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Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

arstechnica.com

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Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#931

Post by roguecoder »

qup wrote: post #345
palata wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating different problems. Big corporations are too big, they should just not exist. When you have corporations more powerful than the government of the biggest states, it's a bug, not a feature. The IP laws may need rethinking. Saying that they should disappear because big corporations are above the law doesn't help, though. First kill the big corporations, then think about fair laws. Changing the law now…

How do you suggest making them smaller? For instance, what if google was still just serving search results w/ ads, and they never expanded that. How would you make them smaller?

I recommend Jason Furman's work for the practical mechanisms by which unnatural monopolies can be broken up and natural monopolies can be regulated.

On the other hand, you are interested in why the status quo isn't an accident and what we would need to do to accomplish those things, I recommend reading Reid Hoffman's book "Blitzscaling" side-by-side with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson's book "Winner-Take All Politics": you can see the same dynamics presented in two very different lights.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#932

Post by roguecoder »

palata wrote: post #911
lrvick wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impersonation would be a dick move, and would ruin my reputation. Do not need laws to avoid such things. Obvious social repercussions are enough. Still impersonation sucks, and it happens. Thankfully we can solve this with cryptography without trying to beg the legal system of hundreds of countries to agree on enforcement tactics. I publish 100% of code I write as FOSS. I also sign my commits. If the code shows up la…

> I publish 100% of code I write as FOSS. This is not public domain. > and so corporations bound by such silly rules have a difficult time using my work in private codebases without paying me for an alternate license. So... you benefit from copyright laws. > to ensure I do not get sued Why would you get sued by releasing your code as public domain?

Liability laws often don't care if something is free.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#933

Post by roguecoder »

alickz wrote: post #356
StefanBatory wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you don't agree with the price, do not buy it. You are NOT entitled to entertain yourself in any way you want. (unless it's funded by taxes etc, in which case... okay, it's open to discussion.) Look, let's be honest - what gives you or others the right to steal from others?

> what gives you or others the right to steal from others? I think technically it's copying more than stealing Like if you could wait for someone to design and build a car and then CTRL+C/V it for yourself (is it possible to steal in a post-scarcity society?)

That is the fundamental problem with trying to project property rights onto ideas. Capitalism works fine for distributing scarce goods and resources, but information and software are both public goods.

In a reasonable world, we would be imposing high taxes on all LLMs and using that money to fund grants for future writers and artists. It would be good for the LLM makers in the long run, since it would give them more fuel for their models, and it would be good for the artists and writers because it would provide sustainable, reliable wages.

Unfortunately, that isn't the world we live in. LLM makers don't seem to care about the impact they will have on society or even their own livelihoods, as long as they get rich today. And in addition to all the regulatory capture, we are having our governments gutted on the mere fear that they might do their job and prevent the wholesale looting of society by these new robber-barons.

So with the economically-optimal approaches off the table, we have to fall back on imposing false scarcity in the hopes that maybe capitalism can limp along.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#934

Post by roguecoder »

satvikpendem wrote: post #759
roguecoder wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The benefits are not clear: why should an "author" who doesn't want to bother writing a book of their own get to steal the words of people who aren't lazy slackers?

It's as much stealing as piracy is stealing, ie none at all. If you disagree, you and I (along with probably many others in this thread) have a fundamental axiomatic incompatibility that no amount of discussion can resolve.

It is not theft in the property sense, but it is theft of labor.

If a company interviewed me, had me solve a problem, didn't hire me or pay me in any way and then used the code I wrote in their production software, that would be theft.

That is the equivalent of what authors claiming they wrote AI books are doing. That they've fooled themselves into thinking the computer "wrote" the book, erasing all the humans whose labor they've appropriated, in my opinion makes it worse, not better. They are lying to the reader and themselves, and both are bad.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#935

Post by lrvick »

palata wrote: post #911
lrvick wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impersonation would be a dick move, and would ruin my reputation. Do not need laws to avoid such things. Obvious social repercussions are enough. Still impersonation sucks, and it happens. Thankfully we can solve this with cryptography without trying to beg the legal system of hundreds of countries to agree on enforcement tactics. I publish 100% of code I write as FOSS. I also sign my commits. If the code shows up la…

> I publish 100% of code I write as FOSS. This is not public domain. > and so corporations bound by such silly rules have a difficult time using my work in private codebases without paying me for an alternate license. So... you benefit from copyright laws. > to ensure I do not get sued Why would you get sued by releasing your code as public domain?

