[HN Gopher] Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal w...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of
seeding
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 580 points
Date : 2025-02-21 10:01 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| contravariant wrote:
| Well, I guess it would be nice if we could have some precedent
| for the claim that _downloading_ copyright protected information
| is not in itself a breach of copyright.
|
| It makes sense from the point of view that _distribution_ is the
| act protected by copyright, not the mere act of _copying_. If
| that sounds odd to you then that 's probably on purpose, There's
| been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to authorrights or
| something similar, but then people might start wondering how
| keeping something from public domain for 90 years after the
| author's death could possibly be about protecting the rights of
| the author.
| latexr wrote:
| Author rights wouldn't be an accurate term. Copy rights do not
| necessarily belong to the author, even when they are alive.
| Distribution rights or "distrights" would make more sense for
| your argument.
| contravariant wrote:
| Works fine in Dutch law really, you just have to allow for
| the option that a company can be an author. A work could also
| have multiple authors.
|
| I prefer it to a name that's more accurate because it signals
| what the _purpose_ of the law is, which I consider more
| important than its implementation.
|
| Now that I think of it that also works quite well when naming
| things in software. Don't name things after their
| implementation, when you can help it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| They are called "authorship rights" in Polish. While the
| right to distribute or make copies doesn't aleways belong to
| the author they always originate from author. And some are
| even non transferable or revocable, like the right to say "I,
| <my chosen name>, made this thing"
| hnbad wrote:
| In some jurisdictions (e.g. Germany) "copyright" belongs
| exclusively to the author/creator and is non-transferrable,
| the German word for "copyright" ( _Urheberrecht_ ) also
| literally translates to "author's right"). So instead of
| transferring copyright to an entity (e.g. the employer) you
| only grant an "exclusive, transferrable and unrestricted"
| license to that entity, essentially prohibiting you from
| using it without their permission while technically still
| retaining that right. This is also why CC0 exists as a
| substitute for a public domain declaration because in these
| jurisdictions it is literally impossible to transfer your
| copyright to the public domain.
|
| In Germany copyright law there is actually one provision for
| the real transfer of copyright: death. So as far as copyright
| is concerned, the transfer of copyright requires literally
| _death of the author_ - which might get a chuckle out of
| people into media studies.
| FabHK wrote:
| In case you didn't chuckle:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
| grotorea wrote:
| I think the equivalent is called author's right in civil law
| countries
| miki123211 wrote:
| "distribution is the act protected by copyright" was the rule
| all along in many (non-US) jurisdictions, not an American so
| not sure about how the US does things.
|
| This is why you often see people getting fines for torrenting
| (Germany is extremely notorious for this for example), but
| fines for _using_ Usenet, IPTV, streaming or book download
| services are a lot more rare (which doesn 't mean they're
| nonexistent)!
|
| Operating / selling / promoting those services is a different
| matter, and most sensationalist articles about "people fined
| for IPTV piracy" are actually about people involved with that
| businesss, not the users.
|
| I even remember reading about some (European) torrenting case
| that was successfully defended on the grounds of something like
| setting a 1 byte per second cap on uploads, but I can't find
| the source right now.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > This is why you often see people getting fines for
| torrenting (Germany is extremely notorious for this for
| example), but fines for using Usenet, IPTV, streaming or book
| download services are a lot more rare (which doesn't mean
| they're nonexistent)!
|
| It's a _lot_ easier to find out who is torrenting than to
| find out who is using Usenet for example though.
|
| With torrents you can see the IP addresses of peers. And then
| I suppose they ask a court to tell the ISP to say which
| customer had that IP addresses at that time.
|
| With Usenet you'd have to get a court to get each Usenet
| provider to give you a list of all customers that downloaded
| a file. That seems a little bit different to me.
|
| And who knows, in the case of the torrents maybe they don't
| always even need to get a court involved. With all of the
| data brokers out there, maybe there are lists you can buy of
| real people tied to different IP addresses and when you have
| a match you send a threatening letter telling them to pay up
| or they will take you to court?
| trilbyglens wrote:
| Germany is wild. You will get a knock on your door within
| hours of firing up a torrent client
| Alex_L_Wood wrote:
| What? No, you will not. You could get fined for seeding
| some popular stuff, but even then no one is knocking on
| your door, it'll probably come in the form of a letter,
| and even then it's not a guarantee.
| relistan wrote:
| I lived in Germany. At least back then it was definitely
| a letter. They were not very good at it, though, and I
| received one for torrenting large open source software.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I wonder if people could form a nonprofit that starts
| torrenting public domain media or open source software as
| a honeypot to find these firms and bury them in legal
| procedures. I'd gladly donate to such a nonprofit.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Do these letters have teeth or just trying to scare you
| into a settlement for lawsuit that would never come?
| moooo99 wrote:
| Huh, what in the world are you talking about.
|
| If you're torrenting and you happen to get caught, you
| will receive a letter from some copyright lawyer with a
| fine of X amount as well as a cease and desist.
|
| The only knock on your door is the mail delivery man
| mft_ wrote:
| Not sure if this is just misinformed, or anti-Germany/EU
| propaganda? Either way, not true.
|
| In Germany, if you torrent something without protection
| of a VPN, you may receive a letter from a blood-sucking
| legal firm within a week or two, with a fine that can be
| argued down somewhat.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I'm sure the OP meant "knock on your door" figuratively.
| And refers to exactly what you say, those leechy law firm
| letters. In that sense it's entirely true.
| franczesko wrote:
| BS
| RajT88 wrote:
| This process of checking seeding peers to reporting an IP
| to an ISP to them send a user a nastygram is pretty
| automated. Torrent a Nintendo game (not even that new of
| one) and you will get an ISP nastygram within minutes.
|
| I've heard.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Are there cases in Germany who went through until the end?
|
| In France despite a hefty budget, the org in charge (HADOPI)
| was so bad they merged it with another one and I think it os
| over now.
| consp wrote:
| Downloading used to be legal here. Now it is explicitly not
| anymore. Because why not if you can squeeze some extra money
| from end users who would have never bought your item for the
| insane prices asked.
| j1elo wrote:
| With "here", you mean Germany? Are you sure? Last time I
| looked into these things (granted, in 2022 or so), seemed
| to me that for example using Stremio with a torrent add-on
| would risk a fine in Germany, but using a Debrid service
| (that torrents in your name and you just do a direct
| download like e.g. is done in Youtube) would be free of
| risks or legal threats. I'm not in Germany though, so I
| didn't research it much further. Just out of curiosity.
| tempfile wrote:
| When and where? This does not sound true for any
| jurisdiction I know about.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> something like setting a 1 byte per second cap on uploads_
|
| You generally can't set a client to 0B/s (as zero usually
| means "no limit") but I'm not sure a good1 lawyer on the
| other side would let you get away with claiming glacial
| distribution is not still distribution. At 1Kbyte/sec (I
| don't know a client off the top of my head that has control
| down to the single byte) a 50MByte file (not unusual for a
| book with illustrations/photos) can be transferred in less
| than 15 hours, a couple of Mbyte (a plain text book,
| compressed or just short) in less than one hour.
|
| There are clients that can be set to not seed at all, or you
| could patch a common client that way. Some that don't even
| offer the capability at all (some command-line wget-style
| tools), that would be a legally safest option IMO2.
|
| ----
|
| [1] good as in good at their job, no moral judgement implied!
|
| [2] caveat: not a lawyer, never played one on TV, nor even in
| local am-dram.
| foobarian wrote:
| transmission-cli -u 0 <url>
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > I'm not sure a good1 lawyer on the other side would let
| you get away with claiming
|
| Fortunately that's not how courts work.
|
| I'm not familiar with the case, but it's possible setting a
| 1 byte per second limit showed _intent_ to not distribute.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| In the context of a book, that could still be seeding a
| book every few hours..
| icedchai wrote:
| 1 byte per second would give you a couple of pages every
| few hours. So probably not.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I byte pee second translates to a little over 3KB/hr.
| Depends on the book.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It's 3600 bytes/hr. 60seconds per minute and 60minutes
| per hour. 60*60*1byte. Not to be condescending but the
| math here really isn't hard.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I mistyped a letter (thanks for indirectly pointing it
| out, fixed) and I get this flippant response. I guess
| this really is reddit.My real answer is close enough, I
| don't need to delineate on the level of bytes.
|
| Either way this is oedantry. My point doesn't change; it
| depends on what kind of book you download.
| mcphage wrote:
| It's also possible that setting a 1 byte per second limit
| showed they were aware what they were doing was illegal.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Intent matters. I can well imagine a judge saying
| something like this:
|
| _While I am satisfied it has been proven you are aware
| that by torrenting said files, distribution also
| occurred. However, I am also satisfied it has been proven
| that by setting a 1 byte per minute upload limit, you had
| taken those steps you could to limit uploads in an effort
| to prevent the prohibited activity. Other evidence
| presented to the court demonstrates you are regularly
| employed, that your finances are generally in order, and
| you have not received payment for the meagre distribution
| that occurred as a consequence of your behaviour.
|
| It is my opinion that the case brough by the prosecution
| does not rise to the level of requiring a sentence, nor
| even a conviction.
|
| You're free to go._
| gowld wrote:
| You'd still be conspiring with others to violate
| copyright.
| mcphage wrote:
| > Intent matters
|
| I agree with you intent matters, and I agree with you
| that setting the upload limit to 1 byte per second shows
| intent, I just disagree about what intent it shows.
| plorg wrote:
| It isn't worth my time or risk to test it myself, but if
| you disable seeding will Warner Media still send a notice
| to your ISP? If you set your client to 0B/s I assume it's
| still broadcasting hashes. I suppose if you disable that
| function entirely in your client there would be nothing to
| see.
|
| I guess some people may be worried about actual fines, but
| I would assume the biggest risk to most people is getting
| blocked by your ISP, which in many cases requires less than
| the legal standard for proof of copyright infringement.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The contractors whose job is collecting lists of people
| downloading films generally make sure to download at
| least a viewable clip of the film direct from your client
| so it could be shown in court. "Yes, your honor, here is
| the evidence we retrieved direct from the defendant".
| plorg wrote:
| Sure, but AIUI they generally are not leading with a
| lawsuit, they're sending a cease and desist notice to
| your ISP, which doesn't require that kind of proof.
| Operators like Comcast won't require that to drop you -
| in fact they may give you a warning for simply
| downloading torrents at all, even if they are literally,
| actually, Linux ISOs.
| nwh5jg56df wrote:
| Booooooo don't leech without seeding. Share a little at
| minimal risk
| zeroq wrote:
| It's an interesting case.
|
| Most commonly used clients won't let you turn off seeding,
| but you can indeed limit the upstream to a really low
| value. You can also, at the same time, seed a ton of
| different things, preferably quite large, to saturate your
| upload and make it statistically improbable to fully send a
| copy of any single file.
|
| Now, based on _my feeling_ and cases I 've seen in _my
| country_ I 'd say that the judge would make a claim that
| the sheer fact of making these files available is enough.
|
| Moreover, there were rulings stating that even if you don't
| have the whole torrent on your disk, but only few fragments
| you are already in violation.
|
| For me, it make sense, as when a company gets caught red
| handed they are judged based on the inventory of stolen
| programs they have, not an actual usage of them.
|
| Lastly, here in an european country, consuming pirated
| media (books, movies, music, etc.) is not a crime. However
| there are plenty of caveats:
|
| - you can't share it, so torrenting, as mentioned, might be
| illegal; getting a copy of a movie on a hard drive from a
| friend only puts him in jepardy
|
| - it has to be personal use, so watching it alone or with
| your wife is ok, but playing stolen music in a club is not;
| commercial use is strictly forbiden ("commercial" as in
| "commercial licence", so usage in context of a company, so
| facebook case here is strictly in violation)
|
| - it has to be a media that's already been published
| somewhere (cinema, television, streaming service); pirating
| leaks and prereleases is strictly forbiden
|
| - pirating software is whole different animal, since now
| it's not a copyright, but a breach of licence agreement
|
| You can think about it as owning a tiny portion of "soft
| drugs" (like marijuana), which is legal in some countries.
| Selling is not.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > pirating software is whole different animal, since now
| it's not a copyright, but a breach of licence agreement
|
| How can that be true? There is no way for me a breach a
| license agreement without being party to the agreement.
| gowld wrote:
| It's can't be true. It's nonsense.
|
| License is an agreement that grants you rights that would
| otherwise be prevented by copyright or other laws.
|
| You can violate a copyright, or a license agreement, or
| both, or neither.
| krzyk wrote:
| > You generally can't set a client to 0B/s
|
| It depends on client, it is possible in e.g. transmission
| tempfile wrote:
| > "distribution is the act protected by copyright" was the
| rule all along in many (non-US) jurisdictions, not an
| American so not sure about how the US does things.
|
| I am pretty sure this is false. It is just that distribution
| carries heavier sentences and is easier to discover, not
| unlike with drug dealing.
