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

Post by kqr » Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

mock-possum wrote: post #257

saghm wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nei…

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…

Post by 999900000999 » Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

lucasyvas wrote: post #151

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.

Post by otterley » Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 4:16 PM UTC

tiahura wrote: post #262

otterley wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Post by BeetleB » Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #255

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…

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.

Post by plorg » Fri, Feb 21, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #221

miki123211 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 ill…