Ex-Meta Researcher Torrented Pirated Books, Deleted It 'Due to Litigation'
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
https://www.courthousenews.com/coders-lose-appeal-in-copyrig...
To avoid open source copyright the court is treating AI models as people for the purpose of copyright (after all, only people can generate copyrighted works according to the law).
Who wants to take bets on whether the court is actually willing to grant personhood to AI models? Because that would, of course, mean that all these companies are holding them hostage. That would mean any fine tuning they do violates the 1st amendment by preventing their speech. And so on and so forth. I mean, it's SO absurd and literally any excuse judges can find to let the billionaires avoid liability is grabbed with both hands.
I don't understand how OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft ... get to do this. Because let's face facts, if I can just openly violate hundreds of millions of copyrights like OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, I have NO trouble coming up with a billion-dollar business idea. Let's start with making the Netflix people actually want ...
Hell, since courts are letting Microsoft violate copyright of programmers surely there cannot be any legal problem with illegally selling MS Office, right? I mean just how absurd would any other judgement be?
Courts: "pay the billionaire, peasant".
They wrote the law to serve them. They will modify the law to serve them. It is funny how some people are more equal than others.
In practice, I bet it matters a lot.
Just like copyright technically being perfectly fine downloading of copyrighted files (only uploading violates copyright) never mattered before when it was small fry downloaders vs billionaire corporations. With absurd excuses like that copying in the buffers of internet routers and network cards and transmission equipment was a crime. Of course it wasn't a crime for the other billionaire corporations (the telcos), who did the vast majority of such copying. It was a crime for the poor 9 year old in their basement, because they "organized the crime", and only for them. And they're still doing that by the way!
And now when it is megacorps totally ignoring and illegally exploiting the copyright of small individuals ... suddenly using other people's copyright without license, without compensation is ... not a crime! In fact the US is threatening European countries, because some European courts want compensation for their copyright. By which we mean European media conglomerates, of course, not small authors.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251111-german-court-...
I guess when you said that courts aren't consistent that was both far more true than you imagined, with the outlandish excuses courts make, and yet far less true at the same time. The consistency is simple: courts always find a way to let billionaire corporations get away with whatever they want.
There's just a fight left between courts, not over justice, of course, but over which billionaire corporations get the money.
My question is: if large scale crimes are allowed, it's very easy to come up with billion dollar company ideas. The Netflix everyone wants, for example. But how do I get courts to judge me like they judge Sam Altman and Dario Amodei? They committed hundreds of millions of copyright violations, and instead of hundreds of jail time and extreme fines, they just got away with it! How do I do that?
If the evidence was very damning, and it’s not there anymore, the judge/jury can’t really properly make a determination about it if it’s gone
I’m not a lawyer, so someone with more legal experience could pitch in, but that’s my impression from seeing these big corporate cases on the news, as well as some personal experience in smaller civil cases in court
To say it more plainly, if AI would have wound up being a helper instead of a “job stealer” I think people would have thought of it more like a google ranking than an enemy.
(By the way I didn't down vote you)
> the court ruled last year that training Llama on books was fair use
https://torrentfreak.com/meta-pirated-adult-film-downloads-w...
To cut a long story short, I'd personally say pirating is bad if you have the money to buy it and you don't just pirate to try first, whereas if you don't have the money it's okay (permissible) and doesn't take away any sales.
Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where book piracy is rampant than one where many people just don’t read anything?
For the majority of literature, buying the book won't contribute to the author because the author is deceased. For that minority where the author is alive, many people won't see a need to make an exception to their policy of not paying. Indeed, your second paragraph gets to the heart of it.
Totally agree. Also, we're applying western ethics to the third world.
They don't share our values on IP, I assure you.
400 euro for a book is hardly ethical. If you must charge that much for a copy you shouldn't have written it because you simply couldn't afford ro write it. Passin your poor business judgement onto others is not ethical.
The academic book publishing industry is very predatory, which is why so many authors nowadays support open textbook initiatives.
What I can say with certainty is that in many poorer countries scientific research would be impossible without piracy. Universities just don't have the budgets and libraries are often abysmal (unless you work in the capital and it has a prestige state library).
Only I got the impression the Code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules
People don't have a right or need of reading The Bible, but many think it's good if people do. It's to the degree that sometimes they're printed at cost and distributed for free. The point is, there can be benefits for humans who can't purchase media to be able to experience it anyway. Now, whether that extends to copyright infringement and piracy being some noble act is a separate bridge to negotiate.
Does context matter, like if it’s OJ Simpson vs a surgeon?
I personally am in the camp that capitalism just isn't a very good model for getting artists paid, but that isn't really the same thing as believing all creative work should be up for grabs by any arbitrary business and/or political campaign for any arbitrary purpose.
You know how talking about wage gaps doesn't necessarily mean that you're a full-blown Communist, or that you're literally saying everyone should be universally paid the same? It's sort of like that.
The fact that he was seeding a torrent is the thing that least matters here. They weren't making billions from seeding a torrent, they were spending bandwidth to do it. The fact that they downloaded a bunch of copyrighted works illegally in order to create their business is.
Copyright violation is civil, but conspiracy is criminal, and destruction of evidence is criminal. These AI companies are criminal. Everything associated with these enterprises should be seized and either run by the state, or run on behalf of the civilly injured parties.
edit: keep downvoting it, but I will keep posting it. This behavior is just getting by through nerve, bribery, and the fact that the US economy depends on it being successful. It is unambiguously criminal, and anybody aware of it who participated (everybody) is implicated. It is so bizarre how you people think you're better than people smuggling counterfeit designer bags or selling bootleg DVDs. You're worse.
If I could, I would.
And it would be incredibly immoral to demand excessive profits for your downloadable if distribution was free.
The music industry's monopoly is luckily being eroded these days. Now they can try to work on market terms.
Valid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone was hit by a train, then he is dead.
Invalid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone is found death, thus he must have been hit by a train.
For those similarly unaware, I guess in 2017 Myanmar's military launched a campaign of mass killings, sexual violence, and destruction of Rohingya, and 700 thousand fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN, and amnesty international, but a 150B USD lawsuit against meta by the survivors was thrown out because section 230 of the CDA makes meta immune, and the dismissal was upheld by the 9th circuit. The court did not determine that meta's behavior was harmless, just that the case was barred. At issue was poor moderation, and algorithmic amplification of genocidal messaging on the platform. Apparently facebook was repeatedly warned for years that they were contributing to enthnic hatred and violence by amplifying false narratives and took no action.
> A court has already called the training fair use
isn't dispositive. Another court, a less stupid or corrupt one, could decide differently. SCOTUS could decide differently.
But using illegally obtained material as the foundation of your business and destroying it for fear of litigation, both of those things are clearly criminal.