In an AI lawsuit targeting Meta, authors claim the company used BitTorrent to share books from shadow library LibGen with third parties.
In one of the AI lawsuits faced by Meta, the company stands accused of distributing pirated books. The authors who filed the class-action lawsuit allege that Meta shared books from the shadow library LibGen with third parties via BitTorrent. Meta, however, says that it took precautions to prevent 'seeding' content. In addition, the company clarifies that there is nothing 'independently illegal' about torrenting.
I was actually hoping to see that as a defense. The principal thing that copy enforcement corps always cite is 'we downloaded a copy from their IP, thus they made a copy and distributed the work'.
If this works as a defense here then in effect they make direct download portals legal for the users at least.
You’re forgetting that they’re a rich corporation, and you’re not. They’ll get away with the defense, but even if it set a precedent, copyright groups can still sue you until you’re broke to make an example of you, even if you didn’t legally do anything “wrong”.
As long as you can sue someone for any reason without repercussions, then it’s always going to be the people with more money who come out on top. Always. Wining a lawsuit doesn’t mean you’re not still financially destroyed and driven into poverty for the rest of your life.
Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful.
Let me see:
At least 100 million of books pirated
infringements were willful
So, a 15k billion dollars fine seem appropriate to give to Meta AND criminal sentences to all the c suite.
Or: apply the same rules to regular people and allow unlimited copyright violations without consequences
There is no legal prohibition against asking someone for a copy of a work, nor is there a prohibition against receiving a copy, even if that copy was illegally produced and/or illegally distributed.
They didn't download them illegally, nor did they "use" them illegally. If you want to say they did something illegal, you have to argue that they were somehow in collusion with the uploader, which would make them uploaders themselves.
Receiving a copy of a copyrighted work (from anywhere) and using it for commercial purposes when the license doesn't cover that usage (or simply doesn't exist) is, in fact, illegal. This is why Anthropic was sued last year.
There is no legal prohibition against asking someone for a copy of a work
No one asked for a copy, they just took it.
nor is there a prohibition against receiving a copy, even if that copy was illegally produced and/or illegally distributed.
They didn't "receive" a copy. No one dropped a hard drive off on their doorstep. They actively pursued the content and made a copy without permission for profit.
If you want to say they did something illegal, you have to argue that they were somehow in collusion with the uploader
Making a copy of copyrighted content without permission is illegal.
Haha, what a bunch of scumbags. They can"t even seed back when pirating.
We really need to round up all of Meta's executive directors, seize all their assets (every last cent) and require them to do mandatory two decade live-in community service as junior custodians (the lowest level custodians in the whole institution) at hospice centres or infectious disease hospitals. De-mining work and resource extraction junior support would also be good options for community service work.
Not for this of course, more like knowingly enabling genocide in Myanmar and so on.
I know it’s their legal defense and all, but it’s not like any of us thought they would seed in the first place. Their business is only about taking for profit, not sharing or giving anything back.
I don't think anyone expected them to seed on purpose but its not inconceivable that they'd accidentally let some seeding through, or not consider it in the first place.