> This is not public domain.

MIT, ISC licenses etc offer minimum anti-liabiliy CYA here and are what I typically use. They are a hack to get around the fact you cannot actually public domain code without legal risk.

> So... you benefit from copyright laws.

I sometimes exploit laws that I feel should not exist at all specifically to target corporations who abuse them the most. In my preferred world where copyright and patents did not exist, I would not need to play such games.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#936

Post by lrvick »

palata wrote: post #908
lrvick wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I disagree with this. IP law should not exist. If I buy a thing it should be mine to do with as I see fit. The more people that share and copy data the better.

You're not an author, obviously. Do you put all - and I mean 100% - the code you write in the public domain?

I author a lot of technical documentation actually.

Even so, yes. I make all my work public, 100%.

I use public repositories as my backup for anything I create, regardless of stage of completion and so others can learn from or help improve my work as they see fit.

I do not believe proprietary technology should exist and I put my code where my mouth is.

Humans progress faster when we collaborate freely. Fork anything I do and make it better if you can.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#937

Post by skeaker »

palata wrote: post #908
lrvick wrote: post #889

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I disagree with this. IP law should not exist. If I buy a thing it should be mine to do with as I see fit. The more people that share and copy data the better.

You're not an author, obviously. Do you put all - and I mean 100% - the code you write in the public domain?

I do, save for code I'm simply too lazy to publish...

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#938

Post by 52-6F-62 »

jodrellblank wrote: post #844
52-6F-62 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this an attempt to imply the Scots had imperial ambitions and have not been fighting to keep their homes free of invasion for several thousand years? Fuck this sounds familiar right now

Didn't Scotland try to make an empire in Eastern Canada, eastern USA, Africa, and Panama, then bankrupt themselves and agree to the Act of Union with England making Great Britain?

Lol. If you call a segment of the merchant class (kind of like silicon valley) the entirety of the country and ethnic group.

But that would be a major misunderstanding. So no.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#939

Post by kelseyfrog »

The usual copyright cartel is up in arms, crying theft. But here’s the truth: intellectual property is a state-enforced monopoly, not real property.

Property is based on scarcity - if you take my car, I no longer have a car. But if you copy my book, I still have my book. No loss, no theft, just an outdated legal fiction designed to stifle innovation and enrich rent-seeking middlemen. An no, loss of potential sales doesn't count - it's like being able to claim a lottery ticket has real value.

Copyright was never about protecting creators—it’s about locking down ideas, preventing competition, and extracting endless fees. Shakespeare borrowed, tech companies iterate, and science thrives on free exchange. The idea that knowledge should be locked away indefinitely is absurd.

Meta’s mistake wasn’t using the data - it was pretending copyright still matters. AI is exposing the system for what it is: obsolete. The future belongs to those who create without asking permission.

Re: Meta torrented & seeded 81.7 TB dataset containing copyrighted data

#940

Post by palata »

lrvick wrote: post #935
palata wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I publish 100% of code I write as FOSS. This is not public domain. > and so corporations bound by such silly rules have a difficult time using my work in private codebases without paying me for an alternate license. So... you benefit from copyright laws. > to ensure I do not get sued Why would you get sued by releasing your code as public domain?

> This is not public domain. MIT, ISC licenses etc offer minimum anti-liabiliy CYA here and are what I typically use. They are a hack to get around the fact you cannot actually public domain code without legal risk. > So... you benefit from copyright laws. I sometimes exploit laws that I feel should not exist at all specifically to target corporations who abuse them the most. In my preferred world where copyright and…

Right. So you use copyright laws because you need them.

I wish we did not need money, but I don't go around telling people that they should stop using money because in my preferred world, money would not exist and we would all live happily.

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