|
| It is not legal, anywhere, to (for example) borrow a DVD from
| someone, copy it, and give the original back. In some
| jurisdictions you have a right to backups, and a right to
| resale, but you emphatically do not have a right to privately
| copy.
| buzer wrote:
| > It is not legal, anywhere, to (for example) borrow a DVD
| from someone, copy it, and give the original back. In some
| jurisdictions you have a right to backups, and a right to
| resale, but you emphatically do not have a right to
| privately copy.
|
| If the DVD doesn't have strong DRM (which is pretty rare,
| CSS counts as strong DRM) you are allowed to make a private
| copy in Finland. There is a levy on various storage mediums
| to compensate private copying. I believe there are similar
| laws in other countries based on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
|
| I'm not 100% sure if strictly downloading from illegal
| source makes downloader liable for damages, as far as I
| know in all court cases there was seeding involved (in
| Finland).
|
| Of course the levy is somewhat questionable these days
| since pretty much everything has strong DRM (as bar is very
| low) and thus you are not allowed to make copies. The
| authors who protect their work with strong DRM still get
| part of the levies though.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Sorry, I may be missing something. Can you please clarify:
|
| >you often see people getting fines for _torrenting_
|
| >fines for _using_ [...] are a lot more rare
|
| Are you saying something kind of like, "When you torrent, you
| are also _distributing_ that copyrighted information, which
| is often prosecuted, but simply _procuring_ that information
| (without redistribution) is not. " Or is it something
| different?
|
| For example: in America, it is completely legal to buy, sell,
| and own a radar detector. Radar detectors are used to
| "detect" when the police use radar to catch speeding
| motorists. In spite of it being legal to own a radar
| detector, it is illegal to _actively use_ a radar detector
| for its intended purpose. There are various reasons I have
| heard for this, but the most common was that the components
| of the device itself is not illegal, and picking up those
| signals are not illegal (because they are targeted at the
| public) _but_ the reason and intent to use one is to commit a
| crime, and the use of a device in the assistance of
| committing an offense (speeding) is illegal. It 's this kind
| of weird grey area, where you can _possess_ the thing, but
| can 't _use_ it for the reason you (likely) bought it for.
|
| Is it kind of like that? Like, you can possess copyrighted
| material that you have not paid for (for whatever
| justification), but actively _sharing_ that copyrighted
| material without authorization, is criminal? If so, does that
| mean that lots of Germans simply don 't seed illegal
| torrents?
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| Went the opposite direction here. Copying things for personal
| use was always legal in Sweden, with some exceptions (notably
| software, since 1986). That law was amended in 2005 (because of
| The Pirate Bay, presumably) to say that you are no longer
| allowed to make a copy from an illegally distributed copy. So
| if someone is illegally sharing something on the internet you
| are not allowed to download it.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| Sweden is always an edge case - education especially. It's
| got a population of 10 million people. My metroplex area in
| DFW has half that with 75% more diversity. Sweden is cool but
| a terrible reference point for anything other than
| homogeneous social studies.
| sightbroke wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_...
|
| "Attached to the core rights of free speech and free press are
| several peripheral rights that make these core rights more
| secure. The peripheral rights encompass not only freedom of
| association, including privacy in one's associations, but also,
| in the words of Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), "the freedom of
| the entire university community", i.e., the right to
| distribute, the right to receive, and the right to read, as
| well as freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to
| teach.[144]"
|
| "The United States Constitution protects, according to the
| Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia (1969), the right to
| receive information and ideas, regardless of their social
| worth, and to be generally free from governmental intrusions
| into one's privacy and control of one's thoughts.[145]"
|
| "As stated by the Court in Stanley: 'If the First Amendment
| means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a
| man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or
| what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage
| rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control
| men's minds.'[146]"
|
| [144] - https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/
|
| [145], [146] -
| https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/557/
| thrance wrote:
| A bit off-topic, but I always thought it was "funny" how
| americans are so opposed to censorship but are perfectly OK
| with advertising and other forms of propaganda (from social
| media editorializing, bought newspapers...), that arguably do
| much more to "control men's minds" than censorship ever
| would.
|
| It just fuels my personal theory that americans only reason
| in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in negative
| liberty (freedom from...).
| lordloki wrote:
| It's very simple, Americans believe that the individual is
| responsible for themselves while most of the rest of the
| world wants to be "protected" by a restrictive government.
| One leads to innovation and one stifles it. We would rather
| be responsible for discovering the truth on our own, than
| trust a central authority to decide what is and isn't
| true(or propaganda). I find it funny how Europeans think
| their governments are protecting them from propaganda
| instead of drowning them in propaganda.
| card_zero wrote:
| Not sure European governments do much to combat external
| propaganda anyway.
| Detrytus wrote:
| This approach is great in theory, the problem is: it does
| not scale. We are bombarded with a lot of information in
| the news, ads, social media, and average individual does
| not have enough time (not to mention access to
| information, or intelligence to interpret it) to fact
| check everything on their own. "The last man who knew
| everything" lived in early 19th century: https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
| card_zero wrote:
| First of all, there's a difference between facts and
| understanding. Thomas Young may have understood the wave
| theory of light, but he could say nothing with certainty
| about Queen Victoria's underwear. Secondly, it's getting
| _easier_ to understand everything, because ideas are
| becoming more powerful. We are however bombarded with
| facts, that part is true.
| pdonis wrote:
| You don't need to fact check the torrent of information
| you describe. You can just ignore it. None of it is worth
| the time and effort to fact check anyway. You don't need
| any of that information to make the decisions you need to
| make in your daily life.
|
| If you want to argue that you need to fact check all that
| information to, for example, decide how to vote in
| elections, none of that information is of any value for
| that purpose either, because it's basically all
| propaganda at this point. There are _no_ "independent"
| sources of information that you can trust, other than
| your own eyeballs and brain. (Possibly you are lucky
| enough to have some friends and family whose eyeballs and
| brain you can also trust.)
| flir wrote:
| Heh. This is _not_ the month to be making that argument.
|
| I like having food hygiene standards - it means I don't
| have to worry about chalk in my bread, arsenic in my
| sweets, or antibiotics in my beef.
|
| I honestly believe we'd be better off with informational
| hygiene standards, too. The last two decades have taught
| me this lesson - free speech absolutism is a giant "kick
| me" sign on the back of society, and when you find a
| security hole that big, you patch it.
|
| I recognize there's a balance to be found, and reasonable
| people will disagree on where the tipping point is.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >free speech absolutism is a giant "kick me" sign on the
| back of society
|
| How does this work? What danger represents freedom of
| speech? With lack of it dangers is understandable: it is
| a giant "welcome" sign for bloody totalitarian
| dictatorship.
| danaris wrote:
| If megacorporations can lie to you about what they're
| selling you (which is one of the things that free speech
| absolutists generally argue for), then you will have no
| way of knowing if what you buy is going to kill you.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >If megacorporations can lie to you about what they're
| selling you
|
| But this has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
| Freedom of speech does not in any way cancel out
| responsibility for fraud.
| flir wrote:
| Then you are not a free speech absolutist, and reasonable
| people will disagree about where the tipping point is.
|
| Fire in a crowded theatre? CP? Threats of violence? Hate
| speech?
| pdonis wrote:
| I don't know any "free speech absolutists" who argue that
| fraud should be legal. Misrepresentation of a product or
| service you're selling is fraud. We already have laws
| against that.
| danaris wrote:
| Then consider yourself lucky, but I've seen that position
| argued strenuously right here on HackerNews in the past.
| rvense wrote:
| This has actually been a fairly common position among
| American libertarians. Alan Greenspan, for instance, was
| strongly against fraud laws until some time after the
| financial crisis. The idea was that the market would sort
| it out.
|
| (And no, I don't understand how this is a serious
| position that serious people can seriously hold, but then
| that is how I feel about libertarianism in general.)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I like having food hygiene standards - it means I don
| 't have to worry about chalk in my bread, arsenic in my
| sweets, or antibiotics in my beef._
|
| And yet somehow humanity survived for tens or hundreds of
| thousands of years without such standards, and without
| having our ancestors' food poisoned.
|
| Also, if you actually believe that government food
| hygiene standards prevent all possible bad things from
| being in your food, I've got some oceanfront property in
| North Dakota I'd like to sell you. You do know, don't
| you, that antibiotics in your beef, for example, is done
| all the time in factory farming with government approval?
| flir wrote:
| > prevent all possible bad things
|
| Well that seems like a bad faith interpretation of my
| argument.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1858_Bradford_sweets_poison
| ing
| pdonis wrote:
| You included in your argument at least one bad thing
| that, as I pointed out, is not only not stopped by
| government regulation, it's explicitly permitted by it.
| The fact that there was a bad thing that happened before
| government regulation, which a government regulation was
| then passed to try to prevent, doesn't make your argument
| valid.
| flir wrote:
| Which government are we talking about, please?
| altruios wrote:
| > And yet somehow humanity survived for tens or hundreds
| of thousands of years without such standards
|
| Narrator: "Most humans didn't survive past year five due
| to preventable illnesses and food born contamination, the
| humans' ancestor's infant mortality rate was rather high
| before the age of food safety and soap".
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Narrator_
|
| Of what? Where are you getting this from?
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| It's a reference to the Arrested Development television
| show.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >And yet somehow humanity survived for tens or hundreds
| of thousands of years without such standards, and without
| having our ancestors' food poisoned.
|
| Sure, with reduced life expectancy. If you're fine dying
| out in your 30's, maybe 40's at best you can eat whatever
| you want. Your body is pretty resilient to poison short
| term.
|
| >, if you actually believe that government food hygiene
| standards prevent all possible bad things from being in
| your food
|
| Extremist takes aren't doing you a favor here. Like I
| just said, we can resist a surprising about of poisons
| short term. Many people indulge in alcohol after all. We
| have no need to strive for "all bad things" out of our
| food.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Not even most Americans believe that. I would say
| paradoxically we have a slice of folks who want liberty
| from the government and also have plenty of government
| protections.
|
| Then there is the "liberty at all costs" types, the
| fringe of which idolizes the David Koresh lifestyle.
|
| There are plenty of folks who also think it is OK to ruin
| someone's entire life if they post something sexist to
| Twitter.
|
| Americans are not so easily generalized; they come in
| many flavors.
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| Hi, American here. Just want to say I'm embarrassed to
| share a nation with this nutcase. Sorry, friends.
| thrance wrote:
| Seeing how almost everyone here in France despises our
| current government, I don't think this propaganda you
| mention is very effective, if it's as present as you
| claim.
|
| Meanwhile money basically dictates who gets elected on
| your side of the pond, whith billionaires being crazy
| over-represented in your political offices, despite being
| a tiny minority in your population.
|
| Also, the people advocating for smaller government are
| often on board with executive power consolidation and
| increased police and army funding, so I think it's little
| more than a stance.
|
| You can't "discover the truth" on your own, no one can.
| Are you able to go everywhere something happens in the
| wordl to get a first hand account of the event and then
| build your own conclusions? Of course not, you rely on
| media (social or legacy) to digest the facts for you, and
| they might (and do) influence you and how you think about
| the world. It can't be another way, so fighting obvious
| lies isn't a bad thing in my book.
| krunck wrote:
| Those who turn discussions about _degrees_ of something
| into fights about binary extremes are the true problem.
| Media and politicians included.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > It just fuels my personal theory that americans only
| reason in positive liberty (freedom to...) and never in
| negative liberty (freedom from...).
|
| This seems to describe 'Murican Freedom pretty well to this
| particular American, for what it's worth.
| rapind wrote:
| > I always thought it was "funny" how americans are so
| opposed to censorship
|
| Not sure you can make this blanket statement about
| "Americans" any more. It seems like an increasing number
| are fine with censorship when they aren't the ones being
| censored.
| thrance wrote:
| Yes, for many this "free speech absolutism" is just a
| rhetorical stance they adopt, which do not reflect their
| actions at all.
| LuciOfStars wrote:
| American here. We're an incredibly large and incredibly
| _diverse_ country. This generaliization doesn 't really
| work.
| thrance wrote:
| I know, I have friends and family in America. It was just
| a fun thought I had in my head for a while. I should have
| added a "Some americans..." in my comment. Sorry for the
| blanket statement.
| papercrane wrote:
| The US Constitution grants congress the power to give authors
| and inventors time-limited exclusive rights to their
| works/discoveries (Art1.S8.C8). This moots the 1st amendment
| argument.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-8.
| ..
