[HN Gopher] Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as ...
___________________________________________________________________
Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta
Argues
Author : askl
Score : 387 points
Date : 2026-03-07 09:18 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| lukan wrote:
| The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have
| never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this,
| basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it,
| because the big guys are doing it.
| elric wrote:
| Big companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small
| time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of
| the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I haven't changed. I was pro 20 years ago and I am pro now.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just need to get around to understand that on many subjects big
| companies are not uniform block... They all have their own
| goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers
| and state.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > And the activists are now against it, because the big guys
| are doing it.
|
| The activists are against it because the big guys are
| exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if
| Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was
| torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these
| companies.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| People would care if Meta is allowed to torrent from Nintendo
| and they aren't, because they'd care if Meta bought licenses
| from Nintendo and open models couldn't get those licenses.
| gzread wrote:
| Open models would just torrent Nintendo IP and train on it
| anyway.
| willis936 wrote:
| It's not like there has been some change in principle and some
| sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about
| making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing
| art.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| 2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible.
| For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the
| digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to,
| with many justifications layered on top.
| gzread wrote:
| that's the same thing?
| cmiles74 wrote:
| It wedged distribution away from record companies. IMHO,
| that was a pretty big concern for them.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| And in 2004 you had a tape deck with two bays meant for
| copying and none of your tapes or cds were real. You'd make
| copies from other people or even the radio or TV. People
| forget how piracy was actually the norm before the digital
| age attempted to crack down on it. Even just passing a book
| you enjoyed to a friend to read, can you even do that with
| ebook DRM?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| LLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates
| allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales.
|
| The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big
| corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And
| I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get
| away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn't.
|
| Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only
| with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I
| lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can
| easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
| fao_ wrote:
| > LLMs make pirated art more accessible,
|
| [citation needed]
|
| > 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their
| sales.
|
| provably false
| willis936 wrote:
| Reselling stolen relabeled art makes it more accessible? I
| don't buy it.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _LLMs make pirated art more accessible_
|
| lol. The current "AI" industry is in the development phase
| where the surveillance industry was from 2000-2010 or so.
| After they're done getting everyone reliant on their
| products (including giving away many for free), and having
| installed their regulatory mote, they'll really start
| tightening the enshittification noose.
|
| The original argument is fallacious because it ignores this
| obvious dynamic. "AI" companies aren't pirating works so
| they can then give them away for free indefinitely. Rather
| they are pirating works to create their own proprietary
| systems which will _most certainly not_ be given away for
| free.
|
| Eventually the activists pushing for copyright enforcement
| on "AI" training are going to start to "win" - after the
| big centralized "AI" players will have brokered deals with
| the relevant content cartels (this lawsuit is merely
| "haggling over the price"). So the dynamic will be to stomp
| out the training of new competing models, both grassroots
| libre and new proprietary startup competitors.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| The problem is that laws don't apply to these big companies but
| to the small guys. It isn't as if piracy has suddenly become
| legal for everybody.
|
| Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are
| different for everybody and that's what activists are worried
| about :)
| plutokras wrote:
| I have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country -- and soon
| in Italy as well -- all storage media sales include a small
| levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for
| losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not
| actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to
| pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating
| content I don't feel like paying for.
|
| By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain
| when their models are scraped and distilled.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| How does that money get distributed? If I create a film, how
| they decide if I'm worthy enough to receive some of that
| money?
| progval wrote:
| The way it works in France is that money goes to a company
| that collects it on behalf of all copyright holders. Its
| website does not offer any documentation as to how
| copyright holders can claim their share.
| imglorp wrote:
| That sounds pretty shady. There's also the problem that
| most media generated globally is not French. Do they
| pretend to distribute the spoils globally?
| gzread wrote:
| In reality the system in these countries is pure
| corruption. The beneficiaries are large corporations who
| see it as an extra revenue stream and that's it.
| lukan wrote:
| Not completely. I know some french musicians who are
| great artists, but are not mainstream enough to sell
| enough records - and they do get state money to continue
| their art (progressive/psychedelic music, nothing tame).
| Loughla wrote:
| Whoever is the director of that company must have laughed
| for weeks when they got that posting.
| sofixa wrote:
| It operates sort of like a guild. For music, there's the
| SACEM, where songwriters, musicians, etc. register
| themselves (hey I have this thing), and get help (e.g.
| SACEM invests in young aspiring music professionals) and
| royalties based on how their music was used and by whom.
| All music users pay SACEM for the use, and SACEM
| distributes the proceeds to the copyright holders.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Why is it fair that you get to be subsidized by everyone who
| does pay? Imagine a world where everyone had the same
| attitude as you and did not pay for any media. Pirates get to
| pirate only because most people don't. So why are you so
| special?
| gzread wrote:
| It's not subsidized. You paid a fee on every hard drive to
| pay for that drive to hold pirated media.
| yorwba wrote:
| It's subsidized by people who paid the fee when they
| bought a hard drive to hold something other than pirated
| media.
| gzread wrote:
| You mean the fee I pay for piracy doesn't cover the cost
| of the piracy? Maybe they should remove the fee, so they
| can prosecute me for piracy, without me arguing it's
| covered by the fee.
| plutokras wrote:
| As mentioned, we all pay the fee. Additionally, I pay for
| plenty of media when it is practical, deserving, or
| convenient. The rest gets pirated.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've bought more media than you. Why is it fair that you
| get to be subsidized by me?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Not everyone is a Kantian.
| anthk wrote:
| Spain too; but legally sharing books and media without profit
| it's allowed.
|
| Still, they should pay _me_ in order to listen all the
| mediocre music and crappy 'best sellers' they often produce.
| More than often I'd just buy some indie book from a small
| publisher which has much better stories than the whole
| mainstream.
|
| Heck; every time I try to read some Spaniard technotriller it
| justs sucks because they focus on crappy emotions everytime
| focusing near nil on scientific facts or tecnological
| backgrounds. If any, of course. Hello, Gomez Jurado with the
| Red Queen sagas.
