Ekaros 7mo ago
There really should be some type of panel for frivolous legal arguments. If they are used by corporation all of the lawyers, leadership and shareholders involved are thrown into jail. Could even get jury on this and have them give majority opinion.
- post-it 7mo ago
  That seems like a bad idea to me.

yorwba 7mo ago

People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use. If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

dotancohen 7mo ago
It has been often said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
- gzread 7mo ago
  And a lawyer.
- qingcharles 7mo ago
  Judges often roll this line out, but in criminal court I've seen some defendants get epic deals by going without a lawyer [0] since absolutely nobody in the justice system wants to deal with the guy who has no idea what he's doing and is going to make the most bizarre arguments about being a sovereign citizen. So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible. [0] I don't like to say "represent yourself." I once angered a judge by pointing out that you can't "represent yourself, you are yourself."
  - wfurney 7mo ago
    Interesting point that I haven't thought about before, thanks for sharing.
    - shmeeed 7mo ago
      I find it interesting as well. I'm also 100% sure it's absolutely terrible legal advice.
  - otterley 7mo ago
    > So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible. With a guilty plea. They don’t walk away without a conviction.
    - qingcharles 7mo ago
      Of course, but it's sometimes a better deal for the defendant than if they had spent their money on private counsel.
  - trinsic2 7mo ago
    There's lots of wiggle room if you know how to start with the proper standing. The problem, from my perspective is: if you are trying to get away with wrong doing, or if you are legitimately being harmed by the law as it's being applied. If you are asking questions or making statements. Everything the court says is a legal determination, everything you say can be used against you,. Im sure a lot has changed no with much criminality in the justice system and government.
thisislife2 7mo ago
Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and the government, the judges rule on the axiom, "Show me your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the law, and I will rule".
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
_heimdall 7mo ago
Unless I'm mistaken, the relevant copyright laws aren't limited to enforcement when money exchanged hands.
- moron4hire 7mo ago
  No, but it does matter how much money the alleged infringer has. Property law is mostly concerned with protecting the rich from the poor, so when a rich person violates the property of a poor person, the courts can't allow the inversion of purpose and will create something called a "legal fiction," which is basically the kind of bending-over-backwards that my children do to try to claim that they didn't break the rules, actually, and if you look at it in a certain way they were actually following the rules, actually.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    This sort of thing used to be heavily downvoted on HN. How the site has changed in the last year.
    - moron4hire 7mo ago
      Yes, the VC-backed startup ecosystem that was the origin of this website does rely on propagating the myth that we live in a meritocracy to ensure it has enough cheap labor to build prototypes that its anointed few can acquire at rock bottom pricing. But we've been through enough cycles of it now that we've started seeing the patterns.
      - WalterBright 7mo ago
        > rock bottom pricing Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it. Browsing in a thrift store can be very enlightening!
        Terr_ 7mo ago
        > Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it. Is a human life literally worthless, because they never pay to be born? The map is not the territory, the price is not the value.
chongli 7mo ago
maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water. Many judges take a dim view of expensive lawyers trying to pull the wool over their eyes with sophisticated but fallacious arguments. You have to deal with a lot of BS to be a long-standing judge, so it seems like resistance to BS may be selected for among judges.
- kube-system 7mo ago
  Sorting BS from non-BS is pretty much the daily job description for a judge.
AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
> maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water. The thing everybody ignores about this is context. Suppose you upload a copy of a work to someone else over the internet for <specific reason>. Is it fair use? That has to depend on the reason, doesn't it? Aren't there going to be some reasons for which the answer is yes? The "problem" here is that the reason typically belongs to the person downloading it. Suppose you're willing to upload a copy to anyone who has a bona fide legitimate fair use reason. Someone comes along, tells you that they have such a reason and you upload a copy to them. If they actually did, did you do anything wrong? What did you do that you shouldn't have done? How is this legitimate fair use copy supposed to be made if not like this? But then suppose that they lied to you and had some different purpose that wasn't fair use. Is it you or them who has done something wrong? From your perspective the two cases are indistinguishable, so then doesn't it have to be them? On top of that, they're the one actually making the copy -- it gets written to persistent storage on their device, not yours. It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader and not the non-fair-use downloader who is doing something wrong is some combination of "downloading is harder to detect" and that then the downloader who actually had a fair use purpose would be able to present it and the plaintiffs don't like that because it's not compatible with their scattershot enforcement methods.
- fc417fc802 7mo ago
  > It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. But of course that would seem to apply to Facebook here in equal measure.
  - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
    > Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. That's something the industry made up out of whole cloth. If someone sells ski masks that can be used for both keeping the wind off your face when you're skiing and hiding your face when you're committing burglary and has no means to know what any given person intends to do with it, are you really proposing to charge the department store as an accomplice? The way that would ordinarily work is that you could charge them if they were e.g. advertising their masks as useful for burglary. But now where are we with someone who doesn't do that?