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I don't think it'd hold up, but one could argue that the
| first amendment was an amendment, and thus changed the
| constitution, and therefore removed that ability of
| congress.
| tiahura wrote:
| The amendments protect the rights as they existed at the
| time the amendment was passed. I.e. how would the plain
| text of the text be interpreted by a reasonable person in
| 1791. E.g., re 2nd, what did militia mean?
|
| Thus, the 1A locks in speech rights as they existed in
| 1791. Because there was no right to slander, or threaten,
| or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained
| the power to regulate.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| That's certainly one interpretation. Your parents also
| has an interpretation. It will be interesting to see what
| the courts decide.
| anonym29 wrote:
| >Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or
| commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the
| power to regulate.
|
| You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the
| purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and
| fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that
| were determined through the legislative process.
|
| Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights
| - the right to X when X means government NOT doing
| something. Right to freedom of movement, right to freedom
| of religion, right to freedom of speech, right to privacy
| - these are restrictions on government to protect the
| liberties of the people. And then you come to the tenth
| amendment -
|
| The powers not delegated to the United States by the
| Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
| reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
|
| It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis
| that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to
| limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal
| government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a
| powerful centralized federal government is quite
| literally the premiere founding principle baked into the
| US's history.
|
| Congress has zero power whatsoever whenever they lack the
| consent of the goverened. The functional legitimacy of
| the entire federal government is near zero - we're living
| in the orwellian nightmare where the military industrial
| complex more or less runs the entire show from behind the
| scenes - something Eisenhower tried to warn us about over
| half a century ago.
| Gormo wrote:
| > Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first
| amendment that were determined through the legislative
| process.
|
| The legislative process can't make exceptions to
| constitutional provisions. These were recognized as not
| covered by first amendment protections by jurisprudence,
| not legislation.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis
| that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to
| limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal
| government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a
| powerful centralized federal government is quite
| literally the premiere founding principle baked into the
| US's history.
|
| Which is why we _immediately_ replaced a loose federation
| of Strong States with a new government built around an
| explicitly empowered and strengthened federal government?
|
| The idea that the constitution was built around a very
| weak federal government is wrong. The founders built a
| weak federal government, immediately ran into problems
| with it, and immediately those same founders built a new
| government with a strong federal government with EXPLICIT
| and CLEAR authority and supremacy over the states on
| certain things.
|
| For example, modern conservatives often decry how the
| federal supremacy on interstate commerce is used to
| regulate interstate commerce, but the commerce clause was
| built to tear down all possible protectionism and trade
| barriers states had erected amount themselves. The strong
| federal government was also built explicitly to be a
| single strong bloc for trade negotiations.
|
| There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this
| time. They got to air their complaints and opinions.
| Nobody listened to them because the articles of
| confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it
| built was just that useless and broken. The founders
| literally tore up the government to make a new one
| without the authorization to do so because there was no
| stability, no long term hope for the existing one.
| tiahura wrote:
| "In interpreting this text, we are guided by the
| principle that "[t]he Constitution was written to be
| understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used
| in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from
| technical meaning." United States v. Sprague, 282 U. S.
| 716, 731 (1931) ; see also Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1,
| 188 (1824). Normal meaning may of course include an
| idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical
| meanings that would not have been known to ordinary
| citizens in the founding generation." _District of
| Columbia v. Heller_ , 554 U.S. 570 (2008).
|
| Interpreted as an ordinary voter would have interpreted
| it.
| sightbroke wrote:
| I am not convinced that applies to receiving information.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Once you tell someone a secret, you need to be prepared to
| beat them up if they share it. -- dad, 1996
|
| This gives you the right "to beat them up" but not the
| right to learn a secret. You can take a patent and build
| that thing in your house. The government can't stop you,
| neither the inventor. It's when you try to sell it that
| they can come after you.
| saghm wrote:
| I don't think that authors having exclusive rights to their
| works necessarily implies that someone else _receiving_
| them is legally culpable though. My admittedly naive
| thinking is that someone distributing something illegally
| doesn't necessarily imply that the receiver is also
| committing crime. If Robin Hood steals a fancy 4K TV from
| the mansion downtown and gives it to his neighbor as a
| birthday gift, would the neighbor be guilty of a crime as
| well? Does the answer change if Robin Hood were instead the
| owner of the mansion next door (who could plausibly be the
| owner of the TV) and gives it to his less wealthy childhood
| friend?
|
| I'm not saying that either of these situations are directly
| analogous to the distribution of copyrighted works (since
| among other things, I don't think there's any way to buy a
| TV without being able to freely give it to someone else),
| but that it's not immediately obvious to me that the
| illegality in distribution has to be symmetric, and that
| there might be a coherent legal argument that people having
| the right to _receive_ information isn't inconsistent with
| the only people with the right to transmit it refusing to
| allow it. The part of the Constitution (edit: Supreme Court
| opinion; not actually the Constitution itself) quoted above
| doesn't seem to say anything about the right to share
| anything, just to receive it.
| mock-possum wrote:
| If Robin Hood sees a nice painting hanging in the castle,
| then commands a genie to create an exact brush-stroke-by-
| brush-stroke replica that is identical to the original in
| every way, then gives the replica to his neighbor as a
| birthday gift, has any crime even occurred?
|
| In this situation, the noble does not own the painting,
| so much as they possess it and have only been granted a
| license to privately view it, not a license to show it to
| others, and further license only to reproduce it for
| their own personal archival purposes - Robin Hood did not
| have license to view the painting, and the genie did not
| have license to reproduce it
|
| but now that the reproduction exists, does it carry the
| same license with it, and should the neighbor be held
| responsible for the original violation of the license,
| when all they've done is receive an illegally produced
| copy?
|
| Should the owner if the original painting be held
| responsible for failing to prevent it from being
| illegally viewed and copied?
| kqr wrote:
| > an exact brush-stroke-by-brush-stroke replica that is
| identical to the original in every way
|
| Yes, forgery is a crime in many jurisdictions, and in
| some it does not matter whether or not you are
| transparent about it being such -- specifically for
| copyright/trademark reasons.
| singlow wrote:
| Forgery would require trying to pass off the copy as an
| original. As long as it is not pretending to be something
| it isn't, it is just a replica, not a forgery.
| kqr wrote:
| Thsis was my impression at first too, but legal experts
| in my jurisdiction have taught me they're not always so
| cleanly separable.
| saghm wrote:
| Without taking a stand on whether this _should_ be
| illegal or not, but whether it _is_, I could imagine that
| a legal system might want to give the painter a way to
| get income for a limited time by distributing copies of
| the painting, and that copying it in this way would
| infringe upon those rights. In this case though, I'd
| argue that the modern analogue of this would be Robin
| Hood getting invited over to watch a movie with the noble
| (which would be allowed!) and then secretly burning a
| copy of the DVD when the noble went to the bathroom. Our
| current legal system doesn't consider "I didn't know what
| I was doing was illegal" to be a valid defense, so Robin
| Hood would still be committing a crime by sharing the DVD
| further after he's copied it. (Since we don't have genies
| in real life, I don't know how the law would consider
| them culpable, but based on my very limited knowledge of
| genie lore, my guess is that the amount of free will they
| have in this situation is about the same as the DVD
| burner, so they probably would be okay from the
| perspective of the law?)
|
| Interestingly, I think that the more direct analog to
| what we have today would be if the noble themself had the
| genie copy the painting and gift it to their friend Robin
| Hood. I do think the same logic I gave above ultimately
| applies to whether our current legal system would allow
| the artist to enforce exclusivity, but I find it a lot
| more compelling as an argument about whether it _should_
| be allowed or not compared to the hypothetical you gave.
| In your version of it, it doesn't feel like allowing what
| Robin Hood did is particularly beneficial to society, but
| in the version where the noble is an enthusiastic
| participant in the copying, it seems a lot more like
| outlawing it would lead to some harmful dynamics (like
| you mention about whether the noble bears responsibility
| for protecting access to the painting based on obtaining
| it). In other words, having a system where the artist is
| allowed to enforce his exclusive distribution rights
| universally actually seems _less_ problematic to me at
| first glance than one that only applies to those who sign
| an agreement when purchasing the paintings.
|
| To put this in terms of torrenting, my naive
| understanding is that right now, it's definitively
| considered illegal to seed protected content, and the
| question is whether it's legal to download it without
| seeding or not. I actually think that it would be worse
| to allowing downloading without allowing seeding as well,
| so the system that Meta is arguing for would be worse
| than if what they did is also illegal. However, I'm
| honestly not sure if they're actually right or not about
| what the law says, and that's why I brought up the
| hypotheticals I did. I also honestly don't feel confident
| in my feelings on whether I'd prefer to ban both seeding
| and downloading protected content or to eliminate the
| legal protections entirely and allow both, but it doesn't
| seem like that's actually the legal question at the heart
| of the current matter.
| dTal wrote:
| >In this situation, the noble does not own the painting,
| so much as they possess it and have only been granted a
| license to privately view it, not a license to show it to
| others, and further license only to reproduce it for
| their own personal archival purposes
|
| What is the point of making such an "analogy"? Might as
| well say the noble has a copy of Die Hard in their DVD
| collection.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| your TV example is a bad example for discussions around
| copyright -- how does one copy a TV?
|
| a more pertinent example to the main topic at hand
|
| i download a file onto my PC. in doing so i have made a
| copy of that file onto my PC.
|
| if that file is a copyrighted work, e.g. a musical work,
| i have reproduced the work by downloading it. i have
| copied it. streaming music is covered by copyright for
| the same reason - a copy is transferred onto your device
| because you clicked on a button. the act of copying, or
| reproducing, the work is the bit that matters.
|
| the distributor (spotify/apple) just gave me access to
| their original copy to make my own, new, copy.
| distribution is covered, but slightly different as it is
| facilitating others to infringe copyright (if i'm
| pirating music).
|
| in your TV example, a closer idea would be if i 3D
| printed a new TV based on a patented design. probably not
| allowed to do it (i don't know patent law) but who's
| gonna enforce it? no one knows about it.
|
| if i start _selling_ my 3D printed TVs, well, i should
| probably get a lawyer sharpish.
|
| --
|
| also, isn't knowingly receiving stolen goods a crime? so
| receiver of the TV in your example could be charged with
| a crime if it can be shown beyond reasonable doubt that
| they knew it was stolen?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If Robin Hood steals a fancy 4K TV from the mansion
| downtown and gives it to his neighbor as a birthday gift,
| would the neighbor be guilty of a crime as well?
|
| In this specific example, probably yes.
|
| > Does the answer change if Robin Hood were instead the
| owner of the mansion next door
|
| Yes, it does. The main problem here is that Robin Hood is
| well known to obtain everything he has in the world by
| stealing it.
| Gormo wrote:
| How can a provision in the base text of the constitution
| take precedence over an amendment?
| nonfamous wrote:
| I would expect it to be argued by defendants that since no
| man (or indeed woman) at Meta actually read the books that
| were torrented, the First Amendment does not apply here. The
| question is: does the First Amendment apply to an algorithm?
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| So I can setup a cable streaming service with ripped vids
| as long a no one in my company watches it?
| dTal wrote:
| You would be distributing the videos. Meta is not
| distributing the things they torrented. No, LLM weights
| don't count.
| Gormo wrote:
| > The question is: does the First Amendment apply to an
| algorithm?
|
| No. The first amendment explicitly applies to Congress; by
| extension it applies to the policy-making authority of the
| federal government generally, and via the 14th amendment,
| it applies to the states.
|
| It prohibits the abridgment of freedom of speech by
| government institutions, without distinction as to the
| identity of the speaker or the content of the speech.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > ...then people might start wondering how keeping something
| from public domain for 90 years after the author's death could
| possibly be about protecting the rights of the author.
|
| That's the best part, it's forever copyright! Because the
| creators are corporations that never die, or a huge number of
| humans, whomever dies last.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| that's not true. the term for works for hire is 95 years from
| creation https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
| DanielHB wrote:
| Would definitely torrent any leaked internal facebook data.
|
| But never seed your honor, that would be illegal!
| jcelerier wrote:
| > There's been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to
| authorrights or something similar
|
| that's exactly how it's called in french - droit d'auteur
| mrcode007 wrote:
| I'm waiting for this precedent to be set in favor of META and
| then enjoying all the movie torrents I can get my hands on.
| Without seeding of course.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| With Musk in the White House (who has similar interests) that
| might actually happen.
| mrcode007 wrote:
| A right adversarial move would be to support this and watch
| the GDP without the entertainment business as part of it.
| Check what happens next.
| knowitnone wrote:
| I don't know Musk but why would he make this happen? He's
| for corporate interests is he not?
| Mr-Frog wrote:
| I don't think Musk's interests are aligned with those of
| legacy media corporations.
| bee_rider wrote:
| None of his corporations is a media one, and his social
| media company probably has some vague interest in not
| having too much enforcement of copyright.
|
| Actually this is something that has always perplexed me
| about corporations that want to meddle in our government.
| Obviously they must know that it is going to involve the
| government following the interest of... some corporation.
| The voters are pretty fickle and having the government
| work for your competition seems like a pretty rough spot.
