Unless they actively modified a bittorrent client, even leeches upload and share some chunks.
It's not hard. I've done it.
Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
161–170 of 471 posts
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#162It'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 current admin and the judges they installed are favorable towards Zuck and antagonistic towards most of the entertainment industry. If this case is seen through (which is not likely) & Meta wins (even if via appeal to higher courts), the legal decision will likely involve a very specific carve out that says what Meta did, and only what Meta did, was fine. It will have no affect on you or me.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, more likely, drop the case to avoid establishing a precedent. Sounds like Meta are banking on the entertainment industry looking at it and deciding that the risk of losing this case is too high given Meta’s almost infinitely deep pockets to mount a legal defence.
Maybe. But it's hard to see how they could possibly win this case no matter how good their defence team is.
So, if Meta were found to have been seeding or making copyrighted materials available to others without permission, that's a slam dunk, I think.
But Meta's contention is 'you don't have any proof of that'.
I think there is enough existing case law and ambiguity in the law as it's written that Meta stand a reasonable (although not a good) chance of being able to argue that they did not commit any crime because a.) they did not create the infringing copy (or that the infringing copy that they received was a technical copy, and they did not create an infringing copy themselves) b.) they did not infringe for private or financial gain (the models they trained on this material were released to the public for free). There's an argument that copyright infringement occurs only upon distribution, and as far as I'm aware, there's no case law that just downloading a copy is illegal.
Meta may also be able to argue that their use of the material could be considered 'fair', as it is non-commercial, transformative, and that the use of the material does not harm the market for the original work.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not arguing about the merits of these arguments, just that they seem to me to be plausible.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
11 years ago the EU made the Netherlands change their position: https://www.zdnet.com/article/downloading-pirate-material-fi... AFAIK this is still the case - the Netherlands is more poorly-enforced than other EU countries, but it's still illegal to download pirated material.
And of course the "thuiskopieheffing", a tax on any storage device that ostensibly is used to fund those whose media gets copied, is still in effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#Netherlan...
As long as I'm paying a tax for it, it is my right to copy
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#165Earlier 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…
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…
Not sure European governments do much to combat external propaganda anyway.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or, more likely, drop the case to avoid establishing a precedent. Sounds like Meta are banking on the entertainment industry looking at it and deciding that the risk of losing this case is too high given Meta’s almost infinitely deep pockets to mount a legal defence.
As much as I dislike the idea of individual copyright owners, like visual artists or writers, having their works scraped for AI without compensation…
If this does break the stranglehold that copyright has over creative acts, especially in the US, this feels like a net good.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#167Earlier 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…
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…
This approach is great in theory, the problem is: it does not scale. We are bombarded with a lot of information in the news, ads, social media, and average individual does not have enough time (not to mention access to information, or intelligence to interpret it) to fact check everything on their own. "The last man who knew everything" lived in early 19th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_Who_Knew_Everythi...
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#168If you download one book you're a criminal. If they download millions of books, that's just business.
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.
In South Africa (as far as I understand) it's also perfectly legal to copy stuff for personal use.
It's been a while since I've been in one, but our public libraries had coin operated photocopiers, you can just walk in, grab literally any book from the shelf, and copy away.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#169That was my understanding too for a long time. I thought everyone who got sued for using BitTorrent was sued because they were "distributing" copies. Downloading isn't distributing. I also don't think anyone has ever been sued in America for using websites which stream movies they don't have the rights to to you.
Re: Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn't illegal without proof of seeding
#170Earlier 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.
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…
In case you didn't chuckle: