Meta also allegedly modified settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,"
Big tech taking without giving back to the community once again.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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I think this is still going to be a net benefit to us, though. Meta may not have contributed much bandwidth, which is leeching in the short term, but in the long term they're now forced to contribute something much more important; lawyer power. Meta is going to have to fight to defend piracy.
Don't count on it.
You think Meta will just roll over and hand out whatever penalties the publishers demand of them?
Meta isn't going to be defending us. It's going to be defending itself. Because it is now one of us.
Secret out-of-court settlement is an option.
Also known as "bribing your way out of the law"
They'll compare the amount the publishers are demanding against how much it would cost them to lawyer up to prevent that and any future payments. Meta's heavyweight enough that they can use "lobbying their way out of the law, aka changing the law so that they're not violating it at all" as a strategy.
If they do simply pay the publishers off, oh well, at least it's just the status quo. But I don't see a reason to assume that's the way this is going to go. Other countries have already carved explicit exceptions to copyright for AI training, Meta would be in favor of that kind of thing.
The amount meta will pay is pocket change to them.
You are very naive
You don't think the publishing industry would like to sue Meta over this?
Yeah they'll lawyer up, but only for themselves. They have no reason to to do anything that benefits the rest of us.
Maybe the torrenting community could see some legal benefits, but only if incentives align. Which they very well may not because Meta is not one of us and their interests don't really align with anyone else's.
I'm not expecting them to do anything specifically to benefit the rest of us. But let them fight. If nothing else, it costs them money.
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Motherfuckers are actually arguing that seeding a torrent isn't "distributing" unless they can show an instance of someone downloading a book from their IP... If that flies they better overturn every fucking piracy conviction ever.
For real.
Just another day in the system only oppressing the poor.
Aaron Swartz does it for educational journals and gets the hammer brought down on him. Zuck n' Co do it and get government funding.
Boo.
Well Aaron didn't deepthroat a mushroom-shaped presidential cock to ask for pardon
Meta also allegedly modified settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, said in a deposition.
Douchebags.
Lol why do they have to do things in the most cartoonishly evil way?
Seeding is worse legally.
So, the minimally illegal way to stiff the people sharing with them. They continue to innovate in the age-old field of bastardry.
Depends on country. In Russia only being first seeder is illegal. New peers fall under "technical limitations" clause.
Wow Russia has more sensible Copyright legislation than most of Europe?
Rare Russian W
After doing terrible crap for so long without much, if any, punishment leads to brazen and absurd tactics...
Soon I expect something akin to them running their own marketplace scams or similar fraud just because it's so profitable vs expense/penalty.
As you say, it's like a bad caricature of the stereotype.
I think it's because in the US downloading and owning is by far not as risky as sharing is.
They get out of liability like that.
won't somebody please think of the shareholders?
Yeah, i do. load gun
If we (people in general) do it, we're being filthy thieves and the reason why everything is bad. But when it's a megacorpo, it's suddenly a-OK?
Screw this shit. Information should be like the air, free for everyone. Not free for the GAFAM chaste and paid for us untouchables.
The sad thing is that corporations have more rights (quantitatively) than humans.
- Can offset tax liability through complex structures
- While they cannot vote, they can effectively hide their identity behind Super PACs
- Any criminal liability results in fines, never jail time for anyone in charge
- in fact, all corporate executives benefit from liability shield, so long as their actions can be tied back to benefit the company in any way
- Can own just about anything a human can own, with the added benefit that they belong to the company. Digital rights (e.g. books, movies, etc.) legally belong to an entity that cannot die.
Any criminal liability results in fines, never jail time for anyone in charge
That just applies to American based companies like Purdue Pharma or GM, if you're working for a foreign companie like VW you're absolutely going to jail and get a way bigger fine
Zuckerberg’s corporate piracy era is peak hypocrisy. Stealth mode torrenting on company hardware while scrubbing traces to avoid accountability? Classic. Meta’s obsession with “data” apparently includes swashbuckling for copyrighted material—just don’t let the plebs do it.
”Smallest amount of seeding possible”? Pathetic. Even leechers have standards. But why bother with ethics when you’re a billionaire playing digital privateer? The courts will shrug, the bourgeois judges will yawn, and Zuck’ll sail into the sunset with his ill-gotten datasets.
Yo bro, maybe invest in a VPN next time. Or just buy a legislature.
I guess that's more than three strikes. Why didn't their ISP disconnect them for abuse?
What gets me the most about these sorts of stories is how they're specifically doing this for profit and are not only getting away with it, they're partnering with other megacorps and are collectively being propped up by institutions and governments that jail individuals that wouldn't even register on the chart for lost profits.
Doing it for personal use, without profit or gain, is supposedly illegal. Doing it for profit certainly appears to be legal.
This is so fucking funny
Previous discussion https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/21649585
huh. I pasted the link in the searchbar and nothing came up. Still better than reddit's search.
Because you're linking arstechnica and the other post is linking torrentfreak
Oh.
As @Jones@lemmy.dbzer0.com points out, it's a different article, but the same subject matter. It's not a duplicate post.
Isnt thatvway to much volume for text? I would imagine every book ever written to be judt a few tb. But I also don't know much about the issue
They downloaded the torrents from Annas Archive, which are standing at ~500TB currently. Keep in mind that you're dealing not only with text, but also with books scanned as images, books with lots of illustrations, scientific articles with illustrations and also comic books.
Those books couldn't all be in only plaintext. I'm certain that many of them are also scans.
I see. Thanks
So they're one of us? Welcome to the club, outlaws!
Good news is that since feds go after individuals sometimes for petty crimes of piracy, they are surely going to dig in very deep to this corporate piracy with massive crippling fines that will set examples for other companies thinking of doing the same. Right?
what did they use? µTorrent?
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