|
| I guess it is like a prisoner's dilemma type thing or
| something.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >If that sounds odd to you then that's probably on purpose,
| There's been plenty of opportunity to rename copyright to
| authorrights or something similar
|
| Man, that's such an ignorant type of thing to say. Copy does
| not only mean the act of making a duplicate. Copy also means
| the words/text directly. Terms like copy editor refer to those
| that make edits to the copy=>words/text, not those that make
| edits to the duplicates. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the use
| of the word in that manner, but that's not the rest of the
| world's problem. That's a limited knowledge problem on your
| end.
|
| Even in the "rules" of copyright, you're allowed to make
| copies. Back in the days of the olds being young and in school,
| we had to go to places called libraries to look things up. We
| could pay the librarians to make copies of things for us to
| take home to use in whatever task we were assigned. The fee
| wasn't for any kind of rights usage, but simply to cover the
| library's expense in providing that copy to you.
|
| It's amazing how quickly information is lost from the lack of
| use
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Man, that's such an ignorant type of thing to say. Copy
| does not only mean the act of making a duplicate. Copy also
| means the words/text directly. Terms like copy editor refer
| to those that make edits to the copy=>words/text, not those
| that make edits to the duplicates. Maybe you are unfamiliar
| with the use of the word in that manner, but that's not the
| rest of the world's problem. That's a limited knowledge
| problem on your end.
|
| Do you think _freedom of the press_ involves the right to
| make any kind of juice you want?
| dylan604 wrote:
| what does that even mean? your sarcasm is so strained it
| can't even be followed.
| comfysocks wrote:
| I remember back in the day when hefty penalties for torrenting
| music were in the news, they would erroneously describe it as
| penalties for "downloading" music. I suppose this was
| intentional in order to spook usenet users, etc.
| ru552 wrote:
| Copy in copyright is not copy like copy in copying some data.
|
| Copy in copyright is a term for the actual writing that gets
| published on ads, or magazines, or in a news paper. "I need to
| get the copy from marketing for this campaign." "The editor
| hasn't approved the copy for the article yet."
|
| Typically, people not in/around the industry aren't familiar
| with the term, which leads to the confusion.
| tempfile wrote:
| This sounds completely false to me. Do you have a reference
| for it?
|
| In particular, the original Statute of Anne (the first law
| establishing a copyright) is officially titled:
|
| > An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the
| Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of
| Copies, during the Times therein mentioned
|
| No doubt people used the word "copy" in the sense you mean,
| but "copy" in "copyright" is absolutely about copying as in
| copying some data.
| singlow wrote:
| Any proof that the word copyright was intentionally referring
| to the noun instead of the verb? The British Statute of Anne
| in 1710, the first copyright statute, definitely referred to
| the act of copying a book, not some abstract concept of
| writing samples.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I always thought that ad copy also came from copy as in copy
| some data. Like it's the words that get copied when the media
| is replicated for distribution, as opposed to words that are
| for some internal communication purpose.
| singlow wrote:
| The use of the noun copy probably came from the act of
| copying, but both uses predated the word copyright, so that
| doesn't really help answer the question.
| wrs wrote:
| The word "copy" in the early 1700s when copyright was
| codified in law meant both a written text and a reproduction
| of a written text. The meaning you're using, of text at an
| intermediate stage of a publishing process, is much later,
| 19th century. [0] So, the original meaning was a noun (the
| right to make "a copy" of a book) but meant the book itself,
| not the abstract text of the book. It would be interesting to
| research whether there were any rulings in that period about
| hand-copying a book, which was the only alternative to
| printing it.
|
| Nowadays of course copyright covers much more than text, and
| includes such "copies" as the public performance of a
| theatrical work or reproduction of a sculpture, so the modern
| copyright clearly doesn't have the meaning you're using.
|
| [0] https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/08/copy.html
| wrs wrote:
| AFAIK, in the US it's literally about copying. In fact, case
| law mostly supports the position that just the act of copying a
| program from disk into memory to run it is protected by
| copyright (with some statutory exceptions). (Google "RAM copy
| doctrine".)
| dgreensp wrote:
| That's my understanding as well. Duplicating the bytes of a
| file when you don't have the rights to the content is
| technically infringement and grounds for an infringement
| claim, and then you have to explain in court why it's "fair
| use."
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| That is only in english. Other langues uses different words. So
| not really useful to argue just based on a superficial def of
| the word.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Well, I guess it would be nice if we could have some precedent
| for the claim that downloading copyright protected information
| is not in itself a breach of copyright."
|
| According to Meta's motion the claim about "seeding" (cf. the
| claim about removing CMI) relates to Cal Penal Code 502(c), the
| "Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act".
|
| Whether the data accessed is "copyright protected information"
| is irrelevant to section 502(c). 502(c)(2) applies to "any
| data".
|
| https://www.calpers.ca.gov/sites/default/files/spf/docs/ca-p...
| arboles wrote:
| If you download one book you're a criminal. If they download
| millions of books, that's just business.
| jcmp wrote:
| you are not. Thats their point
| close04 wrote:
| Their point is that _they_ are not.
| arboles wrote:
| It would set the precedent for everyone. The real
| difference is that they can beg the question and people
| like Aaron Schwartz couldn't.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Aaron Schwartz's lawyer could have posed exactly the same
| claim.
|
| It wouldn't have succeeded, just like this won't.
|
| Lawyers will deploy any possible argument, just in case,
| even if it has a 0.1% chance of working because why
| wouldn't you?
| arboles wrote:
| On the off chance the defense succeeds I'm proven right,
| if the defense fails, I'm still proven right as the fine
| will only be a minor set back for Meta.
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, this is a case of "rules for thee but not for me".
| latexr wrote:
| That is definitely not their point. Their point is, quite
| simply, "don't punish us, bro". They don't give a rat's ass
| about the law in general or what it means for other people,
| they just want to make sure _they specifically_ can do what
| they please without repercussion.
| jcmp wrote:
| I think they try to argue around the diffrence of sharing
| activly (=illegal) and downloading (=valid) with this
| argument it does not matter if you download one book or 1
| million books
| st_goliath wrote:
| > If they download millions of books ...
|
| ... as a private individual, you are toast.
|
| I think the more appropriate quote to paraphrase would be one
| from Dennis Hopper's character in the film Speed (1994): "Oh,
| no. Poor people are pirates, Jack. We are tech innovators!"
| voidUpdate wrote:
| When did he say that? I watched it recently, and don't recall
| that line at all...
| st_goliath wrote:
| The scene where Jack climbs down the hole under the garbage
| can into the subway, having figured out the ransom money
| has moved. He tries to hold up Payne, who reveals he's
| holding Annie hostage.
|
| Here: https://youtu.be/ntTY_Q005Ic?t=128
| craftkiller wrote:
| So he didn't say it. "paraphrase" is the wrong word
| because you changed the meaning behind what he said.
|
| > A paraphrase or rephrase is the rendering of the same
| text in different words _without losing the meaning of
| the text itself_
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Oh, I thought that was the quote before paraphrasing, not
| after
| greyw wrote:
| Depends on your jurisdiction. In Switzerland, downloading
| games, books, music, movies etc. for personal use is always
| legal even if the copy is "pirated". Work just needs to be
| published in any form. Dont know any other country where it
| works like this.
| delroth wrote:
| This is a common misconception: there are some exceptions for
| certain types of media, but for example downloading
| copyrighted software (including games) without authorization
| is not legal in Switzerland. And some of those exceptions are
| more constrained than others.
| aurea wrote:
| Can you point to any official document which states it is
| illegal? Or any document which mentions any exceptions?
| mnau wrote:
| Czechia. In theory, there is a fee for every media (e.g.HDD)
| that is paid to OSA (authors organization) and OSA pays to
| authors through some distribution scheme. Since user already
| paid fee, downloading is OK.
|
| This is mostly leftover before computers were a thing (think
| cassettes and paper copiers).
|
| In practice, it's a racket and OSA is a mafia that doesn't
| pay to anyone. Also, the fees are rather small considering
| the the purpose (I think it's capped at ~$5 per device), but
| since authors don't actually get money from it(OSA practices)
| , it doesn't really matter.
|
| Anyway, downloading audiovisual media is fine, seeding is
| not.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sweden apparently kept the fee _and_ made it illegal. That
| 's extra mafia.
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| It is specifically illegal to make a copy of something
| that has been illegally published, not illegal to make
| copies for personal use in general.
|
| Not that I am a lawyer.
| 2mlWQbCK wrote:
| Sweden has something similar (except, as I mentioned
| elsewhere, the law was amended in 2005 to explicitly add an
| exception for downloads).
|
| The Berne Convention has a special provision for this.
| Something about if the biggest rights organizations agree
| then a country can have laws that allow some free copying.
| So a tax on empty media (in Sweden also covering the
| computer hard drives and the flash memory built into
| phones) is used to pay off the big music and movie
| companies.
|
| The weird thing is that only the biggest industries are
| paid off. No matter what you use your storage for, it is
| the big movie and music companies that receive the money.
| No other industries are paid off as far as I know, so most
| others just have to accept that their stuff is legally
| copied for free, without compensation (a few things like
| software are always illegal to copy, so those industries
| are not affected).
| apexalpha wrote:
| >Dont know any other country where it works like this.
|
| The Netherlands works the exact same.
| beAbU wrote:
| In South Africa (as far as I understand) it's also perfectly
| legal to copy stuff for personal use.
|
| It's been a while since I've been in one, but our public
| libraries had coin operated photocopiers, you can just walk
| in, grab literally any book from the shelf, and copy away.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| It's certainly nice to see someone accused of bittorrenting with
| the bankroll to come up with a decent legal defense team.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| This isn't a decent defence, it's a losing desperate one.
| StevenWaterman wrote:
| The noun phrase was "legal defence team" not "legal defence".
| A decent team can put forward a poor defence
| guappa wrote:
| They can just bribe the president.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Maybe Trump will legalise internet-based copying.
|
| After all, the main people hurt would be Hollywood, which
| is run by people supporting the Democrats. And it would be
| popular with many voters (not an issue for Trump but it is
| for Republicans).
| rs186 wrote:
| That seems an oversimplification.
|
| Counter example: ownership of Amazon MGM Studios and its
| parent Amazon.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Selling streaming media is a side business for Amazon
| (and Apple), an add on as a way to move Amazon Prime and
| Apple One subscriptions.
|
| They would probably benefit by handicapping
| Netflix/Disney/WBD/etc.
| userbinator wrote:
| Not sure if he has the power to, and if everyone else will
| let him, but some EOs opening up the copyright system would
| be very welcome. There are already some things he's done
| around this:
|
| https://www.omm.com/insights/alerts-publications/trump-
| admin...
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Inbefore he pardons meta for torrenting.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Probably no need. Elon Musk already did that. And one of
| his companies just published a shiny new version of grok. I
| wonder where they get their training material. I'm sure
| it's all just tweets and no stashes of ebooks or other
| material got downloaded in some way or otherwise fell of
| the proverbial wagon.
|
| Historically, copyright cases fell in favor of big media
| corporations based on the notion that they were very rich
| and powerful and could fight things endlessly, bribe/lobby
| politicians, and cause laws to be changed (e.g. the DMCA).
|
| However, AI companies are wealthier still. Some have
| revenues exceeding the GDPs of most countries. Surely, rich
| enough to outright buy out some of these media companies.
| At which point it would stop being copyright infringement
| because they'd own the copyrights. I'm sure some other
| arrangement will be found that is less mutually disruptive
| than a lot of court cases. Both sides are making too much
| money for anything else to happen. Forget about small book
| publishers making much of a difference here.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Probably no need. Elon Musk already did that. And one
| of his companies just published a shiny new version of
| grok._
|
| Trump _could_ make Grok, Facebook, Google and OpenAI 's
| actions legal in response to a bribe from Musk.
|
| Or he could step up enforcement actions against Facebook,
| Google and OpenAI while issuing a pardon to Grok.
| yyyk wrote:
| Meta's real (nigh invincible) defence is 'we have way more
| money than you and can keep this going forever'.
| stogot wrote:
| Money doesn't keep it going forever, only about 2-4 years,
| even with appeals
|
| That's enough to bankrupt individuals but industries
| fighting industries can see it to the end, if they don't
| settle
| no_wizard wrote:
| 2-4 years is optimistic IMO. I've seen many copyright
| disputes carry for 7 years or more.
| scotty79 wrote:
| As the richest man on Earth, with multiple investigations
| into him by various government agencies shown us, nothing is
| desperate with billions of dollars "in the bank".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, kinda surprised they haven't just flat out denied it,
| hoped it would blow over.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| At some point I expect we'll see the "shareholders made me do
| it" defense. You know, the fiduciary-duty-to-keep-making-
| billions-regardless defense.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Isn't Meta going to be battling the full legal team of the
| entertainment industry with this argument? I think Meta did
| something stupid with this argument, because there is no way
| that Hollywood or the music industry is going be pleased with a
| precedence for legally downloading copyrighted material. They
| will now do everything in their power to get Meta found guilty.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Or, more likely, drop the case to avoid establishing a
| precedent.
