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. The legal maximum was $150,000 per infringement: when a staffer leaked an early cut of the Wolverine movie, the studio could only sue for that much.
Remember that Metallica band members played an active driving role in those lawsuits against their own underage fans. It wasn't just the RIAA / record company organizations behaving cruelly, it was Metallica themselves. Fuck Metallica.
Killed Napster and forced them overseas to create one of the most toxic streaming platforms for music the world has ever seen. Spotify. Sean Parker used to be cool…
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?
People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use.
If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
Of course not. It is just yet another example of a 7-8 figure expensive attorney and their billions dollar corporation wasting everyone' time, tax payers dollars, and demonstrating that the law applies to us and not them. I expect them to just stop showing up in court in time. What can the court do when these people own the people that write the laws?
There really should be some type of panel for frivolous legal arguments. If they are used by corporation all of the lawyers, leadership and shareholders involved are thrown into jail. Could even get jury on this and have them give majority opinion.
Children are afforded more lenience in sane societies (before the law and in social contexts) because they are still developing and not as well socialized/experienced as adults. I assume most pro-piracy people support personal use and not commercial use of content.
By no means were they suing for downloading alone. They were suing for sharing while downloading, and seeding after, and as "early seeders" they helped thousands obtain copies.
Right or wrong, it was absolutely not about just downloading. It wasn't about taking one copy.
In their eyes, it was about copyng then handing out tens of thousands of copies for free.
Again, not saying it was right. However, please don't provide an abridged account, slanted to create a conclusion in the reader.
Parent post brought in the comparison to stealing a CD, but torrenting isn't just taking a copy, it's distributing to others, hence the absurd damages claims
> Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works.
What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in minutes by the plaintiffs.
I can't believe that no one has ever tried that one before... So do we now roll back all of the previous copyright cases where downloading music with bittorrent has been prosecuted?
> 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.
Meta has so much money, even if they end up paying they’ll probably barely be affected. In that case, actually GP is wrong and it’s the same law, but still different outcomes (like “neither poor nor rich may sleep on public benches…”)
While you are correct that a decision on this specific case is still pending, your parent comment does have a point that breaking the law while rich and while poor have very different outcomes. Also, no way they’re going to roll back all previous cases. So the joke works now, no need to wait.
From my understanding, Meta's use of the pirated book was accepted as fair use and the plaintiffs admitted to no harm. In the case of pirated music and films, neither of those points are made. Copyright holders assume people who pirate would have bought the content, usually even assuming that one download is one lost sale. And I am not aware of a single case where watching or listening to pirated content was accepted as fair use.
It is interesting to follow how this plays out for Meta and how that will impact future cases.
One of the underlying issues is that punitive damages seem to be the norm in US courts.
In the UK you can only claim for the actual damages incurred, which at most will be the profit you would've made on the sale of that book. Which makes most claims for private infringement uneconomical for corporations.
We consumers just need BiTorrent clients that come with LLM training code incorporated, as that transforms the downloads into fair use (according to the very expensive Meta legal team).
When I pull the trigger and the bullet kills an another person, it is just how technology works. Why would I be responsible if I choose to use it or not?
Seeding is opt-out, not opt-in… but it is usually a default that has to actively manually overridden. Most users never touch those settings. The average pirate downloading a torrent is seeding whether they know it or not.
The protocol absolutely does not enforce seeding. A client can lie to the tracker, cap upload to 0k. BitTorrent has no mechanism to compel one to share. Leeching a file, downloading and sharing no forward packets is possible. While the "social contract" of seeding is entirely a norm enforced by private trackers and community shame. It is not the protocol itself.
you're uploading before seeding, and i'm willing to bet Meta weren't seeding but, as they correctly stated in that regard, they're sharing even when they try their best not to because of the way the protocol works as zero-upload is typically impractical for any significant size files
some trackers will additionally penalise you for not sharing file parts, but this depends on the tracker
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.
People would care if Meta is allowed to torrent from Nintendo and they aren’t, because they’d care if Meta bought licenses from Nintendo and open models couldn’t get those licenses.
Big companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.
It's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible. For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to, with many justifications layered on top.
LLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales.
The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t.
Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
Just need to get around to understand that on many subjects big companies are not uniform block... They all have their own goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers and state.
I have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country — and soon in Italy as well — all storage media sales include a small levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating content I don't feel like paying for.
By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.
The way it works in France is that money goes to a company that collects it on behalf of all copyright holders. Its website does not offer any documentation as to how copyright holders can claim their share.
That sounds pretty shady. There's also the problem that most media generated globally is not French. Do they pretend to distribute the spoils globally?
Why is it fair that you get to be subsidized by everyone who does pay? Imagine a world where everyone had the same attitude as you and did not pay for any media. Pirates get to pirate only because most people don’t. So why are you so special?
