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

221–230 of 471 posts

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

#221

Post by dspillett »

miki123211 wrote: post #49
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…

"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…

> 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.

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

#222

Post by jcelerier »

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…

> 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

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

#223

Post by braiamp »

otterley wrote: post #198

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 boo…

> 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

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

#225

Post by tiahura »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #216
papercrane wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

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.

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

#226

Post by thrance »

rapind wrote: post #174
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…

> 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.

Yes, for many this "free speech absolutism" is just a rhetorical stance they adopt, which do not reflect their actions at all.

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

#227

Post by Ray20 »

flir wrote: post #171
lordloki wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

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

#228

Post by sightbroke »

papercrane wrote: post #199
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…

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...

I am not convinced that applies to receiving information.

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

#229

Post by [deleted] »

contravariant wrote: post #24
latexr wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 implementatio…

[deleted]

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

#230

Post by withinboredom »

papercrane wrote: post #199
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…

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...

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.

Post reply on HN