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Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

arstechnica.com

131–140 of 471 posts

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#131
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can just bribe the president.

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...

Inbefore he pardons meta for torrenting.

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#132
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.

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Weird, TIL.

This has never been enforced though.

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#135
post #120
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linking is different from copying, and fortunately the last case I remember allows it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticketmaster_Corp._v._Tickets.... .

Tell me you've never googled lyrics without telling me.....

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#136
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah you mean like Google Search?

Google Search brings you traffic and revenue. LLMs do not.

See also how people have responded to google-snippets. When google search threatens to remove traffic or revenue, people get angry quite quickly.

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#137

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…

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 ri…

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...).

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#138
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.

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#139
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?

Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding

#140
post #108
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sites copied by Google Search explicitly allow it. The books copied by Meta, explicitly disallow it, and require payment for distribution.

Information wants to be free.

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.
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