Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 471 posts

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

#171

Post by flir »

lordloki wrote: post #154
thrance wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 government…

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.

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

#172

Post by toss1 »

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.

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

#173

Post by hobs »

Munksgaard wrote: post #152
mrweasel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meta is a couple of times larger than the entire entertainment industry combined...

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...

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

#174

Post by rapind »

thrance wrote: post #137
sightbroke wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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

#175

Post by 6stringmerc »

2mlWQbCK wrote: post #93
contravariant wrote: post #2

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…

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.

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.

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

#176

Post by drawkward »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #19
mandmandam wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is…

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.

Trump solved the problem by just removing the funding! Checkmate, Libs! /s

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

#177

Post by 6stringmerc »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #163
IshKebab wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. But it's hard to see how they could possibly win this case no matter how good their defence team is.

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.) th…

Meta has a target on its back after getting away with meme jacking / users reposting without attribution / tanking media outlets and becoming a “news source” over the last decade.

I’m all for them getting a dose of reality in this case, and nothing consistently whips tech in the pocketbook like whining their interpretation of Fair Use is legal when it clearly is not.

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

#178

Post by a2128 »

gampleman wrote: post #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 kno…

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

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

#179

Post by flir »

amelius wrote: post #156
flir wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#180

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #118
contravariant wrote: post #2

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…

> ...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.

that's not true. the term for works for hire is 95 years from creation https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html
Post reply on HN