You mean the fee I pay for piracy doesn't cover the cost of the piracy? Maybe they should remove the fee, so they can prosecute me for piracy, without me arguing it's covered by the fee.
Spain too; but legally sharing books and media without profit it's allowed.
Still, they should pay me in order to listen all the mediocre music and crappy 'best sellers' they often produce. More than often I'd just buy some indie book from a small publisher which has much better stories than the whole mainstream.
Heck; every time I try to read some Spaniard technotriller it justs sucks because they focus on crappy emotions everytime focusing near nil on scientific facts or tecnological backgrounds. If any, of course. Hello, Gómez Jurado with the Red Queen sagas.
Meanwhile, people writting half-fantasy/half-geopolitics fiction such as Fabián Plaza with its book depicting a paranormal Cold War were the Spanish Francoist regime never ended and the USSR took the whole Germany for itself, you will get more enganing books. The hippies in Woodstock summoned magical Lovecraftian monsters and the CIA/KGB among paranormal agencies try to fight these. The even mention Orgonic fields and
tons of American floklore on paranormal experiments from the CIA/USSR.
We all know it's actual bullshit but it's documented bullshit.
Modulo the magic, the author applied as a diplomat for Spain a few decades ago so he knows
how to create a thriller by predicting how the characters will behave psichologically much better than the Gómez Jurado's books creating
an Aspie Mary Sue character getting aspull skills.
The mainstream alternative? Some Humanities woman as the maincharacter alleging bullshit 'prime number finding' in order to boost IQ as a goverment experiment against another high IQ psychopath.
The media in Spain sucks because Spain arrived late to a scientifical mindset socially -thanks, Francoist /s- and male/female Humanities people dominate both the press and the literary world. Instead of Gideon Crew like books (which are a bit bullshit, but with a bit of realism too) like sagas, we get drama bound thrillers with no actual research; if any, hidden Apple product placements.
You would say, heck, Dan Brown it's the same and Tom Clancy's novels are a joke against the ones from actually versed people throwing stereotypes away because they did a good research (the US is not just a bigger Texas and Spain is not a big Andalusia), but that's not the issue here.
The matter it's that most of the readers in Spain are women, and somehow they are afraid of reading a thriller with less drama and emotions and more action (action women do exist you know) and resolution and developing actual skills o the spot instead of aspulling them.
Just look at text adventures. Anchorhead it's just a modern Lovecraft retelling but it has a female protagonist and you as the player should drive her solving all the ingame puzzles. If something like that existed in 1998, the Spaniard should be able to write tons of interesting media (books and series)
where crimes were not solved with people
just happening to be in the right spot at some specific time. That's a cheap writting and an obvious neglection to the reader allowing him to join the proofs together.
I wonder how many of the torrent site whales are backed by big tech or industry. Some people share like petabytes of data on multiple sites. It's an insane amount.
On the other hand, it'd be absolutely hilarious if they succeeded with this argument. VPN vendors would not find that as hilarious I bet.
And on another the hypocrisy is mindboggling. I guess you can't blame the lawyers from going after every angle, but this is quite creative.
But really I do just want to find out if money continues to buy justice.
I sincerely hope Facebook loses and is found to have knowingly infringed on copyright of all the books in the lawsuit. At $150K per violation, I'd almost feel bad for the poor shareholders. Zuck would probably take full responsibility and fire tens of thousand of workers.
Everything bends to power, by definition. And laws can’t be impartial because they’re not based in hard science: terms like “murder”, “assault”, “theft”, etc. are ambiguous thus up to interpretation (e.g. is a scam theft? If so, what defines a scam? If “lying”, what’s the difference from “misleading”, or if there’s no difference, what defines “misleading”…)
My best idea for a solution is better education, so people don’t make bad laws then badly enforce them.
This is the real reason the ultra rich are buying media companies. They expect the existing copyright laws to prevail in court and to either make significant revenue licensing IP for training or to take large stakes in AI companies in return for the IP.
ICE played an important role in those cases with long supply chains. Seems quaint now, but I think we should acknowledge any criminal who does not participate in a child abuse ring. Those counterfeit DVDs were not illegal content, just illegal storefronts.
If today’s ICE or FBI uncovered such a ring, who would they call first?
Copyrights and patents are tools of communists and need to be banned and overturned in the age of AI.
Would save countless lives and improve billions more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb_jLAisPzk
If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.
It's funny, because now in the age of AI, many of the people that support piracy are now trying to stop AI companies from doing the same thing.
> I should trot out all of the justifications here.
I'll start: personal use instead of profit. Certainly a difference, not convinced justification is required or even advisable.
^ sociopathic legalists really do think this way.
By no means were they suing for downloading alone. They were suing for sharing while downloading, and seeding after, and as "early seeders" they helped thousands obtain copies.