|
| Sounds like Meta are banking on the entertainment industry
| looking at it and deciding that the risk of losing this case
| is too high given Meta's almost infinitely deep pockets to
| mount a legal defence.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Maybe. But it's hard to see how they could possibly win
| this case no matter how good their defence team is.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| So, _if_ Meta were found to have been seeding or making
| copyrighted materials available to others without
| permission, that 's a slam dunk, I think.
|
| But Meta's contention is 'you don't have any proof of
| that'.
|
| I think there is enough existing case law and ambiguity
| in the law as it's written that Meta stand a _reasonable_
| (although not a _good_ ) chance of being able to argue
| that they did not commit any crime because a.) they did
| not create the infringing copy (or that the infringing
| copy that they received was a technical copy, and they
| did not create an infringing copy themselves) b.) they
| did not infringe for private or financial gain (the
| models they trained on this material were released to the
| public for free). There's an argument that copyright
| infringement occurs only upon distribution, and as far as
| I'm aware, there's no case law that just downloading a
| copy is illegal.
|
| Meta _may_ also be able to argue that their use of the
| material could be considered 'fair', as it is non-
| commercial, transformative, and that the use of the
| material does not harm the market for the original work.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not arguing about the _merits_
| of these arguments, just that they seem to me to be
| plausible.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > a.) they did not create the infringing copy (or that
| the infringing copy that they received was a technical
| copy, and they did not create an infringing copy
| themselves)
|
| Copyright protects against _making copies_ of the work,
| which they definitely did.
|
| > There's an argument that copyright infringement occurs
| only upon distribution
|
| Not in most countries. Certainly not in America.
|
| > b.) they did not infringe for private or financial gain
| (the models they trained on this material were released
| to the public for free).
|
| They _definitely_ gained from it. If their argument rests
| on that then they 're screwed.
|
| > Meta may also be able to argue that their use of the
| material could be considered 'fair', as it is non-
| commercial, transformative, and that the use of the
| material does not harm the market for the original work.
|
| Probably their best bet but it's hard to see how that
| would fly given that it _is_ commercial even if they
| released it for free, and fair use normally depends on
| how much of the work you use; they used all of
| everything.
| stephencanon wrote:
| They don't want to win, they want to reach a settlement
| where they admit no wrongdoing, but agree to pay some
| medium-large fee that establishes a precedent.1 That fee
| is essentially trivial to Meta, but becomes an effective
| moat against new upstart rivals. The possibility of
| losing everything is the stick they wield to encourage
| the copyright owners to agree to accept only a medium-
| large fee.
|
| 1 Not necessarily a formal legal precedent, but at least
| a floor on the "market value" of access to the data
| stogot wrote:
| what is worse to them:
|
| Precedent that LLMs get to keep & use copyrighted data
|
| LLMs get to keep & use copyrighted data without legal
| precedent
|
| I bet the industry will file amicus briefs to try to
| support the plaintiffs
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| Dropping the case does not create any precedent, that's
| the point. Losing the case would.
|
| If you're going to have this fight, wait until you have
| it with a worse-prepared and worse-resourced opponent
| where you're more confident of the win.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| As much as I dislike the idea of individual copyright
| owners, like visual artists or writers, having their works
| scraped for AI without compensation...
|
| If this does break the stranglehold that copyright has over
| creative acts, especially in the US, this feels like a net
| good.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I love the idea. The problem is that we never even tried
| to establish some standard licensing system that
| encourages rewarding the creator while using their
| copyright. Most people would rather work around and re-
| invent a slightly bumpoer wheel.
| bigtimesink wrote:
| What's your test for when a use is ok and being held back
| by copyright law versus when it's damaging? Why is one ok
| but not the other?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Awesome. And just to be clear, Meta will walk away scot-
| free, but Billy Torrent is definitely still going to be
| fined $500,000 if he pulls down "Sleeping Beauty" from
| 1959.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Exactly. There's always a question of power.
| Munksgaard wrote:
| Meta is a couple of times larger than the entire
| entertainment industry combined...
| hobs wrote:
| I think its reversed, and that's just the USA -
|
| The U.S. Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry is the
| largest in the world at $649 billion (of the $2.8 trillion
| global market) and is projected to grow to $808 billion by
| 2028 at an average yearly rate of 4.3% (PwC 2024).
|
| https://www.trade.gov/media-entertainment
|
| Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook Inc., continues
| to dominate the digital landscape with impressive financial
| growth. In 2024, the company's annual revenue reached a
| staggering 164.5 billion U.S. dollars, marking a
| significant increase from 134.9 billion U.S. dollars in the
| previous year. This upward trajectory reflects Meta's
| ability to monetize its vast user base across multiple
| platforms, solidifying its position as a tech giant.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-
| of...
| jpalawaga wrote:
| I think the first statement is reporting on market cap
| and the second statement is reporting on revenue.
|
| If you look at UMG's revenue, one of the largest labels,
| their revenue was 11B.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Meta's market cap is over $1.7 trillion. Over twice as
| large as the whole media and entertainment industry.
| Scoring6931 wrote:
| Market cap is not cash in the bank.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The current admin and the judges they installed are favorable
| towards Zuck and antagonistic towards most of the
| entertainment industry. If this case is seen through (which
| is not likely) & Meta wins (even if via appeal to higher
| courts), the legal decision will likely involve a very
| specific carve out that says what Meta did, and only what
| Meta did, was fine. It will have no affect on you or me.
| bloomingkales wrote:
| There's more money to make for entertainment artists in
| licensing their image and voice for content creation at scale
| (for the average joe). They need the LLM to exist, so there's
| no point in crying about how it was made.
| tombert wrote:
| The combined market cap of Disney and Comcast (who owns NBC
| and the like) is about 350 billion dollars [1][2]. Facebook
| alone is worth about 1.7 trillion [3]. I had trouble finding
| exact numbers on this, but it seems like the movie industry
| itself in the US is worth less than $100 billion.
|
| Facebook could simply _buy_ most of the companies involved if
| they give them too much shit. We 've consolidated way too
| much power into a few large tech companies. I don't see it
| very likely that Hollywood could win this.
|
| [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/walt-disney/marketcap/ [2]
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/comcast/marketcap/ [3]
| https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/meta/market-cap/
| achrono wrote:
| Market cap is not money in the bank.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Meta already runs three of the top eight copyright-violation
| distribution networks.
|
| Google paid about $1b to Viacom in the YouTube piracy
| dispute. That's a lot of money, but do you recall anything
| seriously changing when that happened?
|
| To me, the funniest product is Beat Saber. The best VR game
| by far. 99% of the value is tied up in violating musician's
| rights. Meta saved that game. Did people stop making music?
| No.
|
| This book torrenting thing is complex. The main thing
| plaintiffs want is discovery of the training data. It's not
| complicated. There's no justification for the court to block
| that, it's a fishing expedition yes, but one that will turn
| up a lot of fish. Then all AI companies will have to
| acquiesce to it. That is the "win" for the industry.
| rsync wrote:
| "... the full legal team of the entertainment industry with
| this argument ..."
|
| Is that a problem for them ?
|
| Doesn't meta make more money than _the entire industry of
| Hollywood including all home entertainment revenue_ ?
|
| I am certain they do.
|
| EDIT: 2024 full year revenue for meta is ~160B as compared to
| (roughly) 140B for _the entirety of the film industry_.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The unfortunate side effect is that a megacorp gets to vacuum
| up the sum of human knowledge for free, boil it down, and sell
| it back to us for a nice profit.
| visarga wrote:
| Ah you mean like Google Search?
| moring wrote:
| Google doesn't "vaccuum up" anything. Every site indexed by
| Google is still available without using Google at all. They
| are _copying_ information, not moving or removing it.
| bolognafairy wrote:
| And how does downloading a torrent differ from that?
| notimetorelax wrote:
| It does not, and both uses are fine.
| shakna wrote:
| The sites copied by Google Search explicitly allow it.
|
| The books copied by Meta, explicitly disallow it, and
| require payment for distribution.
| yreg wrote:
| Information wants to be free.
| shakna wrote:
| Perhaps. However, information won't be produced, if the
| already tenuous financial positions of authors is
| removed.
|
| Things should be free, as in speech, not as in beer.
| Especially in this case. The giants of Silicon Valley
| could in fact purchase these rights.
|
| Few authors care about people personally enjoying a
| product through otherwise means. They do care about mass
| distribution without attribution, without royalty, and
| without regard.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Information isn't copyrightable, at least in the US. Only
| creative works. But I get what you are saying.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's fine and dandy as part of a free as in beer ethos.
| When 'information' wants to pad the quarterly earnings
| statement of a gigantic corporation that exists only by
| grinding the suffering of fellow humans into a fine
| marketable paste I am somewhat less sympathetic.
| Information should be free. To people, for non-commercial
| use.
| roenxi wrote:
| The sites indexed often don't explicitly allow it. I can
| see my website in the index of web search engines that I
| never opted in to.
|
| I'm not unhappy about it; but was never consulted.
| axus wrote:
| Linking is different from copying, and fortunately the
| last case I remember allows it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster_Corp._v._Ticke
| ts.....
| amne wrote:
| Tell me you've never googled lyrics without telling
| me.....
| mcursa wrote:
| Sources are linked below the lyrics though!
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| But how did can Google index a site without copying it to
| their servers?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It doesn't, unless the torrent later becomes unavailable.
| Then the AI trained with is the only "copy" left.
|
| If anything, the law should require that they seed their
| training data so that the competitive landscape converges
| on actual technological innovation and not moat building
| through data destruction.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Google Search brings you traffic and revenue. LLMs do not.
| rocqua wrote:
| See also how people have responded to google-snippets.
| When google search threatens to remove traffic or
| revenue, people get angry quite quickly.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I still own my content. Google links to it and sends me
| traffic. We both win. This sort of relationship is not
| present when my content is anonymously fed into a training
| model intended to be used to extract users _before_ they
| are sent to me. And, yes, I am aware Google has pulled some
| cute shit with this definition, and when they do it then it
| 's also bad.
| visarga wrote:
| > Google links to it and sends me traffic
|
| Used to, but more recently it's probably LLM agents using
| Google not people. And even if it's not yet, it will be.
| Last time I searched for something on Google it messed up
| so bad I quickly returned to GPT-4o+search.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| If that's the case, Google should go away. I use kagi and
| it works pretty well for me.
|
| The answer to bad products is not to throw away the idea
| of people getting to control their own content.
| LevGoldstein wrote:
| How long before a handful of entities, having already
| ingested the available content into their proprietary
| systems, bankroll assaults on Wikipedia and the Internet
| Archive.
| retropragma wrote:
| Likely never, as those platforms are continuously updating
| at no cost to the siphons training their LLMs on them
| mft_ wrote:
| Really?
|
| a) Meta are (so far) releasing their models for free.
|
| b) There's nothing stopping non-mega-corps from doing the
| same, especially if this precedent was established. (Training
| is of course expensive but this is a challenge, not an
| absolute block.)
| r1chardnl wrote:
| "If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from
| many, it's research." - Wilson Mizner
| janlaureys wrote:
| "Plagiarize, let no one else's work evade your eyes. Remember
| why the good lord made your eyes, so don't shade your eyes but
| plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize !" ~ Me
| jfk13 wrote:
| Glad to see you didn't acknowledge your source! :-)
|
| (It's Tom Lehrer, for any who don't recognize it.)
| stevage wrote:
| No, it's Jan Laureys
| actionfromafar wrote:
| - Lincoln. Fact-checked by Meta.
| edm0nd wrote:
| I sung this in the style of System Of A Down for some reason
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| And now I am infinitely disappointed that there don't seem
| to be any covers of Tom Lehrer tunes in the style of System
| of a Down.
| graemep wrote:
| Plagiarism is claiming credit for work that is not yours: it is
| entirely different from a breach of copyright. You can breach
| copyright without plagiarism, and you can plagiarise without
| breaching copyright.
| tsumnia wrote:
| "Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal" - Picasso
| selamtux wrote:
| Aaron Swartz didn't seed or distribute articles too
| mandmandam wrote:
| I don't think that what Aaron did was* wrong.
|
| Meta's wholescale theft, however, is pretty hard to defend, and
| Meta knew it. That's why they went to some lengths to hide it.
|
| Similarly, that OpenAI whistleblower, the one whose family was
| calling for a murder investigation, might be alive today if it
| wasn't pretty well known that stealing the work of
| thousands/millions of people to make a for-profit imitation
| machine isn't exactly cool or legal.
|
| Edit: egregious typo.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| What Aaron did was not wrong.
|
| He intended to make journal articles publicly available. They
| should be, as many are publicly funded, and academic
| publishers like Elsevier do not pay for these articles.
| Scientists provide them to journals. Universities, libraries,
| and we then have to buy back access.
