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.
When I click a link, I am sending a request to a server. I am asking that server to provide me with information. The server’s operator is responsible for determining if and how the server should respond to my request. I don’t control that server. I can’t force it to send me data. I can only ask. If it is configured to accede to my request, it will start sending data, which may or may not be the data I requested. If it doesn’t want to, it can tell me to pound sand. The operator of that server is responsible for the server’s actions. The operator of that server is the uploader.
If Meta actually “just took it”, we wouldn’t be having a discussion about copyright. We would be talking about “Unlawful access to a computer”.
They absolutely did.
Actively pursuing content is perfectly lawful.
You can’t copy something you do not possess. The entity who copied it was the uploader, not the downloader. That uploader created and distributed a copy by sending a bitstream to the receiver. Putting that bitstream on their hard drive is “receiving” not “creating a copy”.
A profit motive is only relevant if we are talking about a fair use exemption. They aren’t raising a fair use defense.
Which they did not do. The uploader may have violated the law, but the downloader has not.
You seem intent on repeatedly misrepresenting the situation so this conversation is clearly going nowhere.
One of us seems intent on repeatedly misrepresenting the situation. I am inclined to leave the determination of that point to the reader.
I am the reader and I have made the determination that you are wrong. Plenty of people get letters for leeching only - just your presence in the swarm is all it takes, and that’s all they check for before sending you a letter - at least in the US.
Rather narcissistic of you to assume you are our sole audience…
So what? You can write me a letter saying you have me on camera receiving a thumb drive that contains an infringing copy of the latest blockbuster release, and I’ll say “So? There’s nothing illegal about having received an infringing copy of the latest blockbuster release. Go talk to the guy who handed it to me.”
Those letters are not formal accusations, and certainly aren’t convictions. There is a reason why they are sending you a letter and not serving a leecher with a copyright lawsuit: They know that that suit would be thrown out when they can’t actually claim a copy was made or distributed.
I don’t know if this is news to you or not, but while you are leeching, you are also seeding.
If that were actually true (it’s not), then explain this:
Either they were leeching (downloading) only, in which case the letters claiming infringement are without merit, or they were seeding (uploading) as well, and thus infringing.
(Technically, that’s a false dichotomy… There’s other possibilities I don’t want to get into right now.)
Both things can be true at the same time - you can get a letter for leeching only AND usually when leeching you are also seeding. I don’t know what your issue is with that statement.
The missing “usually” was the issue. When that was added, your statement became true… And it became functionally irrelevant to the issue at hand: Fecesbook took special care to leech only.
This argument has been around since the Napster era. Nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for downloading, and until the law is rewritten to specifically include “receiving” as an offense, nobody ever will.
Of they ever tried to get that law enacted, it would fail unless “personal use” was exempted.
It seems the readers have spoken.