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.
Billy downloading a copy of Game of Thrones because he's too poor to afford one, is radically different than super billionaires who just don't want to pay for a license.
Meta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with impunity.
I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
Politics will make more sense once you realize that no one is really trying to have consistent principles.
People (and corporations/politicians/neighborhood groups/unions/countries/whatever) are by and large for whatever they think will benefit them, and against what they think will hurt them.
> 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.
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.
I always wondered - were the huge fines applicable because they shared the files, or because they downloaded the files? The two things were always conflated and poorly understood in media reports at the time.
Seems like it would be impossible to prove substantial damages from one individual downloading an album, because you have only lost the potential single sale. No different than a kid stealing a single CD in terms of lost revenue.
Sharing the song on Kazaa or Limewire or Napster however means that they could have potentially illicitly provided the album to thousands or even millions of potential customers, more akin to stealing a truckload or even a whole store full of cds. In that case, it does seem plausible that you could prove (or at least convince a judge/jury) significant damages more in line with the exorbitant punitive sums.
Since they “caught” you by setting up fake peers that recorded your ip when sharing, I always assumed it was the latter that actually got people in trouble.
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.
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.
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.
Everyone's pointing out the obvious hypocrisy here, but I think it's more interesting if Meta succeeds in making this argument: can I just steal any book I want and share it with anyone? Does the same apply to music, movies, TV shows, and video games?
I wonder if big companies will now start paying shadow libraries like annas archive for direct access, to minimize publicity of how training data was acquired, like Nvidia supposedly did?
Few tens of thousands of dollars is a rounding error in Meta's bottom line but if this case goes anything like the Anthropic one, I would see it likely.
Of course it wouldn't prevent authors from asking LLM's for content from their books and suing Meta again but I imagine authors would be less likely to with less evidence.
> the company argued that uploading pirated books to other BitTorrent users during the torrent download process also qualifies as fair use ... as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works.
as someone that's disabled upload when I'm downloading copyrighted material via bittorrent for decades, it is absolutely a choice
This is a desperate defense. They're making it because they have to try something, but I doubt the court will buy it. This is a class action brought by authors, so while Meta has deep pockets, I expect this will actually settle, with named plaintiffs getting payouts authors will find big and the rest of the class getting scraps. If a major media company were the plaintiff, I'd expect this to get very expensive quickly.
I'm a little surprised Meta is even bothering to fight this. I mean the argument looks farcical to me be IANAL and weirder things have happened. If they do end up losing they'll have to pay however many millions to their law firms plus whatever the in or out of court settlement end ups being.
And you just know that whatever they end up paying will be so tiny that it will just be seen as the cost of doing business. From a corporation's perspective it's always better to break the law and maybe pay a tiny fine (if you get caught and can't argue your way out of it) than it is to follow the law and miss out on profit/revenue/strategic advantage etc.
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[ 8.1 ms ] story [ 93.3 ms ] threadMeta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with impunity.
I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
People (and corporations/politicians/neighborhood groups/unions/countries/whatever) are by and large for whatever they think will benefit them, and against what they think will hurt them.
What an argument to make in court. It can be proved false in minutes by the plaintiffs.
"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...
human nature will not change. the best change folks here could make is accepting that.
Seriously? They couldn't be bothered setting upload speed to 0?
Seems like it would be impossible to prove substantial damages from one individual downloading an album, because you have only lost the potential single sale. No different than a kid stealing a single CD in terms of lost revenue.
Sharing the song on Kazaa or Limewire or Napster however means that they could have potentially illicitly provided the album to thousands or even millions of potential customers, more akin to stealing a truckload or even a whole store full of cds. In that case, it does seem plausible that you could prove (or at least convince a judge/jury) significant damages more in line with the exorbitant punitive sums.
Since they “caught” you by setting up fake peers that recorded your ip when sharing, I always assumed it was the latter that actually got people in trouble.
Only data is a moat, not algos, not compute.
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.
how much you have to bribe a judge to even begin to consider saying that in a defense?
Few tens of thousands of dollars is a rounding error in Meta's bottom line but if this case goes anything like the Anthropic one, I would see it likely.
Of course it wouldn't prevent authors from asking LLM's for content from their books and suing Meta again but I imagine authors would be less likely to with less evidence.
as someone that's disabled upload when I'm downloading copyrighted material via bittorrent for decades, it is absolutely a choice
so there's that
And you just know that whatever they end up paying will be so tiny that it will just be seen as the cost of doing business. From a corporation's perspective it's always better to break the law and maybe pay a tiny fine (if you get caught and can't argue your way out of it) than it is to follow the law and miss out on profit/revenue/strategic advantage etc.