|
| Meanwhile, people writting half-fantasy/half-geopolitics
| fiction such as Fabian Plaza with its book depicting a
| paranormal Cold War were the Spanish Francoist regime never
| ended and the USSR took the whole Germany for itself, you
| will get more enganing books. The hippies in Woodstock
| summoned magical Lovecraftian monsters and the CIA/KGB among
| paranormal agencies try to fight these. The even mention
| Orgonic fields and tons of American floklore on paranormal
| experiments from the CIA/USSR. We all know it's actual
| bullshit but it's _documented_ bullshit. Modulo the magic,
| the author applied as a diplomat for Spain a few decades ago
| so he _knows_ how to create a thriller by predicting how the
| characters will behave psichologically much better than the
| Gomez Jurado 's books creating an Aspie Mary Sue character
| getting aspull skills.
|
| The mainstream alternative? Some Humanities woman as the
| maincharacter alleging bullshit 'prime number finding' in
| order to boost IQ as a goverment experiment against another
| high IQ psychopath.
|
| The media in Spain sucks because Spain arrived late to a
| scientifical mindset socially -thanks, Francoist /s- and
| male/female Humanities people dominate both the press and the
| literary world. Instead of Gideon Crew like books (which are
| a bit bullshit, but with a bit of realism too) like sagas, we
| get drama bound thrillers with no actual research; if any,
| hidden Apple product placements.
|
| You would say, heck, Dan Brown it's the same and Tom Clancy's
| novels are a joke against the ones from actually versed
| people throwing stereotypes away because they did a good
| research (the US is not just a bigger Texas and Spain is not
| a big Andalusia), but that's not the issue here.
|
| The matter it's that most of the readers in Spain are _women_
| , and somehow they are afraid of reading a thriller with less
| drama and emotions and more action (action women do exist you
| know) and resolution and developing actual skills o the spot
| instead of aspulling them.
|
| Just look at text adventures. Anchorhead it's just a modern
| Lovecraft retelling but it has a female protagonist and _you_
| as the player should drive her solving all the ingame
| puzzles. If something like that existed in 1998, the Spaniard
| should be able to write tons of interesting media (books and
| series) where crimes were not solved with people just
| happening to be in the right spot at some specific time. That
| 's a cheap writting and an obvious neglection to the reader
| allowing him to join the proofs together.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nothing has changed: the money flows in the same direction as
| before, that's the constant. The courts are just a diode in a
| rectifier.
| vjk800 wrote:
| If Meta wins this, does it mean that pirating becomes legal
| again?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Probably only if you are giving "back to Humanity" or
| something like that? :-D
| j-bos wrote:
| The activists seem to be so blinded by disdain they can't even
| consider the value of the precedent if it goes theough.
| gzread wrote:
| Activists are against AI training, not bittorrent
| swed420 wrote:
| You're probably both right since activists are not a
| consistent monolith.
| sumeno wrote:
| It's almost like things can be good or bad in different
| contexts
| candlemas wrote:
| Back in 2015 Twitter bragged that Periscope had been widely
| used the night before to pirate a pay-per-view boxing match. I
| thought that was odd.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-stream...
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _And the activists are now against it, because the big guys
| are doing it._
|
| Different activists are different. "Information wants to be
| free" activists are against different things from "artists
| trying to make an honest living" activists.
|
| And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company
| wants different things from a big guy book publisher.
| jMyles wrote:
| > Different activists are different. "Information wants to be
| free" activists are against different things from "artists
| trying to make an honest living" activists.
|
| ...uhhh, I mean, maybe my perspective is skewed because I
| largely run in bluegrass/deadhead circles, but the venn
| diagram of these two seems to be nearly a circle.
|
| https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
| tototrains wrote:
| It is not strange. Power serves power. Power lies without
| consequence. This is consistent.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Billy downloading a copy of Game of Thrones because he's too
| poor to afford one, is radically different than super
| billionaires who just don't want to pay for a license.
|
| Meta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough
| money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with
| impunity.
|
| I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to
| ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only
| be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
| w4yai wrote:
| Oh, how the tables have turned...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I remember in the 90s and 2000s, the FBI would go after homeless
| people selling bootleg VHS and DVDs on the street lol
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Since the creation of the USA the only real crime a person
| could do was being poor.
| sigwinch wrote:
| ICE played an important role in those cases with long supply
| chains. Seems quaint now, but I think we should acknowledge any
| criminal who does not participate in a child abuse ring. Those
| counterfeit DVDs were not illegal content, just illegal
| storefronts. If today's ICE or FBI uncovered such a ring, who
| would they call first?
| Sayrus wrote:
| > Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically
| uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the
| protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn't a choice, it was
| simply how the technology works.
|
| What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in
| minutes by the plaintiffs.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I can't believe that no one has ever tried that one before...
| So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases
| where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted?
| Sayrus wrote:
| From my understanding, Meta's use of the pirated book was
| accepted as fair use and the plaintiffs admitted to no harm.
| In the case of pirated music and films, neither of those
| points are made. Copyright holders assume people who pirate
| would have bought the content, usually even assuming that one
| download is one lost sale. And I am not aware of a single
| case where watching or listening to pirated content was
| accepted as fair use.
|
| It is interesting to follow how this plays out for Meta and
| how that will impact future cases.
| Hamuko wrote:
| We consumers just need BiTorrent clients that come with LLM
| training code incorporated, as that transforms the
| downloads into fair use (according to the very expensive
| Meta legal team).
| RobotToaster wrote:
| One of the underlying issues is that punitive damages seem
| to be the norm in US courts.
|
| In the UK you can only claim for the actual damages
| incurred, which at most will be the profit you would've
| made on the sale of that book. Which makes most claims for
| private infringement uneconomical for corporations.