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| +1 public money, public research
| mandmandam wrote:
| Yeah agreed, I was typing pre-caffeination :/
| drawkward wrote:
| Trump solved the problem by just removing the funding!
| Checkmate, Libs! /s
| weberer wrote:
| Swartz killed himself before the trial actually took place. Its
| entirely possible that the court would have ruled in his favor.
| ramblerman wrote:
| Maybe, but getting arrested with the FBI involved is a pretty
| traumatic event for a citizen. Having your company's lawyers
| mail back and forth with the DoJ less so.
| visarga wrote:
| Probably not because there was a DA who needed to make her
| career on his back.
| selamtux wrote:
| by the way they say "we didn't seed after the download" but what
| about while downloading in progress?
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| In any case it's really easy to configure a BitTorrent client
| to never seed. It would be dumb not to when torrenting for
| work.
| dspillett wrote:
| The claim is that they "took precautions not to 'seed' any
| downloaded files" - that probably means blocking all upload
| actions which is possible with many torrent clients. They may
| also have used a custom hacked client that didn't even connect
| to other nodes that didn't claim to have 100% already.
| throw310822 wrote:
| In fairness, I don't think Meta would have (had) any trouble
| paying the fair price of every book they downloaded (the price of
| exactly one copy) if that had been possible to do at scale.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| Paying the price of one copy does not imply that you can use it
| for training, right ?
| throw310822 wrote:
| That's what I do all the time, when I buy a copy of a book
| and read it.
| pyrale wrote:
| Since there is no such thing as training rights, they would
| have a reasonable claim.
| amelius wrote:
| I think it is more reasonable for content owners to say
| what can and cannot be done with their data. After all,
| content is what make AI possible, and content owners could
| easily start their own LLM if they wanted to since a lot of
| it is open source now.
| visarga wrote:
| That is not reasonable, should a child heed the
| restrictions placed on the 1st grade math book later in
| life, when they become PhD?
| davidcbc wrote:
| LLMs aren't people
| flir wrote:
| LLMs aren't the ones making the decision to use the
| copyrighted information as training data, and it's that
| decision that is at issue here.
| stale2002 wrote:
| No, but people are the one's training the models.
| cowl wrote:
| they are not content "owners" though. they have a a
| copyright that regulates who can copy and distribute that
| data. they don't have a say how that content is used when
| acquired legally as long as you activity doesn't
| constitute a distribution.
| flir wrote:
| You're taking an "everything not permitted is forbidden"
| approach, which contradicts the common law principle of
| residual freedom.
|
| This would automatically outlaw any new use of
| information (eg music sampling) by default.
|
| If all novel uses were banned from the outset, cultural
| progress would suffer immeasurably.
| amelius wrote:
| I don't think cultural progress will suffer from
| copyright holders preventing AI from using their content.
|
| What I think will suffer more is the bank accounts of AI
| corporations.
| flir wrote:
| So to be clear, you're arguing this one specific use
| (machine learning) should be knocked on the head? And not
| all novel uses?
|
| Because "content owners to say what can and cannot be
| done with their data" is quite broad.
| amelius wrote:
| No, that's not what I said.
|
| If we want to use data owned by others and make money
| with it, we can do two things:
|
| (1) just grab the data
|
| (2) ask the content owners
|
| I think what is fair is closer to (2) than to (1).
| Especially since the data was originally intended for
| human consumption. What you call "training" is what
| another person might call "mechanized processing", and
| would not fall within fair use of the data.
| flir wrote:
| I'm honestly at a loss here. I can't figure out what your
| position is.
|
| > If we want to use data owned by others and make money
| with it [...] ask the content owners
|
| So is it "no commercial use without permission" you're
| arguing for?
|
| > mechanized processing
|
| Or are you arguing that training should fall under the
| existing mechanical license provisions for songs? I don't
| think you are, because those licenses are compulsory, and
| you seem to want an element of choice for the copyright
| holder.
|
| Ok, put the chatbots aside for the moment. If [brand new
| use] for a book is invented, and I buy a copy of that
| book and want to do [that new thing] with it, should the
| copyright holder of that book be able to block me?
| stale2002 wrote:
| >I think it is more reasonable for content owners to say
| what can and cannot be done with their data.
|
| They lose that right as soon as they sell it to other
| people.
|
| No, you can't sell a book to someone and then sue anyone
| who reads the book, upside down.
|
| That would be ridiculous. If you don't want someone
| reading your book upside down, or training on it, then
| don't sell books.
| amelius wrote:
| You assume that "training" and human learning are similar
| things.
|
| This is a bit like saying that taking a holiday picture
| of someone, and putting a surveillance camera on the
| street are the same thing.
|
| I think many books actually prohibit the storage into an
| information retrieval system and AI can be considered a
| form of that.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > You assume that "training" and human learning are
| similar things.
|
| No I don't. Because a human is choosing to enact the
| training regardless.
|
| Just like if a human held a book up to a rock. It would
| be ridiculous that an author could ban a human from
| "training" a rock from a book. Its their book, and they
| can show it to a rock if they want!
| amelius wrote:
| If you buy a DVD and show it at work, then that's also
| ok, because it is your DVD and you can do with it
| whatever you want?
|
| Turns out, nope, that's not ok.
| noirscape wrote:
| (note; not a lawyer) It depends on if a model is a derivate
| work from it's source material or not. If yes, then all
| copyright protections come into force. If not, then the
| author can't rely on copyright to protect themselves.
|
| My instinct/gut says that an AI model is a derivative work
| from the training data (in that it quite literally takes
| training data to produce a new creative output, with the
| "human addition" being the selection of training data to
| use), but there's not really clear judgements on it either
| way for the time being, which leaves room to argue.
|
| The actual methodology used ("isn't an LLM like a computer
| reading a book for yourself?") is an irrelevant distraction
| in this regard. Computers aren't people and don't get that
| sort of protection; they're ultimately tools programmed to do
| things by humans and as a rule we hold humans responsible
| when those tools do something bad/wrong. "Computer says no"
| works on the small scale, but in cases like this, it's not
| really an adequate defense.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Or rather, that is how it should be; I think the
| uncomfortable truth here is that we need Congress to make
| laws to clarify the situation in the favor of society, and
| Congress does not seem willing to do that.
| visarga wrote:
| Doesn't synthetic data complicate this reasoning? If I
| train a model on synthetic data, which is not protected by
| copyright, I am free to do as I please. It won't even
| regurgitate the originals, it will learn the abstractions
| not memorize the exact expression, because it doesn't see
| it.
|
| But it's not just supervised training. Maybe a model
| trained on reasoning traces and RLHF is not a mere
| derivative of the training set. All recent models are being
| trained on self generated data produced with reward or
| preference models.
|
| When a model trains on a piece of text it won't derive
| gradients from the parts it knows, it will only absorb the
| novel parts. So what it takes from each example depends on
| the ordering of training examples. It is a process of
| diffing between model and text, could be seen as a form of
| analysis not simple memorization.
|
| Even if it is infringement to train on protected works, the
| model size is 100x up to 1000x smaller than the training
| set, it has no space to memorize it.
|
| The larger the training set, the less impact any one work
| has. It is de minimis use, paradoxically, the more you take
| the less you imitate.
|
| That should matter when estimating damages.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| Understood, Was there any conclusion to the past copy right
| cases that have been filed against open ai / anthropic ?
| noirscape wrote:
| All still pending as far as I'm aware. The only concluded
| lawsuit is that LAION isn't responsible for how AI
| companies use it's dataset and that merely providing a
| tagged image index isn't in and of itself copyright
| infringement (and that lawsuit was ruled in Germany, not
| the US.)
| IshKebab wrote:
| That is still an open question.
| pyrale wrote:
| They would have a better defense if they had escrowed that
| money and/or reasonably tried to buy.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Indeed. Although there is the case of owners of rights
| invited to come forward to receive their due, if it wasn't
| possible to contact them before. You probably need a proof
| that you made an effort though.
|
| It's also true that anyone can go to a public library and
| read all the contents for free- the point is they can't
| further distribute them except in a highly processed form
| (i.e. they can distribute original products influenced by
| what they have read). Here the issue is the scale of both the
| "reading" part and of the "producing original work" part.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| If anyone could do it at scale, it would be Meta.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| So openai announced once that it will cover its' clients legal
| costs for copyright infringement suits, wonder how it works.
| Either they are very cautious about where they are training or
| seeding the data from or there is a loophole.
| noirscape wrote:
| It's a bluff, OpenAI and Microsoft both have an carveout in
| that guarantee that effectively says "if we think you
| deliberately did copyright infringement with our tools, we
| won't help you".
|
| And of course, conveniently, if you get a copyright
| infringement lawsuit, they can just point to that. A company
| promising legal defense is only worth the paper it's written on
| and there's always carveouts like that, with the likelihood of
| them being used probably being equal to the risk the company
| takes on with that promise. US Copyright lawsuits having pretty
| extreme fines makes them fairly likely to get used.
| guappa wrote:
| Probably "after the fact", meaning you first go bankrupt so
| they don't have to pay you.
| zigman1 wrote:
| Did at least their competitors seed?
| yyyk wrote:
| Pirating used to be the worst. The law is awfully flexible when
| large companies want it to be.
| abenga wrote:
| The law doesn't punish those who break it. It punishes those
| who can't afford expensive legal teams and those who hurt
| people who can afford expensive legal teams.
| guappa wrote:
| I think they should be fined more for torrenting and not seeding
| :D
| lubujackson wrote:
| Meta's rep continues to degrade - first they steal from
| copyright holders, but then they admit to leeching? Not even a
| 1:1 ratio?!
|
| /kickban
| easterncalculus wrote:
| Seriously though, where is that magnet link? That's the only
| question on my mind when these articles come up.
| janetmissed wrote:
| annas archive has a whole section on torrenting
| bcraven wrote:
| >This torrent list is the "ultimate unified list" of
| releases by Anna's Archive, Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, and
| others. By seeding these torrents, you help preserve
| humanity's knowledge and culture. These torrents represent
| the vast majority of human knowledge that can be mirrored
| in bulk.
|
| >These torrents are not meant for downloading individual
| books. They are meant for long-term preservation. With
| these torrents you can set up a full mirror of Anna's
| Archive, using our source code and metadata (which can be
| generated or downloaded as ElasticSearch and MariaDB
| databases). We also have full lists of torrents, as JSON.
|
| https://annas-archive.org/torrents
| vednig wrote:
| This lawsuit may have impact on legality of open AI models like
| LLAMA 3, if outcome makes it illegal this may prevent businesses
| utilizing these models directly in their project.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| So not only did they pirate all those books, they were also jerks
| about it? Meta's seeding ratio would've gotten them kicked off of
| most private trackers back in the day.
| fetzu wrote:
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| If this was 15-20 years ago, arguably at the peak of P2P
| filesharing, I suspect most people would side with Meta.
| apexalpha wrote:
| In the Netherlands this is still the law.
|
| Downloading is fine, uploading is not.
|
| We used to have a sort of national library of every single
| media on Usenet back in the day.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Maybe Meta has a "trading desk" in the Netherlands. :-)
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| 11 years ago the EU made the Netherlands change their
| position: https://www.zdnet.com/article/downloading-pirate-
| material-fi... AFAIK this is still the case - the Netherlands
| is more poorly-enforced than other EU countries, but it's
| still illegal to download pirated material.
| apexalpha wrote:
| Weird, TIL.
|
| This has never been enforced though.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| It certainly has!
|
| https://stichtingbrein.nl/largest-ever-criminal-action-
| again...
|
| https://piracymonitor.org/netherlands-odido-is-ordered-
| to-bl...
|
| https://piracymonitor.org/netherlands-brein-reports-two-
| pira...
| apexalpha wrote:
| All these are proof of _upload_ enforcement, not
| download.
| jillyboel wrote:
| And of course the "thuiskopieheffing", a tax on any storage
| device that ostensibly is used to fund those whose media
| gets copied, is still in effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/Private_copying_levy#Netherlan...
|
| As long as I'm paying a tax for it, it is my right to copy
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| No, it is not your right to copy! If you want to keep
| using euros and have free travel to other Eurozone
| countries, you need to respect EU law. The tax does not
| respect EU law because it makes no effort to actually
| offset losses to copyright holders.
|
| Your comment doesn't even make sense! The intention was
| never to make piracy okay, it was to offset a tiny
| fraction of the financial losses. These financial losses
| are still occurring even now that piracy is formally
| illegal, so the tax is still justified.
|
| More generally this seems a form of freeloading: picking
| the parts of the EU that you like, ignoring the parts
| that don't. Who cares about society, it's just me me me.
| Pure selfishness.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Collecting restitution from innocent parties is perhaps
| the definition of injustice.
| jillyboel wrote:
| Not sure what you're on about but it was permitted by
| law, and the tax exists because of that reason. The EU
| bullied the NL into changing some laws (which aren't
| enforced), but the NL is still charging this tax.
