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

arstechnica.com

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

#391

Post by franczesko »

trilbyglens wrote: post #111
codetrotter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)! It’s a lot easier to find out who is torrenting than to find out who is using Usenet for example though. With torrents you can see the IP addresses of peers. And then I…

Germany is wild. You will get a knock on your door within hours of firing up a torrent client

BS

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

#392

Post by amelius »

stale2002 wrote: post #344
amelius wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that "training" and human learning are similar things. This is a bit like saying that taking a holiday picture of someone, and putting a surveillance camera on the street are the same thing. I think many books actually prohibit the storage into an information retrieval system and AI can be considered a form of that.

> You assume that "training" and human learning are similar things. No I don't. Because a human is choosing to enact the training regardless. Just like if a human held a book up to a rock. It would be ridiculous that an author could ban a human from "training" a rock from a book. Its their book, and they can show it to a rock if they want!

If you buy a DVD and show it at work, then that's also ok, because it is your DVD and you can do with it whatever you want?

Turns out, nope, that's not ok.

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

#393

Post by Ajedi32 »

ninalanyon wrote: post #351
noboostforyou wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that argument I believe the question becomes "is the output of a model considered a derivative work of the training data?" https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.pdf

What else could it be?

An original composition based on a statistical analysis of the training data. Statistical data about a copyrighted work obviously isn't necessarily a derivative of that work. Otherwise Tolkien could sue me for telling you how many times The Lord of the Rings uses the word "the".

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

#394

Post by rsync »

mrweasel wrote: post #56
isaacfrond wrote: post #5

It's certainly nice to see someone accused of bittorrenting with the bankroll to come up with a decent legal defense team.

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.

“… the full legal team of the entertainment industry with this argument …”

Is that a problem for them ?

Doesn’t meta make more money than the entire industry of Hollywood including all home entertainment revenue ?

I am certain they do.

EDIT: 2024 full year revenue for meta is ~160B as compared to (roughly) 140B for the entirety of the film industry .

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

#395

Post by Ajedi32 »

a2128 wrote: post #178
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

So your position is that it is illegal for me to watch a movie on Netflix that they don't have the rights to? Just that I wouldn't be prosecuted because I didn't intend to break the law? Unless perhaps I knew they didn't have the rights to it but watched it anyway?

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

#396

Post by mrguyorama »

anonym29 wrote: post #301
tiahura wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Because there was no right to slander, or threaten, or commit treason, or "share" in 1791, Congress retained the power to regulate. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and intentions of the constitution. Slander and fighting words are exceptions to the first amendment that were determined through the legislative process. Essentially the entire US constitution is negative rights - the right…

>It seems abundantly clear from even a cursory analysis that the founders explicitly designed the constitution to limit and restrict the power of a centralized federal government, as treasonous, violent disregard for a powerful centralized federal government is quite literally the premiere founding principle baked into the US's history.

Which is why we immediately replaced a loose federation of Strong States with a new government built around an explicitly empowered and strengthened federal government?

The idea that the constitution was built around a very weak federal government is wrong. The founders built a weak federal government, immediately ran into problems with it, and immediately those same founders built a new government with a strong federal government with EXPLICIT and CLEAR authority and supremacy over the states on certain things.

For example, modern conservatives often decry how the federal supremacy on interstate commerce is used to regulate interstate commerce, but the commerce clause was built to tear down all possible protectionism and trade barriers states had erected amount themselves. The strong federal government was also built explicitly to be a single strong bloc for trade negotiations.

There were plenty of anti-federalists around during this time. They got to air their complaints and opinions. Nobody listened to them because the articles of confederation, and the loose, weak federal government it built was just that useless and broken. The founders literally tore up the government to make a new one without the authorization to do so because there was no stability, no long term hope for the existing one.

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

#397

Post by Ajedi32 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #218
userbinator wrote: post #54

If this was 15-20 years ago, arguably at the peak of P2P filesharing, I suspect most people would side with Meta.

Why do we have to play this purity game where we take a situation, remove context, and wag our finger at each other? There's an ENORMOUS difference between college students pirating some movies or albums and the company worth $2 trillion doing it programmatically across millions of works and then reselling the laundered data . This is a completely unserious discussion without considering context.

The difference being... what? Just scale?

To be clear, Meta didn't "[resell] the laundered data": or at least they're claiming there's no proof of seeding.

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

#398

Post by gowld »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #366
zeroq wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting case. Most commonly used clients won't let you turn off seeding, but you can indeed limit the upstream to a really low value. You can also, at the same time, seed a ton of different things, preferably quite large, to saturate your upload and make it statistically improbable to fully send a copy of any single file. Now, based on my feeling and cases I've seen in my country I'd say that the judge wo…

> pirating software is whole different animal, since now it's not a copyright, but a breach of licence agreement How can that be true? There is no way for me a breach a license agreement without being party to the agreement.

It's can't be true. It's nonsense.

License is an agreement that grants you rights that would otherwise be prevented by copyright or other laws.

You can violate a copyright, or a license agreement, or both, or neither.

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

#399

Post by gowld »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #378
mcphage wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also possible that setting a 1 byte per second limit showed they were aware what they were doing was illegal.

Intent matters. I can well imagine a judge saying something like this: While I am satisfied it has been proven you are aware that by torrenting said files, distribution also occurred. However, I am also satisfied it has been proven that by setting a 1 byte per minute upload limit, you had taken those steps you could to limit uploads in an effort to prevent the prohibited activity. Other evidence presented to the cour…

You'd still be conspiring with others to violate copyright.

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

#400

Post by mcphage »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #378
mcphage wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also possible that setting a 1 byte per second limit showed they were aware what they were doing was illegal.

Intent matters. I can well imagine a judge saying something like this: While I am satisfied it has been proven you are aware that by torrenting said files, distribution also occurred. However, I am also satisfied it has been proven that by setting a 1 byte per minute upload limit, you had taken those steps you could to limit uploads in an effort to prevent the prohibited activity. Other evidence presented to the cour…

> Intent matters

I agree with you intent matters, and I agree with you that setting the upload limit to 1 byte per second shows intent, I just disagree about what intent it shows.

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