| tzs wrote:
| Note though that the court can award more than this in
| some circumstances. From the Copyright, Designs and
| Patents Act of 1988, section 97 [1]: (2)
| The court may in an action for infringement of copyright
| having regard to all the circumstances, and in particular
| to-- (a)the flagrancy of the infringement,
| and (b)any benefit accruing to the defendant
| by reason of the infringement, award such additional
| damages as the justice of the case may require.
|
| I think most copyright systems have some provision for
| damages beyond lost profits, because if they did not what
| incentive would there be to not infringe?
|
| [1]
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/97
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The use of the pirated book is a totally separate action
| than acquiring the pirated book.
| orbifold wrote:
| I don't get that, the use of these books was instrumental
| and necessary for the success of the training run. The
| expected value of these training runs is high as the build
| out of 100 billion+ infrastructure demonstrates, so the
| book publishers should at a minimum be paid a licensing
| fee, a small fraction of every inference run revenue or
| whatever they decide. The fact that authors and publishers
| didn't get any say under what conditions their intellectual
| property can be used is pretty outrageous.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The conclusion was they suffered no legal harm, in that
| their interests such as their continued publishing of
| books was not affected by LLMs; no one is using AI to
| compete with publishers, if anything "authors" might very
| well use those same publishers to get their generated
| books on shelves.
|
| If it's fair use, no licensing fee is needed.
| smegger001 wrote:
| So pretty much the same as the Authors Guild, Inc. v.
| Google, Inc. case ruling it as fair use as a
| transformative work. I mean if indexing the worlds books
| is transformative then a neural net run on them certainly
| is a transformative work and fair use.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Yes, that's how the argument is going for these lawsuits
| so far.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| > So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases
| where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted
|
| No, because those cases were pirating-while-poor. This is
| pirating-while-trillion-dollar-corporation, which falls under
| a completely different section of the law.
| mcherm wrote:
| At this stage, you are going to far in claiming that. So
| far, all that happened is that Meta's lawyers _claimed_ it
| was fair use. They are paid to try every argument they can
| think of that might work. Just because they make the
| argument doesn 't mean the court will find it has any
| merit.
| latexr wrote:
| While you are correct that a decision on this specific
| case is still pending, your parent comment does have a
| point that breaking the law while rich and while poor
| have very different outcomes. Also, no way they're going
| to roll back all previous cases. So the joke works now,
| no need to wait.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Meta has so much money, even if they end up paying
| they'll probably barely be affected. In that case,
| actually GP is wrong and it's the same law, but still
| different outcomes (like "neither poor nor rich may sleep
| on public benches...")
| throw73848595 wrote:
| This. You can set upload speed to zero, and download entire
| dataset without uploading anything. Slower but doable.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| As far as I know, setting upload speed to zero disables the
| limit. You can set it to be very low but not zero.
| gzread wrote:
| You can patch it so zero means zero.
| Etherlord87 wrote:
| I think it's a fair argument in the context of big
| corporations using the technology.
| pwg wrote:
| That is client dependent. On rtorrent, there is a separate
| "off" setting for the speed throttle that means "no
| throttle" with the result that "zero" actually means "no
| uploading".
| gmokki wrote:
| When I pull the trigger and the bullet kills an another person,
| it is just how technology works. Why would I be responsible if
| I choose to use it or not?
| swarnie wrote:
| I'm going to need a copy of your latest bank statement before
| i can accurately answer that.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I agree, that people used to be called "leechers". Somewhat
| related xkcd https://xkcd.com/553/
| Teknomadix wrote:
| Not exactly automatically.
|
| Seeding is opt-out, not opt-in... but it is usually a default
| that has to actively manually overridden. Most users never
| touch those settings. The average pirate downloading a torrent
| is seeding whether they know it or not.
|
| The protocol absolutely does not enforce seeding. A client can
| lie to the tracker, cap upload to 0k. BitTorrent has no
| mechanism to compel one to share. Leeching a file, downloading
| and sharing no forward packets is possible. While the "social
| contract" of seeding is entirely a norm enforced by private
| trackers and community shame. It is not the protocol itself.
| muyuu wrote:
| seeding is not the only way you actually upload
|
| you're uploading before seeding, and i'm willing to bet Meta
| weren't seeding but, as they correctly stated in that regard,
| they're sharing even when they try their best not to because
| of the way the protocol works as zero-upload is typically
| impractical for any significant size files
|
| some trackers will additionally penalise you for not sharing
| file parts, but this depends on the tracker
| gzread wrote:
| and the protocol doesn't enforce you upload anything.
|
| The original design called for some kind of tit-for-tat
| algorithm, but it's long obsolete and you get whatever
| bandwidth the seeder has.
| muyuu wrote:
| If you try to download any significant file with zero-
| upload, you will run out of peers that will share with
| you much earlier than you will download the file. It's
| not practical.
|
| Most people that speak of leeching or not seeding really
| are talking about not seeding at all after they've
| completed. In fact, most clients will let you set upload
| speeds to a trickle but not zero (zero means unlimited in
| most clients). From a legal standpoint, that already
| means you uploaded.
| 47282847 wrote:
| It's true that most clients do not support a zero upload
| configuration, but it's not inherent to the protocol, and
| modified clients exist.
|
| I'm not aware of any clients that will refuse to share
| data with clients that are configured to not upload. I
| don't even see how they could determine that, especially
| in situations where there are no other peers to upload
| to, and given that stats are entirely self-reported and
| clients that send bogus numbers exist.
|
| You would need a central tracker that cares, which is
| what private torrent communities rely on, but not
| public/DHT torrents such as those discussed here.
| muyuu wrote:
| You can, but you will slow down your own downloads
| dramatically by doing so. In some cases you will fail to
| finish them.
|
| The case for doing this would be just so you can have
| this ridiculous legal defence Meta seem to be trying to
| pull out. Really no other good reason. Even for the most
| parasitic leeches, zero upload is a bad strategy.