|
| None of that really has anything to do with me, I'm not a
| bureaucrat. But they chose to still tax me, so as far as
| I'm concerned I have the moral right to download as much
| as I want.
|
| Anyway, feel free to lobby the NL to drop this tax and
| then we can talk.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| These days for books at least Anna's Archive is the place to
| go.
|
| https://annas-archive.org/activity
| grotorea wrote:
| I think people would dunk on Meta for not seeding
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Why do we have to play this purity game where we take a
| situation, remove context, and wag our finger at each other?
|
| There's an ENORMOUS difference between college students
| pirating some movies or albums and the company worth $2
| trillion doing it programmatically across millions of works and
| then _reselling the laundered data_.
|
| This is a completely unserious discussion without considering
| context.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The difference being... what? Just scale?
|
| To be clear, Meta didn't "[resell] the laundered data": or at
| least they're claiming there's no proof of seeding.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Yes, scale matters, a lot. I can feed my neighbor some
| rycin and I'm a murderer. If I poison the state's water
| supply with rycin and millions die, I'm not just a murderer
| any more. I'm now a terrorist and an entirely new set of
| laws apply to me. Same with blowing up my neighbors barn vs
| blowing up a large building. Scale matters and these
| "what's the difference except the scale" comments seem
| unconsidered or naive to me.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| The difference is scale AND that META does it for profit,
| violating plenty of licensing terms in the process as well.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I still do on this one specific argument. Just because I loathe
| them doesn't mean I disagree with everything they say.
| bodiekane wrote:
| It's today and everyone on HN still should side with them.
|
| It's a travesty that we let the RIAA and MPAA sue defenseless
| kids and elderly for impossibly large sums, forced them to
| settle out of court to avoid expensive legal fees, and then use
| those acts of terrorism to establish the insane idea that
| filesharing was tantamount to "theft" or should be restricted.
|
| I hope Meta wins. I hope we see a reversal of the attacks on
| fair use and the end of abusive fraudulent DMCA takedowns, and
| I'm happy to finally have a powerful ally in the resistance
| against oppression from the copyright cartel.
| blogabegonija wrote:
| We have TV culture not recognizing the Internet culture.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| I am curious, where did the other companies (OpenAI, Anthropic,
| et al) get their training data from? Why is only Meta under fire
| for this?
| xuki wrote:
| Meta is dumb enough to use email to discuss it.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| It's not just books; most websites technically don't allow
| scraping content, but most of the content on which these models
| trained was scraped from the web. It's legality is still an
| open question.
| codelion wrote:
| Yeah, the difficulty of tracking is a huge factor. Plus, with
| torrenting, the "making available" part is pretty blatant. With
| Usenet or direct downloads, it's a grayer area unless you're
| running the server. I've always wondered about the legal nuances
| of just passively receiving copyrighted data - like if a
| misconfigured server pushes something to you without you
| requesting it.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Unless they actively modified a bittorrent client, even leeches
| upload and share some chunks.
| itiduenacvylipt wrote:
| It's not hard. I've done it.
| Rhapso wrote:
| Right, but did they? It being easy doesn't mean data
| scientists moving fast and breaking things bothered while
| they were already doing something illegal.
| stevage wrote:
| > Evidence instead shows that Meta "took precautions not to
| 'seed' any downloaded files," Meta's filing said. Seeding refers
| to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and
| because there's allegedly no proof of such "seeding," Meta
| insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books
| with anyone during the torrenting process.
|
| Are they actually claiming only that they didn't share after the
| torrent completed? Or is the journalist just confused?
|
| My understanding with bittorrent is that normally during download
| you are also uploading. "Seeding" is just what the uploading part
| is called when you're not also downloading.
|
| I think it _is_ possible to download without doing any uploading
| at all, but I feel like the onus of proof should be on them to
| show that they actually did that.
| rozab wrote:
| I think it's possible with the optimistic unchoking feature of
| BT but it would be slow and rely on generous clients.
|
| But at the end of the day I don't think Meta care enough. They
| see themselves as being above the law and likely didn't seed
| 'more than necessary' only because it didn't benefit them.
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| But that's not quite how the law works. Meta's response here is
| "you have no evidence of any wrongdoing".
|
| The fact we're even discussing this shows that there's at least
| some doubt that Meta could be successfully prosecuted for
| downloading alone.
|
| With regards to uploading, legally speaking, it sounds like
| they're right. Generally, the presumption of innocence means
| that whoever's doing the accusing carries the burden of proof,
| and without any evidence that Meta did anything wrong, it also
| sets a worrying precedent that Meta would proactively have to
| prove their innocence in the face of no evidence to the
| contrary.
| mft_ wrote:
| You're right that torrent clients typically share during
| downloading, although one might limit this by limiting the
| upload bandwidth.
|
| However, while we have no idea the lengths that Meta went to
| (or not), I suspect they have the engineering chops to fork and
| tweak their own 'download-only' torrent client.
| DrScientist wrote:
| In the end it's it about the money? ie the loss to the copyright
| holder.
|
| One of the reasons people sharing were gone after is you could
| aggregate the loss to one lawsuit - the person sharing was
| responsible for every lost sale - rather than chasing the
| thousands of individual lost sales, one at once, for each
| download. Not sure that actually made the best sense from a legal
| perspective as the sharer wasn't necessarily benefiting - but it
| was pushed for practical reasons.
|
| In this case I'm assuming Meta downloaded as many pirated books
| as it could get it's hands on in order to avoid paying for them.
|
| Seems common sense what they did is/should be illegal.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Torrenting without seeding is a new low even for Meta.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| my teenager self the trillion dollars company
| api wrote:
| We'll see if small scale piracy is bad but massive scale
| corporate piracy is fine.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Corporate advocating for internet piracy, even better for
| torrents surely was not on my 2025 bingo card.
| karlkloss wrote:
| So I'm allowed to torrent all the games and apps for their VR
| headsets? Good that they clarified this.
| tripplyons wrote:
| Only if you leech it, I guess.
| sheepdestroyer wrote:
| The Open(Closed)AIs of the world have millions of dollars to
| spend on IP datasets.
|
| Arguing that copyright forbids training AI models without paying
| authors is the moat that would prevent any hope that small labs,
| individuals, and open source communities can ever compete with
| these huge corpos.
|
| The books and other artworks they are arguing over didn't come
| generated spontaneously from nowhere, and it's disingenuous to
| refuse sharing them to inform what is basically the worlds next
| currency : Intelligence. Doing so is just saying that knowledge
| and intelligence must belong to rich corpos only and never be
| democratized.
|
| This is unexpected but Meta is basically being the good guy by
| giving away their research papers and models weight resulting
| from millions of $ of training.
|
| The alternative to open source AI is everyone's subjugation to
| the oligarchists in charge of Intelligence. Copyrights holders
| who argue against free training of open source models from their
| work are morally and ethically wrong here.
| xyst wrote:
| Semantic details aside (I was just downloading/leeching, bro!1! I
| pinky promise). Clearly a PR campaign.
|
| It's abhorrent that a multibillion dollar company is not just
| pirating the content for personal use (? wtf how can a for profit
| company download it for _personal_ use ?) but also _profits_ on
| the pirated content by using it for training material.
|
| The whole "corporations" are people ruling is fucking stupid, and
| truly shows how much this country bends to the billionaire class
| anilakar wrote:
| Disclaimer: not American.
|
| Copyright agencies that monitor torrents here have actually
| verified that peers offer at least one offending chunk on
| protocol level and the Market Court has decided it's the minimum
| that can be considered sharing. As far as I know, nobody has yet
| claimed their client has been modified to download without
| seeding.
| itiduenacvylipt wrote:
| I do not work for Meta. Still throwaway account for obvious
| reasons.
|
| I wrote a modified torrent client that fake seeds. No data (not
| even a byte) of the content itself is ever uploaded to another
| peer.
|
| I'm aware this is an asshole move, but it made the lawyers
| happier.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's actually really interesting, thanks for sharing.
|
| I've genuinely been wondering if someone building these
| models has done exactly that, precisely after discussing with
| lawyers. It seems like the obvious move, legally.
| Mekoloto wrote:
| In germany its saver to illegally download through usenet because
| you don't upload and the cost a rights owner can make is only the
| cost of the product and not an aribrary number of (you puloaded
| it and created damage of x).
|
| It doesn't make it legal at all, it just makes it no longer
| interesting for IP owners to sue you.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Wasn't there a ruling like a decade ago that explicitly
| declared storing illegal, but streaming (download to RAM) is
| fine as a non-redistributing client?
|
| Of course the rights holder would have trouble proving whether
| you did save it, but that's a different issue.
| Mekoloto wrote:
| Its official illegal for a while.
|
| Nonetheless its the same thing: if they can prove you watched
| it, the damage is small for you and because IP holders are
| splittered, and you didn't just watch content of one, its
| probably not worth it to sue you.
| fazeirony wrote:
| so trying to understand here. when metallica et. al. went after
| kids (well, i guess ppl my age all those years ago lol) for using
| napster and downloading their music...they made this very clear
| distinction right?
|
| i'm beyond sick and tired of these large corpos arguing 'rules
| for thee but not for me.' unfortunately, in this country with no
| meaningful legislation around privacy or really, anything
| digital, it's a game of 'who has the slickest lawyers to pull one
| over on the judge/jury' it would seem.
| indigovole wrote:
| This amounts to a claim of fair use, since copying occurs. Pretty
| disingenuous of them to make a claim that an individual user
| would make.
|
| The outcome of a fair use claim by one of the world's largest
| corporations to ingest wholesale an entire corpus and use it for
| commercial purposes is probably not the same as one by an
| individual person who wanted to watch a movie.
|
| It's not the same use, and is much more likely to be found
| unfair.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Well it was a nice run.
|
| I expect all LLMs to be illegal within a year if this is the sort
| of high caliber defense the top minds of meta can come up with.
| bilekas wrote:
| This is actually genius from the lawyers of meta. In this way
| they are pushing the onus onto the question of "what is illegal
| in regards to torrenting copyright content".
|
| They have the money and legal team to push it to any conclusion,
| but that conclusion would risk so many huge industries in the Us
| that too many parties would be effected. That would incentivize
| companies to drop this case against meta and the status quo can
| continue.
|
| I'm under absolutely zero illusion this will set some precedent
| for one way or the other. It's too valuable to too many people
| involved.
| thrance wrote:
| Yes, it will just turn into another proof that if you're rich
| enough you can get away with anything in this country. The rule
| of law is three times gone and never coming back.
| erremerre wrote:
| Can someone, self representing, and with the very intention to
| lose, keep going this battle? I don't know, there are 70tb of
| books, could someone who had published under their name carry
| on independently?
| thrwaway1985882 wrote:
| Anybody can sue anybody, and this someone in your example
| would likely have standing, so why not?
|
| A single person self representing against a company that is
| essentially one of the largest law firms on the planet, and
| can outspend them tens of thousands times over - what's to be
| gained?