Right or wrong, it was absolutely not about just downloading. It wasn't about taking one copy.
In their eyes, it was about copyng then handing out tens of thousands of copies for free.
Again, not saying it was right. However, please don't provide an abridged account, slanted to create a conclusion in the reader.
What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in minutes by the plaintiffs.
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.
It is interesting to follow how this plays out for Meta and how that will impact future cases.
In the UK you can only claim for the actual damages incurred, which at most will be the profit you would've made on the sale of that book. Which makes most claims for private infringement uneconomical for corporations.
Seeding is opt-out, not opt-in… but it is usually a default that has to actively manually overridden. Most users never touch those settings. The average pirate downloading a torrent is seeding whether they know it or not.
The protocol absolutely does not enforce seeding. A client can lie to the tracker, cap upload to 0k. BitTorrent has no mechanism to compel one to share. Leeching a file, downloading and sharing no forward packets is possible. While the "social contract" of seeding is entirely a norm enforced by private trackers and community shame. It is not the protocol itself.
you're uploading before seeding, and i'm willing to bet Meta weren't seeding but, as they correctly stated in that regard, they're sharing even when they try their best not to because of the way the protocol works as zero-upload is typically impractical for any significant size files
some trackers will additionally penalise you for not sharing file parts, but this depends on the tracker
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.
The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t.
Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.
By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.
Still, they should pay me in order to listen all the mediocre music and crappy 'best sellers' they often produce. More than often I'd just buy some indie book from a small publisher which has much better stories than the whole mainstream.
Heck; every time I try to read some Spaniard technotriller it justs sucks because they focus on crappy emotions everytime focusing near nil on scientific facts or tecnological backgrounds. If any, of course. Hello, Gómez Jurado with the Red Queen sagas.
Meanwhile, people writting half-fantasy/half-geopolitics fiction such as Fabián Plaza with its book depicting a paranormal Cold War were the Spanish Francoist regime never ended and the USSR took the whole Germany for itself, you will get more enganing books. The hippies in Woodstock summoned magical Lovecraftian monsters and the CIA/KGB among paranormal agencies try to fight these. The even mention Orgonic fields and tons of American floklore on paranormal experiments from the CIA/USSR. We all know it's actual bullshit but it's documented bullshit. Modulo the magic, the author applied as a diplomat for Spain a few decades ago so he knows how to create a thriller by predicting how the characters will behave psichologically much better than the Gómez Jurado's books creating an Aspie Mary Sue character getting aspull skills.
The mainstream alternative? Some Humanities woman as the maincharacter alleging bullshit 'prime number finding' in order to boost IQ as a goverment experiment against another high IQ psychopath.
The media in Spain sucks because Spain arrived late to a scientifical mindset socially -thanks, Francoist /s- and male/female Humanities people dominate both the press and the literary world. Instead of Gideon Crew like books (which are a bit bullshit, but with a bit of realism too) like sagas, we get drama bound thrillers with no actual research; if any, hidden Apple product placements.
You would say, heck, Dan Brown it's the same and Tom Clancy's novels are a joke against the ones from actually versed people throwing stereotypes away because they did a good research (the US is not just a bigger Texas and Spain is not a big Andalusia), but that's not the issue here.
The matter it's that most of the readers in Spain are women, and somehow they are afraid of reading a thriller with less drama and emotions and more action (action women do exist you know) and resolution and developing actual skills o the spot instead of aspulling them.
Just look at text adventures. Anchorhead it's just a modern Lovecraft retelling but it has a female protagonist and you as the player should drive her solving all the ingame puzzles. If something like that existed in 1998, the Spaniard should be able to write tons of interesting media (books and series) where crimes were not solved with people just happening to be in the right spot at some specific time. That's a cheap writting and an obvious neglection to the reader allowing him to join the proofs together.
Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are different for everybody and that's what activists are worried about :)
On the other hand, it'd be absolutely hilarious if they succeeded with this argument. VPN vendors would not find that as hilarious I bet.
And on another the hypocrisy is mindboggling. I guess you can't blame the lawyers from going after every angle, but this is quite creative.
But really I do just want to find out if money continues to buy justice.
I sincerely hope Facebook loses and is found to have knowingly infringed on copyright of all the books in the lawsuit. At $150K per violation, I'd almost feel bad for the poor shareholders. Zuck would probably take full responsibility and fire tens of thousand of workers.
The way Disney &co coopted law to pack their coffers is a travesty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
My best idea for a solution is better education, so people don’t make bad laws then badly enforce them.
Only data is a moat, not algos, not compute.
Seriously? They couldn't be bothered setting upload speed to 0?
"Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B US to settle author class action over AI training"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/anthropic-ai-copyright-sett...
Why would you sort of doxx yourself and how is it relevant to the thread?
Are you a bot?