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

arstechnica.com

101–110 of 471 posts

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

#101
post #80
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see you didn't acknowledge your source! :-) (It's Tom Lehrer, for any who don't recognize it.)

No, it's Jan Laureys

- Lincoln. Fact-checked by Meta.

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

#102

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

In the Netherlands this is still the law. Downloading is fine, uploading is not. We used to have a sort of national library of every single media on Usenet back in the day.

Maybe Meta has a "trading desk" in the Netherlands. :-)

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

#104
post #8

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…

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.

In some jurisdictions (e.g. Germany) "copyright" belongs exclusively to the author/creator and is non-transferrable, the German word for "copyright" (Urheberrecht) also literally translates to "author's right"). So instead of transferring copyright to an entity (e.g. the employer) you only grant an "exclusive, transferrable and unrestricted" license to that entity, essentially prohibiting you from using it without their permission while technically still retaining that right. This is also why CC0 exists as a substitute for a public domain declaration because in these jurisdictions it is literally impossible to transfer your copyright to the public domain.

In Germany copyright law there is actually one provision for the real transfer of copyright: death. So as far as copyright is concerned, the transfer of copyright requires literally death of the author - which might get a chuckle out of people into media studies.

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

#105

In fairness, I don't think Meta would have (had) any trouble paying the fair price of every book they downloaded (the price of exactly one copy) if that had been possible to do at scale.

If anyone could do it at scale, it would be Meta.

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

#106
post #81
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your jurisdiction. In Switzerland, downloading games, books, music, movies etc. for personal use is always legal even if the copy is "pirated". Work just needs to be published in any form. Dont know any other country where it works like this.

Czechia. In theory, there is a fee for every media (e.g.HDD) that is paid to OSA (authors organization) and OSA pays to authors through some distribution scheme. Since user already paid fee, downloading is OK. This is mostly leftover before computers were a thing (think cassettes and paper copiers). In practice, it's a racket and OSA is a mafia that doesn't pay to anyone. Also, the fees are rather small considering t…

Sweden apparently kept the fee and made it illegal. That's extra mafia.

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

#108
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does downloading a torrent differ from that?

The sites copied by Google Search explicitly allow it. The books copied by Meta, explicitly disallow it, and require payment for distribution.

Information wants to be free.

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

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did he say that? I watched it recently, and don't recall that line at all...

The scene where Jack climbs down the hole under the garbage can into the subway, having figured out the ransom money has moved. He tries to hold up Payne, who reveals he's holding Annie hostage. Here: https://youtu.be/ntTY_Q005Ic?t=128

So he didn't say it. "paraphrase" is the wrong word because you changed the meaning behind what he said.

> A paraphrase or rephrase is the rendering of the same text in different words without losing the meaning of the text itself

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