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

Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

variety.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 484 posts

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#91

Post by Quarondeau »

qarl wrote: post #67
Quarondeau wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would hardly make a dent. And if you hired hundreds of savants, the knowledge would still be spread over hundreds of separate minds. And even if we grant that those savants are also very skilled at creating "market substitutes" based on their training that are capable of competing with the original works, their maximum creative output would only be a relatively small number of new works, because they can only work…

Ok - but if a company were able to hire one million savants, you feel it should be illegal, because why? Can you cite something in the copyright laws themselves that suggest this scale distinction?

This goes back to the original purpose of copyright, which is to serve as an economic incentive for individual creators and artists to make more art, by securing exclusive rights to use their own works commercially for a specified time. The goal is both the creation of more works, but also to protect the economic viability of artists.

This principle is quite universal and can be found in many places, including the US constitution and US (supreme) court decisions, many international jurisdictions, treaties and conventions.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#92

Post by pessimizer »

Shouldn't this stuff trigger RICO? Why do torrent site operators get led off in cuffs for running operations that usually lose money, but Zuck doesn't?

RICO specifically cites "criminal infringement of a copyright" as laid out in 18 U.S. Code § 2319. If the CEO tells his employees to download hundreds of thousands of works illegally in order to carry out his money-making scheme, how is that not organized crime even if (dubiously) LLM training on the material is fair use?

-----

RICO: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-96

Definitions: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1961

> As used in this chapter — (1) “racketeering activity” means (A)[...]; (B) any act which is indictable under any of the following provisions of title 18, United States Code: [...], section 2319 (relating to criminal infringement of a copyright),[...]

18 U.S. Code § 2319 - Criminal infringement of a copyright: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2319

-----

edit:

> 18 U.S. Code § 1962 - Prohibited activities

> (c) It shall be unlawful for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity[...].

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1962

From the lawsuit:

“Meta — at Zuckerberg’s direction — copied millions of books, journal articles, and other written works without authorization, including those owned or controlled by Plaintiffs and the Class, and then made additional copies of those works to train Llama,” the suit says. “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement. Meta also stripped [copyright management information] from the copyrighted works it stole. It did this to conceal its training sources and facilitate their unauthorized use.”

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#93

Post by ben_w »

dylan604 wrote: post #87
ben_w wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company being "worth" some amount doesn't mean it has that much money and real property; it means there exist people willing to buy shares, on the margin, at a price which works out like that. One of the common (very rough) approximations is that a business is worth as much as the profit it's expected to make over the next 20 years. But one of the reasons (there are many) that this is only a rough guide, is that if…

At the same time, isn't Zuck's worth based on his shares of evilCorp while evilCorp's shares are what you just said. Ergo, the Zuck isn't worth all that either???

Yup. All the headlines following the pattern "${billionaire} {gains|loses} ${x} billion this week" are mostly just fluff, the marginal share price of any given stock wanders all over the place even without forced sales or people trying to buy them out.

There's some interesting exceptions, like how Musk has managed to sell Tesla shares totalling more or less as much as the business itself has made in total lifetime revenue; but even then, Musk's theoretical net worth is very different from how much he could get if he was forced to sell all his shares suddenly.

Owner-CEOs like Musk and Zuckerberg get all the effects of such randomness, but the only examples I can think of such people getting into billion-dollar legal troubles tend to be examples which go on to sink their companies completely, so I'm not sure what impact a fine of "merely" 10% of cash reserves would do to investor confidence as expressed in share price. And this is not the only legal case Meta's facing right now.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#94

Post by pessimizer »

yorwba wrote: post #20
AlotOfReading wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-strawman way to interpret the parent comment is that they want them to be treated the same as normal copyright violators. Jail is a common result of (criminal) copyright prosecution, with 44% of convicted offenders being imprisoned, averaging 25 months [0]. Now, I personally find the idea of imprisoning people for copyright offenses horrific, but I don't think it's remotely insane that someone else might come…

From [0]: "In fiscal year 2017, there were 80 copyright/trademark infringement offenders who accounted for 0.1% of all offenders sentenced under the guidelines." This is such a low number that I assume most prosecuted cases are settled without ever making it to sentencing, or alternatively copyright infringement is just hardly ever prosecuted criminally at all.

I don't understand how the fact that 80 people were prosecuted for copyright violation in one year is an argument that one person shouldn't be prosecuted for copyright violation.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#96

Post by qarl »

Quarondeau wrote: post #91
qarl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok - but if a company were able to hire one million savants, you feel it should be illegal, because why? Can you cite something in the copyright laws themselves that suggest this scale distinction?

This goes back to the original purpose of copyright, which is to serve as an economic incentive for individual creators and artists to make more art, by securing exclusive rights to use their own works commercially for a specified time. The goal is both the creation of more works, but also to protect the economic viability of artists. This principle is quite universal and can be found in many places, including the US…

But my question is about your point of scale.

I don't understand why it should be allowed for one savant to study and answer questions about one book, but wrong for a company to hire one million savants to answer questions about one million books.

And I'm asking where in the law or case law this is supported.

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#99

Post by financetechbro »

ben_w wrote: post #74
azinman2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And meta's worth is much more than that. He's not personally paying.

A company being "worth" some amount doesn't mean it has that much money and real property; it means there exist people willing to buy shares, on the margin, at a price which works out like that. One of the common (very rough) approximations is that a business is worth as much as the profit it's expected to make over the next 20 years. But one of the reasons (there are many) that this is only a rough guide, is that if…

Zuck can just take out loans against his equity. He doesn’t need to sell any of it to benefit from Metas “worth”

Re: Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement

#100

Post by pessimizer »

runjake wrote: post #80
FireBeyond wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much revenue have your friends and family made from "doing the same thing"?

Some. In some cases they've "stolen" tens of thousands in content. Like I said, not at the same scale, but the same "crime" nonetheless. I'd much rather prosecution focus on Zuck's more serious crimes against privacy and civilization as a whole. But maybe this is a small start?

> Some. In some cases they've "stolen" tens of thousands in content.

That's not revenue.

Post reply on HN