| tyteddffc wrote:
| You're correct about seeds, but peers who are also
| downloading will often stop sharing with you if you stop
| sharing with them. Seeds generally are configured to try
| to give different pieces to different peers so that they
| can send them to each other and reduce load on the seed;
| they don't want to give you the entire file directly
| unless you're the only person downloading. And peers
| prioritize and filter which other ones they'll send
| pieces to based on reciprocity.
|
| You will probably get the data eventually, and it really
| depends on the composition and configuration of the
| swarm, but generally, you do need to upload if you want
| to ensure the fastest and most reliable download.
| gzread wrote:
| Long-running torrents are mostly populated by seeders.
| Bit torrent was originally designed for a lot of
| downloaders to get a file at the same time with limited
| seeding bandwidth, so leechers would need to trade with
| each other a lot, but that's not really the situation
| most torrents are in today.
| gzread wrote:
| Seeders don't know how much data you shared with other
| leechers.
| muyuu wrote:
| Yes. So?
| gzread wrote:
| So you can download from seeders as fast as they can
| upload.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is entirely dependent on the client on the other end
| of the connection.
| blamestross wrote:
| "tit-for-tat" trading of chunks only happens between peers
| that both are actively downloading. Seeding nodes just let
| anybody leech.
|
| You totally CAN disable all uploads in the torrent
| protocol. Just set the "upload budget" to zero in most
| clients. Just nobody realizes they can do that.
|
| Bittorrent is wildly successful in part because every
| popular client makes it nontrivial to "opt out" of it's
| more socialist components (chunk trading, DHT
| participation, seeding by default).
|
| Making an "leech behavior only" torrent client is
| straightforward and viable.
| muyuu wrote:
| Tit-for-tat kicks in. It's fine for smaller files to just
| jump peers with zero upload, but i reckon Meta would have
| found it challenging to download very large files without
| sharing. It's certainly much faster if you don't get
| throttled or banned by many peers.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Would you say that generally books would be considered a
| _small_ file or a BIG file?
| muyuu wrote:
| they'd most certainly go for very large curated
| collections like those of Anna's Archives, we're talking
| about 10s or 100s of TBs per archive
|
| going 1 by 1 would be quite the exercise in itself
| considering just how much variety of formats, styles,
| crap added in the files, random password crapware, etc
| etc you find for anything other than the most trendy
| stuff
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Lawyers are paid to defend a position. They are intellectual
| prostitutes.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| My client didn't "buy" illegal drugs. He received illegal
| drugs. But anyone who makes a drug deal automatically sends
| money to the drug dealer, as inherent of the protocol. In other
| words, "giving money for drugs" wasn't a choice, it was simply
| how drug deals work.
| tgv wrote:
| Even if the court accepts the argument, it can be undermined by
| pointing out that they knew it in advance, or could have known,
| and thus accepted it.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Gut reaction: Judge needs to upload Meta's lawyers to jail cells,
| explaining "that's simply how the technology works".
| villgax wrote:
| Literally admitting to theft & whining about the modus which got
| them caught lol
| carlosjobim wrote:
| A related case:
|
| "Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B US to settle author class action
| over AI training"
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/anthropic-ai-copyright-sett...
| david_shi wrote:
| At some point, the contradiction of "law as something impartial"
| and "law bends to the whims of power" will need to be resolved.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Bad news, it's already been resolved.
| senko wrote:
| Wholly agreed.
|
| The way Disney &co coopted law to pack their coffers is a
| travesty:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Everything bends to power, by definition. And laws can't be
| impartial because they're not based in hard science: terms like
| "murder", "assault", "theft", etc. are ambiguous thus up to
| interpretation (e.g. is a scam theft? If so, what defines a
| scam? If "lying", what's the difference from "misleading", or
| if there's no difference, what defines "misleading"...)
|
| My best idea for a solution is better education, so people
| don't make bad laws then badly enforce them.
| gzread wrote:
| Right problem, wrong solution. You can't build something that
| doesn't bend to power, by definition. You have to take away
| the power.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Power can only be redistributed.
|
| Education also bends to power (people can be "educated" via
| propaganda), but it's harder because people have some level
| of critical thinking. You can only chain so many lies
| before they contradict each other or live experience.
| y0eswddl wrote:
| "the law" has always only been the whims of the powerful aa a
| threat of violence against the powerless if they don't follow
| tototrains wrote:
| The nukes will fall before they give up power.
| tormeh wrote:
| We're reaching levels of "move fast and break things" previously
| only thought possible under laboratory conditions.
|
| Seriously? They couldn't be bothered setting upload speed to 0?
| Havoc wrote:
| Meanwhile some kid downloads a song and gets lynched for it
| GaryBluto wrote:
| The last time that happened in the US was over 18 years ago.
| dizzy9 wrote:
| Some of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children
| for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They
| sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider
| that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around
| $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure
| seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around
| $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. The legal maximum was
| $150,000 per infringement: when a staffer leaked an early cut of
| the Wolverine movie, the studio could only sue for that much.
| jazz9k wrote:
| Children can commit crimes too.
|
| It's funny, because now in the age of AI, many of the people
| that support piracy are now trying to stop AI companies from
| doing the same thing.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| 'Same thing', _hah._ This was edited out, but I 'm quoting it
| anyway:
|
| > _I should trot out all of the justifications here._
|
| I'll start: personal use instead of profit. Certainly a
| difference, not convinced justification is required or even
| advisable.
| functionmouse wrote:
| Oh stop being disingenuous.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| A child stole a candy bar from my shop, time to bankrupt his
| whole working class family!
|
| ^ sociopathic legalists really do think this way.
| Shadowmist wrote:
| That child was just a fan of chocolate!
| mchaver wrote:
| Children are afforded more lenience in sane societies (before
| the law and in social contexts) because they are still
| developing and not as well socialized/experienced as adults.
| I assume most pro-piracy people support personal use and not
| commercial use of content.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The issue is that child labor laws encourage children to
| pursue cybercrime if they want to make money since
| legitimate companies will not hire them. This results in a
| lot of incentive for children to commit cybercrime such as
| piracy and without the disincentive of punishment they are
| free to do it. These 2 things are incentivizing antisocial
| behavior in society.
