Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues

Post by armchairhacker » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 12:53 PM UTC

dns_snek wrote: post #11

lukan wrote: post #2

The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.

> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it. The activists are against it because the big guys are exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these companies.

Post by bsenftner » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

ohbleek wrote: post #44

dizzy9 wrote: post #35

Some of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. Th…

So, does this mean that people can simply argue in court now (if they were to be prosecuted for downloading media via bittorrent) that it is fair use if they used it to train a local model on their machine?

Post by gzread » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

yorwba wrote: post #64

gzread wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not subsidized. You paid a fee on every hard drive to pay for that drive to hold pirated media.

It's subsidized by people who paid the fee when they bought a hard drive to hold something other than pirated media.

Post by yorwba » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

ohbleek wrote: post #44

dizzy9 wrote: post #35

Some of us are old enough to remember when the RIAA sued children for downloading Metallica albums on filesharing networks. They sued for $100,000 per song, an absurd amount when you consider that even stealing a physical album would amount only to around $1 per song. What was bizarre was that courts took the figure seriously, even if they typically settled cases for around $3,000, still around 30x actual damages. Th…

So, does this mean that people can simply argue in court now (if they were to be prosecuted for downloading media via bittorrent) that it is fair use if they used it to train a local model on their machine?

Post by armchairhacker » Sat, Mar 07, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

mcherm wrote: post #30

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted No, because those cases were pirating-while-poor. This is pirating-while-trillion-dollar-corporation, which falls under a completely different section of the law.

At this stage, you are going to far in claiming that. So far, all that happened is that Meta's lawyers claimed it was fair use. They are paid to try every argument they can think of that might work. Just because they make the argument doesn't mean the court will find it has any merit.