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| In the Netherlands, for individuals at least, it's legal to
| download copyrighted works, but not to upload or seed. I don't
| know if that applies to corporations.
| otterley wrote:
| It's not genius; it's SOP in legal procedure. See my other
| comment in this discussion.
| gampleman wrote:
| I'm a little confused about how is it supposed to work otherwise?
| Do I have an obligation as an internet user to ascertain if a
| website owner whose website I visit has the all the rights to all
| the media that the website contains (presumably also working out
| whatever jurisdictional issues come up)?
|
| Like how do you know that (say) Netflix actually has the right to
| stream you every show that they do? And how do you know that some
| random ad supported website doesn't?
| bilekas wrote:
| It's an argument made in bad faith to basically send a message
| to the claim bringers that "hey, we have enough money and time
| to push this argument all the way, want to try us?".
|
| Try this as a citizen.
| a2128 wrote:
| It's a difference of intent. Paying Netflix as an individual
| with the intention and expectation of watching content legally
| is very different to torrenting terabytes of pirated books on
| company laptops for training a commercial AI to replace those
| writers, and employees even expressing concern over its ethics
| on recorded communication
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| So your position is that it _is_ illegal for me to watch a
| movie on Netflix that they don 't have the rights to? Just
| that I wouldn't be prosecuted because I didn't _intend_ to
| break the law? Unless perhaps I knew they didn 't have the
| rights to it but watched it anyway?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| That the judge will say you did not break the law because
| you reasonably believed you were following the law.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
| gunalx wrote:
| You wouldnt download a BOOK. (But meta is allowed, because they
| are to big to fail or something)
| palata wrote:
| Burning tires in Meta's offices isn't illegal without proof of
| having set the tires on fire.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| This sets a hilarious precedent where downloading torrents
| becomes completely fine. You can just cite this case if they win
| - even though we are talking about books the MPAA is probably
| going to have an opinion here.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| You're typical 19 year old doesn't have a team of elite lawyers
| to argue for her when she torrents Game of Thrones.
|
| Expect Meta to "win" as in the plaintiffs just give up and
| calculate it's not worth pursuing. It would stun me if they
| even settle.
|
| Not to mention the LLMs themselves are creating unauthorized
| copies of copywriten content. But again, Meta has unlimited
| money. Different rules for them.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Not sure if it's still the case but this is it is in Canada.
| Downloading is legal but uploading is illegal.
| lucasyvas wrote:
| I think you're right but I don't think this is the case in
| the US? I've certainly read many stories over the years of
| the hammer coming down on downloading on its own.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| That was my understanding too for a long time. I thought everyone
| who got sued for using BitTorrent was sued because they were
| "distributing" copies. Downloading isn't distributing. I also
| don't think anyone has ever been sued in America for using
| websites which stream movies they don't have the rights to to
| you.
| toss1 wrote:
| Meta may not be re-seeding the titles in the original form, but
| Meta _ARE_ definitely redistributing the content in altered form
| -- it is the specific intent of their bulk-downloading -- to
| ingest the content into their LLM to redistribute it as their
| product.
|
| The question I see for someone sitting in the judge's chair is
| whether this is fair use, sufficient alteration to constitute a
| new work, or a derivative work requiring compensation.
| moonlet wrote:
| If only every copyright lawyer in the world could suddenly band
| together and descend on them in a horde. This is such a
| disgusting abuse of book authors, who are usually not the big
| guys. As a non-author myself, I don't care about the publishers
| and whatnot but most people who are authors only have written one
| book and should get the royalties they deserve from their work.
| otterley wrote:
| Both the headline and the theme of the story are incorrect and
| misleading. Meta isn't claiming that everything they're doing is
| lawful. They're claiming that their activities don't run afoul of
| a particular California state law, CDAFA, and section 1202(b)(1)
| of the DMCA.
|
| It's very common in litigation for the plaintiff to accuse the
| defendant of every violation they might be guilty of or liable
| for ("throwing the book at them"), and for defendants then to
| systematically try to strip them away.
|
| As far as I know, Meta is not yet claiming their activities were
| completely lawful.
|
| Here is the actual filing: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/02/Kadre...
| braiamp wrote:
| > Meta responded to this complaint with a motion to dismiss. In
| a supporting reply filed on Tuesday, the company notes that the
| 'torrenting' allegations, relating to the removal of copyright
| information and the CDAFA violations, don't hold up.
|
| They are addressing both the second and third counts. The
| "Direct Copyright Infringement" isn't being addressed by these
| claims. This is even quoted on the filing you provided:
|
| https://torrentfreak.com/images/seedingprecautions.jpg.webp
| otterley wrote:
| How does your response conflict with what I said?
| tiahura wrote:
| Won't named plaintiffs have the burden of proving meta actually
| seeded blocks containing their works? How could they ever do
| that?
| otterley wrote:
| The plaintiffs do have the burden of proof, but there are
| many ways to Rome. Any evidence they can find, whether it be
| packet captures, client and server logs, incriminating
| emails, or even admissions, will be proffered to the court
| and/or jury.
| tiahura wrote:
| _many ways to Rome_
|
| Fair enough, but I wouldn't be surprised if none of those
| methods pan out.
|
| 1) Given the timeline, it seems unlikely that anyone was
| doing a packet capture.
|
| 2) Why would anyone at META have been paying attention to,
| or logging, which blocks were being seeded and which
| weren't? Who would have personal knowledge such that they
| could admit that transmission didn't seed the declaration
| of independence 6 million times?
| otterley wrote:
| Again, they don't have to trace actual data flows to have
| sufficient evidence to convince a court or jury that Meta
| is in breach of the law.
|
| Other examples of evidence include an admission from a
| Meta employee during a deposition that they were
| instructed to download a bunch of copyrighted material
| and the undertook the efforts to do so.
|
| Or, perhaps the plaintiffs seized the machines used in
| the scheme (happens all the time following a TRO and
| discovery motion) and found whole copies or traces of the
| copyrighted works on them, or even local client logs that
| suggest that it was done.
| papercrane wrote:
| The plaintiffs will, eventually, need to prove that their
| claim is likely true ("preponderance of the evidence"
| standard.) Right now they're fighting about expanding
| discovery to try and uncover more evidence.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Company emails, internal server logs.
| tiahura wrote:
| Server logs of what? Transmission doesn't log which blocks
| it seeded. Does any client?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Router logs? I have no idea. I just suspect that,
| somewhere in the complicated cabling of Ethernet, there's
| a device that has been logging packets.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Feels like their defense for some state incursion is an
| admission of a larger crime. I still don't get it.
|
| I'm not going to murder someone, steal their car, then put out
| a statement that I was unaware the car had expired tags and I
| shouldn't be prosecuted for it.
| grayhatter wrote:
| Is this your first experience/exposure to the us legal
| system?
|
| Defending yourself from an accusation using a hypothetical
| admission doesn't actually admit to it. e.g. I didn't murder
| anyone, and I didn't steal that car, but if even if I did
| murder them, and steal their car, the car's expired tags
| wouldn't apply to me because [reason].
|
| If you care about justice, you want to enable every truth to
| come out, and be decided on. If you prohibit someone from
| making an argument, because it might imply something that is
| separate, you limit the the possible outcomes to something
| strictly less fair. If someone did murder a person them and
| took their car, they should be prosecuted for that, but just
| because you did commit crime a, and crime b, doesn't mean you
| should be convicted of crime c. Even if crime c is the least
| significant. That's still not just.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Of course you will if you've been caught and charges are
| being filed and there's evidence you were in the car.
| gosub100 wrote:
| A YouTube video I saw talked about the charges faced by the
| accused killer of the United Healthcare CEO.
|
| Aside from murder , he faced:
|
| - criminal possession of a weapon
|
| - illegal possession of a silencer
|
| - illegal possession of an automatic weapon (it wasn't full
| auto, but somehow due to the large capacity magazine, NY
| state considers it an automatic weapon)
|
| So had he used a hammer or a knife, he might be able to get
| out again because murderers in NYS can be out in as little as
| 20 years. But all the firearms charges can effectively double
| his sentence.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I guess that might be good for everyone else?
| stalluri wrote:
| Models absorbed the pirated content. Now Meta is distributing
| those models. Is that considered distribution?
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| It really should be.
| noboostforyou wrote:
| For that argument I believe the question becomes "is the output
| of a model considered a derivative work of the training data?"
|
| https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf
| ninalanyon wrote:
| What else could it be?
| monocasa wrote:
| The industry is banking on Author's Guild v. Google to be
| precedent in such a way that it's functionally
| transformative enough to be a completely new work.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google
| ,....
|
| I think they have about a coin flip of a chance that it
| passes muster in the courts.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| An original composition based on a statistical analysis of
| the training data. Statistical data about a copyrighted
| work obviously isn't necessarily a derivative of that work.
| Otherwise Tolkien could sue me for telling you how many
| times The Lord of the Rings uses the word "the".
| bodiekane wrote:
| Of course not.
|
| I listened to other people's music and learned some of their
| songs before writing my own music, that doesn't mean my songs
| are distribution of theirs.
|
| I read other people's books and short stores and news articles
| before writing my own, that doesn't mean my writing is
| distribution of theirs.
| asadotzler wrote:
| How about if I play your song at just the right speed with
| just the right EQ and I can get an exact reproduction of some
| of the songs you claim to have written? Because we can get
| large excerpts of exact copies of short and long form content
| as demonstrated clearly by the New York Times research on
| chatbots and their own content.
| aezart wrote:
| I don't know what the _legal_ answer will be, but I believe it
| _should be_ considered distribution. A model is basically a
| highly lossy and extremely compressed copy of its training
| data, available as a content-addressable database. To
| anthropomorphize, the model is _trying_ to perfectly replicate
| its training set, its brain just isn 't big enough to do so.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Did they really need a photo of a leech in the article? I get the
| connection, but it's gross and reminds me of a Taboola/Outbrain
| chumbox.
| jug wrote:
| Pirates around the world agree!
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Just more proof that laws only exist for poor people, if you are
| the 1% you get away with virtually anything.
| calibas wrote:
| "It's only illegal if you get caught"
| tiahura wrote:
| The author of the linked piece identifies as a "reporter,"
| however it reads like an opinion piece. We should demand better
| from ALL journalists.
| phillypham wrote:
| Could some disgruntled employee offer proof of seeding and
| collect a whistleblower reward?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I will admit that I did not have "FB ruling may end up making
| torrenting legal ( as long as you don't seed )" in my 2025 bingo
| card.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Seems like a bad thing, increasing the percentage of non-
| seeding users will likely kill most torrents.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| I wasn't making a judgment on whether it is a good or a bad
| thing. I just did not see it coming. I was expecting lawsuits
| on AI will get interesting, but I did not expect this.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Yup, we can agree on that one.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Copyright laws exist to prevent those who are not wealthy from
| sharing their resources with each other. That's why AI companies
| and now FB can get away with it, the law wasn't meant for them.
|
| Fundamentally, the ability to share what you own is a right no
| government has legitimate authority to restrict. Such laws are
| illegitimate. Governments don't own people, they govern them.
| Governance is scoped within limits of authority. Even slaves and
| prisoners can share their food,clothing and other resources with
| each other, preventing them is not just inhumane but beyond the
| authority of slave owners and prison wardens. It boils down to
| this: if you own something, you can give it away for free because
| ownership implies authority to retain and give away the property.
| The right to own things can be restricted, but once ownership is
| allowed, no one has the authority to restrict retention or free
| exchange of owned resources. Governments can regulate commerce,
| but free exchange of resources is beyond their authority since it
| isn't commercial activity. Keep in mind that this is a more
| crucial and important concept beyond basic liberty and human
| rights. If you can't own stuff, nothing else matters regarding
| your relationship with the government. Telling you that you own
| stuff but then stripping away the meaning of ownership so that
| you don't really own stuff is a sneaky way of governments
| exceeding the limits of their authority.
|
| Another sneaky and fraudulent thing is implied acceptance of
| licensing. Stamping a copyright notice,eula, ToS,etc.. means
| nothing. if You buy a book with cash, your exchange is with the
| person who sold it to you and You now own the book. It isn't
| licensed to you, it is yours to give away for free. The same
| concept applies to software, video, music,etc.. neither
| intermediaries, nor original content authors have the authority
| to enforce a licensing agreement or copyright over the content,
| unless a license agreement is required at point of sale, and even
| then the agreement is beyond the two participants. If you agree
| to a copyright license contract and purchase music, and then you
| give it away for free, it makes sense to get sued by the copy
| right owner over violation of that contract. But the person you
| sold it to has no obligation to honor a contract they did not
| enter. The government has no right to implicitly force people to
| enter a license agreement when they receive goods free of charge
| by someone. only the person who originally agreed to the contract
| should be held liable.
| ngneer wrote:
| The gall!
|
| Next they'll say that "just because we downloaded the content
| does not mean we USED the content, and you have no proof we used
| the content, so we are not pirates".
| DannyPage wrote:
| This line of argument sounds exactly what a lot of people tried
| in the past when they were getting hit by claims from the media
| companies.
|
| If I were to scrape Meta's information and use it to train AI
| chat bots, would they say "That's fine, go ahead" because I'm not
| sharing the raw information in another way?
| foxygen wrote:
| Copyright laws should not exist. Claiming you "own" a specific
| sequence of words/pixels is crazy. I hope Meta wins the case.
| tempfile wrote:
| I am astonished that Meta is even trying this defense. It does
| not even remotely pass the smell test. Seeding is not remotely
| relevant, and neither is the fact that torrenting in general is
| legal. The works are not published with the consent of the
| rightsholders - LibGen and Z-Library distribute them illegally,
| and Meta therefore obtained them illegally.
|
| This is an open-and-shut case.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Using LLMs trained on copyright books should be banned anywhere
| downloading copyright books is illegal
| cryptonector wrote:
| Meta can afford to buy copies of the books / whatever it's
| scraping.
| acc_297 wrote:
| I was a university student in golden age of libgen so Glass
| Houses and all - but it's crazy that this was approved from the
| top of a company that could maybe have even legally purchased the
| bulk of this collection without hurting quarterly returns
| kmod wrote:
| I believe that at least in the past the entertainment industry
| would try to detect someone seeding a file before going after
| them. The idea being that someone downloading is receiving a copy
| (not illegal), and the act of making the copy (illegal) was done
| by the seeder. I'm not sure to what degree this was an
| established requirement vs them trying to avoid ambiguity, but my
| point is that this framing by Meta isn't novel. I'm not
| expressing a judgment on whether it's correct or if it's good.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I'm picturing some lawyers pulling up at the front of the court
| building in their clown car - a vehicle with the tight turning
| circle needed after all these years of hearing lawyers argue
| piracy is theft.
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