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

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

#331
post #74

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…

Yes it is a different kind of worth, but it is not worth less because of it.

This common argument to not take market cap valuations seriously doesn't hold.

True, Meta as an entire entity is not liquid. A forced sale in entirety would produce a massive reduction in compensation. But that is a highly unlikely and contingent reduction.

It is also true that if you have Meta's equivalent in cash, the value of the cash is likely to drop, while the value of Meta likely to grow, over any appreciable time. In that sense, $X cash is worth much "less" than the $X market cap.

These seeming contradictions are the result of different practical tradeoffs in structures of wealth. Not because market caps reflect misleading or overstated accounting.

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

#332
post #2

A lot of people would be very pleased if this leads to Zuckerberg getting even the statutory minimum damages ($750?) on each infringement. The previous infringement case with Anthropic said that while training an AI was transformative and not itself an infringement, pirating works for that purpose still was definitely infringement all by itself. The settlement was $1.5bn, so close to $3k for each of the 500k they pir…

What's frustrating is all those kids who got criminal charges for running MP3 sites back in the day [1], and this guy rips off every piece of media in existence and will walk away literally because he's too rich to be charged. [1] See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace#Legal_pro...

Definitely what pisses me off the most. All these "pirates"? Arrested. Why isn't the copyright industry raiding the homes of these tech billionaires then? Why isn't SWAT pointing guns at their faces while the squad seizes all of their computers and equipment? Why aren't these CEOs in cuffs?

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

#336
post #2

A lot of people would be very pleased if this leads to Zuckerberg getting even the statutory minimum damages ($750?) on each infringement. The previous infringement case with Anthropic said that while training an AI was transformative and not itself an infringement, pirating works for that purpose still was definitely infringement all by itself. The settlement was $1.5bn, so close to $3k for each of the 500k they pir…

What's frustrating is all those kids who got criminal charges for running MP3 sites back in the day [1], and this guy rips off every piece of media in existence and will walk away literally because he's too rich to be charged. [1] See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace#Legal_pro...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records%2C_Inc._v._Tho...

24 songs and was at one point $80k per song, almost 20 years ago. Let's let Zuck off with an even 100k per infringement.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is all those kids who got criminal charges for running MP3 sites back in the day [1], and this guy rips off every piece of media in existence and will walk away literally because he's too rich to be charged. [1] See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace#Legal_pro...

I just don't see why everyone seems to not be cheering that perhaps we are not going to go back to the days where all those kids are going to be re charged. It almost feels like everyone wants to go back to labels carpet bombing students with lawsuits[0] [0] https://w2.eff.org/IP/P2P/riaa-v-thepeople.html

Do you think if there was a mass movement of students moving off Spotify and downloading MP3s, they would _not_ be charged today?

The hypocrisy is what has at least me upset

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

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is all those kids who got criminal charges for running MP3 sites back in the day [1], and this guy rips off every piece of media in existence and will walk away literally because he's too rich to be charged. [1] See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace#Legal_pro...

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/zuckerstreisand/ Cory Doctorow wrote a nice summary of the Zuckerstreisand book by Sarah Wynn-Williams. "First, Facebook becomes too big to fail. Then, Facebook becomes too big to jail. Finally, Facebook becomes too big to care."

> When Wynn-Williams give birth to her second child, she hemorrhages, almost dies, and ends up in a coma.

> Afterwards, Kaplan gives her a negative performance review because she was "unresponsive" to his emails and texts while she was dying in an ICU.

Holy shit.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is all those kids who got criminal charges for running MP3 sites back in the day [1], and this guy rips off every piece of media in existence and will walk away literally because he's too rich to be charged. [1] See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oink%27s_Pink_Palace#Legal_pro...

What's frustrating is that I don't even consider infringement to be a crime. Why are you all so upset about this, rather than his real crimes?

I'm a copyright abolitionist. I don't care at all that they're training AIs on copyrighted works. I care a lot that they're not getting relentlessly hunted down by the copyright industry for it like all the "pirates" that came before them. The copyright industry has actually ruined lives by litigating their "infringement" nonsense. It's only fair that they go after this guy as well.

His constant violation of people's privacy is also horrendous and worthy of condemnation, but that's not directly related to the copyright infringement matter. It's a separate issue.

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

#340
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you write a book and I take it and embed its knowledge into my product that is so pervasive that no one needs to buy your book any more (and I don't even credit you so no one knows where that knowledge came from), to you really still have what was stolen? The trouble with this analogy is that it proves too much. Suppose you write a book, and so does someone else, but they have better marketing than you and then…

A better analogy would be that you do original research or work and produce a valuable book. Somebody else looks at your work, decides it has value, and reproduces it in a new book under their name. The new book is cheaper, or easier to find, or for whatever reason displaces your original book created through your own research and investment. Now somebody else is profiting off your creativity or work, without payment…

So for example, when Disney sees value in public domain stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel/Tangled or Snow White, and they make movies out of them, profiting from the creativity and work of the Brothers Grimm without paying anything to their estate, or high school plays do Shakespeare, that seems unethical to you?

Would it be fair for Greece to do retroactive term extensions all the way back to Plato and then sue anyone who copies the idea of having a university or uses the Platonic solids or distributes religious texts that incorporate the dualistic theory of the soul?

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