| themafia wrote:
| We support copyright reform not piracy. The reason we do is
| because corporate giants have weaponized the system for their
| own ends and not for our useful promotion of the arts and
| sciences.
|
| So.. I don't think it's appropriate for billion dollar
| companies to abuse copyrighted authored material for their
| own profit streams. They have the money. They can either pay
| or not use the material.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| The only copyright reform I support is abolishing this
| abomination altogether.
| ohbleek wrote:
| So, does this mean that people can simply argue in court now
| (if they were to be prosecuted for downloading media via
| bittorrent) that it is fair use if they used it to train a
| local model on their machine?
| bsenftner wrote:
| Of course not. It is just yet another example of a 7-8 figure
| expensive attorney and their billions dollar corporation
| wasting everyone' time, tax payers dollars, and demonstrating
| that the law applies to us and not them. I expect them to
| just stop showing up in court in time. What can the court do
| when these people own the people that write the laws?
| Ekaros wrote:
| There really should be some type of panel for frivolous
| legal arguments. If they are used by corporation all of the
| lawyers, leadership and shareholders involved are thrown
| into jail. Could even get jury on this and have them give
| majority opinion.
| post-it wrote:
| That seems like a bad idea to me.
| yorwba wrote:
| People could always simply argue in court that their
| torrenting was free use.
|
| If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of
| an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company,
| maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he
| explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
| dotancohen wrote:
| It has been often said that a man who represents himself in
| court has a fool for a client.
| gzread wrote:
| And a lawyer.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Judges often roll this line out, but in criminal court
| I've seen some defendants get epic deals by going without
| a lawyer [0] since absolutely nobody in the justice
| system wants to deal with the guy who has no idea what
| he's doing and is going to make the most bizarre
| arguments about being a sovereign citizen. So they give
| them a really low offer and get them on their way as
| quickly as possible.
|
| [0] I don't like to say "represent yourself." I once
| angered a judge by pointing out that you can't "represent
| yourself, you _are_ yourself. "
| wfurney wrote:
| Interesting point that I haven't thought about before,
| thanks for sharing.
| thisislife2 wrote:
| Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and
| the government, the judges rule on the axiom, _" Show me
| your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the
| law, and I will rule"_.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Unless I'm mistaken, the relevant copyright laws aren't
| limited to enforcement when money exchanged hands.
| moron4hire wrote:
| No, but it does matter how much money the alleged
| infringer has.
|
| Property law is mostly concerned with protecting the rich
| from the poor, so when a rich person violates the
| property of a poor person, the courts can't allow the
| inversion of purpose and will create something called a
| "legal fiction," which is basically the kind of bending-
| over-backwards that my children do to try to claim that
| they didn't break the rules, actually, and if you look at
| it in a certain way they were actually following the
| rules, actually.
| gzread wrote:
| This sort of thing used to be heavily downvoted on HN.
| How the site has changed in the last year.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Yes, the VC-backed startup ecosystem that was the origin
| of this website does rely on propagating the myth that we
| live in a meritocracy to ensure it has enough cheap labor
| to build prototypes that its anointed few can acquire at
| rock bottom pricing. But we've been through enough cycles
| of it now that we've started seeing the patterns.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > rock bottom pricing
|
| Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by
| what people are willing to pay for it.
|
| Browsing in a thrift store can be very enlightening!
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by
| what people are willing to pay for it.
|
| Is a human life literally worthless, because they never
| pay to be born?
|
| The map is not the territory, the price is not the value.
| gzread wrote:
| It can be empirically observed that human lives are not
| assigned much value when choosing to start a war.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| History clearly establishes that the open market assigns
| substantial value to human life. We just happen to have
| outlawed trading in it. Human life has been deemed
| worthless by force of law.
|
| Less facetiously, you're committing a semantic error.
| moron4hire wrote:
| "Markets clear" is one of those meritocracy myths that we
| the hoi paloi get taught explicitly all the while the
| elite will tell you to your face they don't believe.
| Google and Meta are massively profitable companies built
| on the idea that the concept of value is manipulable.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Where did you get the idea that those ideas are mutually
| exclusive?
| harimau777 wrote:
| > Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by
| what people are willing to pay for it.
|
| What do you base that belief upon?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Have you ever bought something that you didn't think was
| worth the money at the time?
| chongli wrote:
| _maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he
| explains why the argument doesn 't hold water._
|
| Many judges take a dim view of expensive lawyers trying to
| pull the wool over their eyes with sophisticated but
| fallacious arguments. You have to deal with a lot of BS to
| be a long-standing judge, so it seems like resistance to BS
| may be selected for among judges.
| kube-system wrote:
| Sorting BS from non-BS is pretty much the daily job
| description for a judge.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he
| explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
|
| The thing everybody ignores about this is context.
|
| Suppose you upload a copy of a work to someone else over
| the internet for <specific reason>. Is it fair use? That
| has to depend on the reason, doesn't it? Aren't there going
| to be some reasons for which the answer is yes?
|
| The "problem" here is that the reason typically belongs to
| the person downloading it. Suppose you're willing to upload
| a copy to anyone who has a bona fide legitimate fair use
| reason. Someone comes along, tells you that they have such
| a reason and you upload a copy to them. If they _actually
| did_ , did you do anything wrong? What did you do that you
| shouldn't have done? How is this legitimate fair use copy
| supposed to be made if not like this?
|
| But then suppose that they lied to you and had some
| different purpose that wasn't fair use. Is it you or them
| who has done something wrong? From your perspective the two
| cases are indistinguishable, so then doesn't it have to be
| them? On top of that, they're the one actually making the
| copy -- it gets written to persistent storage on their
| device, not yours.
|
| It seems like the only reason people want to argue that
| it's the uploader and not the non-fair-use downloader who
| is doing something wrong is some combination of
| "downloading is harder to detect" and that then the
| downloader who actually had a fair use purpose would be
| able to present it and the plaintiffs don't like that
| because it's not compatible with their scattershot
| enforcement methods.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > It seems like the only reason people want to argue that
| it's the uploader
|
| Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're
| overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal
| conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. But of
| course that would seem to apply to Facebook here in equal
| measure.
| b112 wrote:
| Way to leave out context!
|
| By no means were they suing for downloading alone. They were
| suing for sharing while downloading, and seeding after, and as
| "early seeders" they helped thousands obtain copies.
|
| Right or wrong, it was absolutely not about just downloading.
| It wasn't about taking one copy.
|
| In their eyes, it was about copyng then handing out tens of
| thousands of copies for free.
|
| Again, not saying it was right. However, please don't provide
| an abridged account, slanted to create a conclusion in the
| reader.
| misnome wrote:
| Did you even read the _title_ of the article? This is exactly
| what they are claiming is fair use.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Parent post brought in the comparison to stealing a CD, but
| torrenting isn't just taking a copy, it's distributing to
| others, hence the absurd damages claims
| tzs wrote:
| They are replying to what a comment said about past file
| sharing cases.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Remember that Metallica band members played an active driving
| role in those lawsuits against their own underage fans. It
| wasn't just the RIAA / record company organizations behaving
| cruelly, it was Metallica themselves. Fuck Metallica.
| reactordev wrote:
| Killed Napster and forced them overseas to create one of the
| most toxic streaming platforms for music the world has ever
| seen. Spotify. Sean Parker used to be cool...
| roegerle wrote:
| how they were able to recover from that is beyond me.
| dotancohen wrote:
| They didn't. I haven't bought a Metallica album since the
| black album. That was a decade earlier, because everything
| since sucked, but as I got older I thought about maybe
| expanding my tastes. I avoided Metallica specifically for
| their disrespect of their fans.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Did they not? Seems like they're still quite popular, and
| I knew people in HS (for reference, late 2010s to early
| '20s) that were big into the band.
|
| Additionally, looking at Google Trends[0], it seems they
| peaked in 21st-century online popularity in 2008 and had
| another notable uptick in 2017.
|
| I think a lot of us _want_ the assholes to have suffered
| real consequences for their behavior, but _want_ is
| different from _did_.
|
| [0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo
| =US&q=%...
| petre wrote:
| Yeah, they're popular like Ariana Grande is after the
| Manchester bombing. But just about everything they
| released after the Black album is kind of lame. The
| Budapest tickets sold out pretty fast, but they're still
| lame regardless if people go to their concerts. Compared
| to Depeche Mode and other bands that only get better with
| age, Metallica just play the same old songs or worse. And
| they're not a cult band like Death or The Sisters of
| Mercy either.
| DiskoHexyl wrote:
| But they kind of are (a cult band). Most people in the
| world know Metalica while hardly anyone ever heard any of
| the Sisters Of Mercy's tracks.
|
| Normal people don't care- they just enjoy a ballad or
| two.
|
| I've long since learnt to separate an artist from their
| art- a fair share of the musicians, actors, directors etc
| aren't really a decent bunch
| petre wrote:
| Not really, they missed that chance when they released
| Load and Reload and who knows what they did after that. I
| got fed up with their foray into commercial music and
| moved on to prog metal and other more interesting stuff.
| If they had stopped after the black album or continued to
| release quality works, then things would be different,
| but they chose money, whining, lawyers and drunk
| teenagers as an audience. They became lame and popular,
| which excludes being a cult band. Cult bands are not very
| popular in fact, as you have yourself pointed out.
| to11mtm wrote:
| I think they've got some ineffable qualities, and frankly
| there's lots of other genres where people might decide to
| give them a listen...
|
| Which is really just a roundabout way of saying I think
| Apocalyptica did a lot to help refresh them in the modern
| zeitgeist (Yes I know it was older, but I remember
| youtube videos causing it to enter at least my and
| other's conscious space...)
| brunoborges wrote:
| You clearly haven't watched Stranger Things
| Arubis wrote:
| Most of their fans didn't know and probably still don't. In
| my admittedly limited exposure (N=3 or 4), folks I know
| that were informed on Metallica's behavior in the Napster
| age that have since purchased anything from Metallica is
| zero.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Not that surprising considering that James Hetfield has no
| qualms about his music being used for literal torture.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/19/usa.guantanamo
| wnevets wrote:
| It's even more egregious after watching interviews of a young
| Lars bragging about trading bootleg cassette tapes.
| aduty wrote:
| Lars was always a scumbag.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| An insult to scumbags everywhere.
| mindslight wrote:
| I still can't listen to a Metallica song on the radio without
| feeling a bit sour. I wasn't a die hard superfan or anything,
| but their songs were pretty good. It really didn't help that
| they had cultivated this tough guy image and then turned into
| total whiners about piracy.
| petre wrote:
| It all went downhill after Metallica '91. Cover for
| _Whiskey in the Jar_ , come on. It's okay when everyone is
| drunk I guess, otherwise just litsten to the Dubliners'
| version or Thin Lizzy's.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| I became a super fan for a brief second during the Napster
| days, that's literally what got me into metal in the first
| place. Decades later and I'm still soured on them too.
| Napster days were so good for music discovery. I mean,
| they're better now with all these algos, obviously, but it
| was weirdly fun to download a track with tons of random
| strings in the name and end up with some parody Weird Al
| track and that's how you discovered something new.
| olivierestsage wrote:
| Another person who I remember really coming out as a villain
| in that era was Gene Simmons from KISS: "Sue everybody. Take
| their homes, their cars."[1]
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/10/kiss-
| frontman-we...
| halJordan wrote:
| Man back when ars was good. Feels like you're pouring salt
| into a wound posting that link.
| tombert wrote:
| Wow, I already didn't like him. Reading this feels
| validating.
| tombert wrote:
| IIRC, Dave Grohl actually gave a lot of shit to Metallica,
| claiming that it would be one thing if this were some indie
| band selling cassettes having their music stolen, but it's
| another when multi-millionaires are crying that they aren't
| getting extra money.
