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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

#401

Post by krzyk »

dspillett wrote: post #221
miki123211 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"distribution is the act protected by copyright" was the rule all along in many (non-US) jurisdictions, not an American so not sure about how the US does things. 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)! Operating…

> something like setting a 1 byte per second cap on uploads You generally can't set a client to 0B/s (as zero usually means “no limit”) but I'm not sure a good¹ lawyer on the other side would let you get away with claiming glacial distribution is not still distribution. At 1Kbyte/sec (I don't know a client off the top of my head that has control down to the single byte) a 50MByte file (not unusual for a book with ill…

> You generally can't set a client to 0B/s

It depends on client, it is possible in e.g. transmission

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

#402

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #395
a2128 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That the judge will say you did not break the law because you reasonably believed you were following the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea

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

#403

Post by bcraven »

easterncalculus wrote: post #328
lubujackson wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta's rep continues to degrade - first they steal from copyright holders, but then they admit to leeching? Not even a 1:1 ratio?! /kickban

Seriously though, where is that magnet link? That's the only question on my mind when these articles come up.

>This torrent list is the “ultimate unified list” of releases by Anna’s Archive, Library Genesis, Sci-Hub, and others. By seeding these torrents, you help preserve humanity’s knowledge and culture. These torrents represent the vast majority of human knowledge that can be mirrored in bulk.

>These torrents are not meant for downloading individual books. They are meant for long-term preservation. With these torrents you can set up a full mirror of Anna’s Archive, using our source code and metadata (which can be generated or downloaded as ElasticSearch and MariaDB databases). We also have full lists of torrents, as JSON.

https://annas-archive.org/torrents

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

#404

Post by jillyboel »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #203
jillyboel wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it is not your right to copy! If you want to keep using euros and have free travel to other Eurozone countries, you need to respect EU law. The tax does not respect EU law because it makes no effort to actually offset losses to copyright holders. Your comment doesn't even make sense! The intention was never to make piracy okay, it was to offset a tiny fraction of the financial losses. These financial losses are s…

Not sure what you're on about but it was permitted by law, and the tax exists because of that reason. The EU bullied the NL into changing some laws (which aren't enforced), but the NL is still charging this tax.

None of that really has anything to do with me, I'm not a bureaucrat. But they chose to still tax me, so as far as I'm concerned I have the moral right to download as much as I want.

Anyway, feel free to lobby the NL to drop this tax and then we can talk.

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

#405

Post by registeredcorn »

miki123211 wrote: post #49
contravariant wrote: post #2

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…

"distribution is the act protected by copyright" was the rule all along in many (non-US) jurisdictions, not an American so not sure about how the US does things. 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)! Operating…

Sorry, I may be missing something. Can you please clarify:

>you often see people getting fines for torrenting

>fines for using [...] are a lot more rare

Are you saying something kind of like, "When you torrent, you are also distributing that copyrighted information, which is often prosecuted, but simply procuring that information (without redistribution) is not." Or is it something different?

For example: in America, it is completely legal to buy, sell, and own a radar detector. Radar detectors are used to "detect" when the police use radar to catch speeding motorists. In spite of it being legal to own a radar detector, it is illegal to actively use a radar detector for its intended purpose. There are various reasons I have heard for this, but the most common was that the components of the device itself is not illegal, and picking up those signals are not illegal (because they are targeted at the public) but the reason and intent to use one is to commit a crime, and the use of a device in the assistance of committing an offense (speeding) is illegal. It's this kind of weird grey area, where you can possess the thing, but can't use it for the reason you (likely) bought it for.

Is it kind of like that? Like, you can possess copyrighted material that you have not paid for (for whatever justification), but actively sharing that copyrighted material without authorization, is criminal? If so, does that mean that lots of Germans simply don't seed illegal torrents?

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

#408

Post by [deleted] »

bodiekane wrote: post #374
stalluri wrote: post #207

Models absorbed the pirated content. Now Meta is distributing those models. Is that considered distribution?

Of course not. I listened to other people's music and learned some of their songs before writing my own music, that doesn't mean my songs are distribution of theirs. I read other people's books and short stores and news articles before writing my own, that doesn't mean my writing is distribution of theirs.

[deleted]

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

#409

Post by asadotzler »

bodiekane wrote: post #374
stalluri wrote: post #207

Models absorbed the pirated content. Now Meta is distributing those models. Is that considered distribution?

Of course not. I listened to other people's music and learned some of their songs before writing my own music, that doesn't mean my songs are distribution of theirs. I read other people's books and short stores and news articles before writing my own, that doesn't mean my writing is distribution of theirs.

How about if I play your song at just the right speed with just the right EQ and I can get an exact reproduction of some of the songs you claim to have written? Because we can get large excerpts of exact copies of short and long form content as demonstrated clearly by the New York Times research on chatbots and their own content.

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

#410

Post by asadotzler »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #397
micromacrofoot wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, scale matters, a lot. I can feed my neighbor some rycin and I'm a murderer. If I poison the state's water supply with rycin and millions die, I'm not just a murderer any more. I'm now a terrorist and an entirely new set of laws apply to me. Same with blowing up my neighbors barn vs blowing up a large building. Scale matters and these "what's the difference except the scale" comments seem unconsidered or naive to me.
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