|
| Found it: https://youtu.be/Yy45qY9c49k
| codazoda wrote:
| His book (maybe he has several) is fantastic.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| At least it brought us some fun Flash animations as a result,
| in the form of Metallicops.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb_jLAisPzk
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| "Napster bad!", classic
| tzs wrote:
| You are off a bit on the numbers. First, though, the RIAA suits
| were not for downloading. The suits were for distribution.
|
| Here is how their enforcement actions generally went.
|
| 1. They would initially send a letter asking for around $3 per
| song that was being shared, threatening to sue if not paid.
| This typically came to a total in the $2-3k range. There were a
| few where the initial request was for much more such as when
| the person was accused of an unusually high volume of
| intentional distribution. But for the vast majority of people
| who were running file sharing apps in order to get more music
| for themselves rather than because they wanted to distribute
| music it averaged in that $2-3k range.
|
| 2. If they could not come to an agreement and actually filed a
| lawsuit they would pick maybe 10-25 songs out of the list of
| songs the person was sharing (typically around a thousand) to
| actually sue over. The range of possible damages in such a suit
| is $750-30000 per work infringed, with the court (judge and
| jury) picking the amount [1].
|
| NOTE: it is per "work infringed", not per infringement. The
| number of infringements will be one of the factors the court
| will consider when deciding where in that $750-30000 range to
| go.
|
| 3. There would be more settlement offers before the lawsuit
| actually went to trial. These would almost always be in the
| $200-300 per song range, which since the lawsuit was only over
| maybe a dozen or two of the thousand+ songs the person had been
| sharing usually came out to the same ballpark as the settlement
| offers before the suit was filed.
|
| Almost everyone settled at that point, because they realized
| that (1) they had no realistic chance of winning, (2) they had
| no realistic chance of proving they were were an "innocent
| infringer", (3) minimal statutory damages then of $750/song x
| 10-15 songs was more than the settlement offer, and (4) on top
| of that they would have not only their attorney fees but in
| copyright suits the loser often has to pay the winner's
| attorney fees.
|
| 4. Less than a dozen cases actually reached trial, and most of
| those settled during the trial for the same reasons in the
| above paragraph that most people settled before trial. Those
| were in the $3-15k range with most being around $5k.
|
| [1] If the defendant can prove they are in "innocent
| infringer", meaning they didn't know they were infringing and
| had no reason to know that, then the low end is lowered to
| $200. If the plaintiff can prove that the infringement was
| "willful", meaning the defendant knew it was infringement and
| deliberately did it, the high end is raised to $150k.
| themafia wrote:
| > the RIAA suits were not for downloading
|
| They were not all the same, some were fairly complicated
| cases, and one was undoubtedly for distribution.
|
| `The court's instructions defined "reproduction" to include
| "[t]he act of downloading copyrighted sound recordings on a
| peer-to-peer network."'
|
| From:
|
| https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-
| courts/ca8/11-282...
| tzs wrote:
| What I should have said is that all their lawsuits included
| an allegation of infringing the distribution right. There
| weren't any as far as I know that were just downloading.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > NOTE: it is per "work infringed", not per infringement. The
| number of infringements will be one of the factors the court
| will consider when deciding where in that $750-30000 range to
| go.
|
| But that's the whole problem, isn't it? Consider how a P2P
| network operates. There are N users with a copy of the song.
| From this we know that there have been at most N uploads, for
| N users, so the average user has uploaded 1 copy. Really
| slightly less than 1, since at least one of them had the
| original so there are N-1 uploads and N users and the average
| is (N-1)/N.
|
| There could be some users who upload more copies than others,
| but that only makes it worse. If one user in three uploads
| three copies and the others upload none, the _average_ is
| still one but now the _median_ is _zero_ -- pick a user at
| random and they more likely than not haven 't actually
| distributed it at all.
|
| Meanwhile the low end of the statutory damages amount is 750X
| the average, which is why the outcome feels absurd -- because
| it is.
|
| Consider what happens if 750 users each upload one copy of a
| $1 song. The total actual damages are then $750, but the law
| would allow them to recover a _minimum_ of $750 from _each of
| them_ , i.e. the total actual damages across _all_ users from
| _each_ user. The law sometimes does things like that where
| you can go after any of the parties who participated in
| something and try to extract the entire amount, but it 's not
| that common for obvious reasons and the way that usually
| works is that you can only do it _once_ -- if you got the
| $750 from one user you can 't then go to the next user and
| get _another_ $750, all you should be able to do is make them
| split the bill. But copyright law is bananas.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > The total actual damages are then $750, but the law would
| allow them to recover a minimum of $750 from each of them
|
| Because they're statutory damages, because the actual point
| of the exercise is to make an example of the person
| breaking the law. Obviously in scenarios where it's
| feasible to reliably prosecute a significant fraction of
| offenders then making an example of people isn't
| justifiable.
| ufocia wrote:
| Your memory may be failing you. The "maxima" you cite still
| exist, but they are merely statutory damages provisions. In
| other words, the plaintiffs can obtain such damages without
| proof of actual loss, i.e. strict liability. If the plaintiffs
| succeed in pricing actual damages beyond this level, they can
| obtain them.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Furthermore, in most copyright lawsuits that nerds like us
| actually care about (i.e. ones involving service providers
| and not actual artists or publishers), the number of works
| infringed is so high that the judge can just work backwards
| from the desired damage award and never actually hit the
| statutory damages cap. If the statutory damages limit was
| actually reached in basically any intermediary liability
| case, we'd be talking about damage awards higher than the US
| GDP.
|
| Linear arithmetic is one hell of a drug.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Or said differently: the law is stupid
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| That makes running a seedbox sound like a threat of global
| economic mass destruction.
| scuff3d wrote:
| Those kids should have just pirated all the music they could,
| turned it into a multi billion dollar business, and had lawyers
| fight for them in court. As long as enough money is involved
| you can just about anything you want.
|
| Stupid kids
| kristofferR wrote:
| Yeah, but remember how joyful we'd have been if copyright had
| been this weak in 2003. As long as this flows down to regular
| people instead of just corps, then copyright won't halt
| societal development as much as previously anymore. The
| weakening of copyright is a great thing.
|
| Just step back into space. Pretend you're so high that you can
| see your own person from outside yourself, like you are the
| CCTV camera in the corner. Now look at copyright, the law about
| the restriction of the right to copy to a select group. It's an
| absurd sight, like a bad trip.
|
| This might be relief, we might hopefully get past copyright and
| patents and just have innovation free for all.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| I rather doubt this more laissez-faire attitude towards
| intellectual property will be extended to those without.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > It's an absurd sight, like a bad trip.
|
| Do you say the same thing about being required to wear pants
| in public?
|
| Agreed that the extreme it has been taken to is absurd and
| entirely counterproductive though. 20-ish years was already a
| long time. If it takes you more than 20 years to market your
| book perhaps people just don't really like it all that much?
| Arubis wrote:
| Sure, but these are BILLIONAIRES. Some of society's most
| vulnerable members. We need to protect them! The kids can take
| the hit.
| PLenz wrote:
| This is the real reason the ultra rich are buying media
| companies. They expect the existing copyright laws to prevail in
| court and to either make significant revenue licensing IP for
| training or to take large stakes in AI companies in return for
| the IP.
|
| Only data is a moat, not algos, not compute.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| Seems like a bad bet to me. It looks like authors are going to
| lose this case setting the precedent that you not only don't
| need to license training data, obtaining it illegally (for
| free) is totally okay.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If this happens then free and open content (the Wikipedia
| model, more or less) becomes a hugely impactful "commoditize
| the complement" play for the big AI and tech firms. Every good
| piece of open content is something that AI firms don't have to
| license from a proprietary supplier. And if models trained on
| entirely open content can write an acceptable "first draft" of
| something new, that's huge acceleration.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Feeling very conflicted right now.
|
| On the other hand, it'd be absolutely hilarious if they succeeded
| with this argument. VPN vendors would not find that as hilarious
| I bet.
|
| And on another the hypocrisy is mindboggling. I guess you can't
| blame the lawyers from going after every angle, but this is quite
| creative.
|
| But really I do just want to find out if money continues to buy
| justice.
|
| I sincerely hope Facebook loses and is found to have knowingly
| infringed on copyright of all the books in the lawsuit. At $150K
| per violation, I'd almost feel bad for the poor shareholders.
| Zuck would probably take full responsibility and fire tens of
| thousand of workers.
| Hamuko wrote:
| It's a win-win situation. Either pirates win or Meta loses.
| gzread wrote:
| Ordinary piracy would still be illegal since it's not for AI
| training.
| icase wrote:
| piracy is not wrong, no matter who does it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I wonder how many of the torrent site whales are backed by big
| tech or industry. Some people share like petabytes of data on
| multiple sites. It's an insane amount.
| iririririr wrote:
| "i shoot them as it was fair use to taking their wallet. that's
| how the protocol work."
|
| how much you have to bribe a judge to even begin to consider
| saying that in a defense?
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Every pirate website can claim fair use in its footer. Doesn't
| mean the judge will take it seriously.
| everdrive wrote:
| Everyone's pointing out the obvious hypocrisy here, but I think
| it's more interesting if Meta succeeds in making this argument:
| can I just steal any book I want and share it with anyone? Does
| the same apply to music, movies, TV shows, and video games?
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Only if you are Facebook.
| luqtas wrote:
| but if i'm Facebook, can't i pay thousands books?
| unforgivenpasta wrote:
| I wonder if big companies will now start paying shadow libraries
| like annas archive for direct access, to minimize publicity of
| how training data was acquired, like Nvidia supposedly did?
|
| Few tens of thousands of dollars is a rounding error in Meta's
| bottom line but if this case goes anything like the Anthropic
| one, I would see it likely.
|
| Of course it wouldn't prevent authors from asking LLM's for
| content from their books and suing Meta again but I imagine
| authors would be less likely to with less evidence.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| They already do....
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > the company argued that uploading pirated books to other
| BitTorrent users during the torrent download process also
| qualifies as fair use ... as it is inherent to the protocol. In
| other words, the uploading wasn't a choice, it was simply how the
| technology works.
|
| as someone that's disabled upload when I'm downloading
| copyrighted material via bittorrent for decades, it is absolutely
| a choice
|
| so there's that
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Is it weird that I'm on Meta's side for this?
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Can Meta fight Nintendo, too? Would love to see two legal
| Leviathans fight each other.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This is a desperate defense. They're making it because they have
| to try something, but I doubt the court will buy it. This is a
| class action brought by authors, so while Meta has deep pockets,
| I expect this will actually settle, with named plaintiffs getting
| payouts authors will find big and the rest of the class getting
| scraps. If a major media company were the plaintiff, I'd expect
| this to get very expensive quickly.
| staplung wrote:
| I'm a _little_ surprised Meta is even bothering to fight this. I
| mean the argument looks farcical to me be IANAL and weirder
| things have happened. If they do end up losing they 'll have to
| pay however many millions to their law firms _plus_ whatever the
| in or out of court settlement end ups being.
|
| And you just know that whatever they end up paying will be so
| tiny that it will just be seen as the cost of doing business.
| From a corporation's perspective it's always better to break the
| law and _maybe_ pay a tiny fine ( _if_ you get caught and can 't
| argue your way out of it) than it is to follow the law and miss
| out on profit/revenue/strategic advantage etc.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Courts lose respect when their rules are not consistent and
| almost always favouring a legal fiction of a corporation being a
| person and a real person or any non-human specie on this planet
| as the lesser and a commodity. There must be a better way to
| maintain order and ensure progress.
| goldylochness wrote:
| it's interesting that meta is at the forefront of any legal
| battles for AI when they're not at the forefront of the
| technological race
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