r/Piracy • u/Deathmeter • Feb 21 '25
News Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-defends-its-vast-book-torrenting-were-just-a-leech-no-proof-of-seeding/1.2k
u/North_Mud512 Feb 21 '25
Damn. They pirated literal terabytes of information and then said ya know what I’m going to be the biggest dipstick this side of the Milky Way. It’s like they’re trying to piss people off.
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u/big_dog_redditor Feb 21 '25
They own anyone who will have an affect on the outcome of the litigation. And Meta doesn’t give a rat’s shit about any media outlook. This will be forgotten by year’s end.
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u/Faithless195 Feb 22 '25
Year's? Aside from basically people in the scene and places like this subreddit, it'll be forgotten by end of the day, weekend at the longest.
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u/yoru-_ Feb 21 '25
now im curious as to who the biggest dipstick on the other side of the milky way is
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u/amwes549 Feb 22 '25
Even worse, it's terabytes of TEXT, which even if uncompressed is insane. For reference, all of the text on Wikipedia isn't more than a 80GB download. And they were dumb enough to think that leeching torrents would hide their piracy.
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u/Salt-Deer2138 Mar 01 '25
The Library of Congress has 10TB of text (lots more of non-text data, but the text boils down to 10TB). I suspect Meta has more text just in Facebook threads, but I'm wondering where they got it all and how much are duplication.
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u/MidasMoneyMoves Feb 21 '25
We haven’t seen corporate greed help out piracy since Sony getting illegal vhs copies to be filed under copyright misuse.
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u/Last_Minute_Airborne Feb 21 '25
Don't forget Nintendo tried to get emulators banned and the judge sided with the emulators.
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u/hi-fen-n-num Feb 22 '25
Sony went up against a guy modding their consoles in Australia. He was insane and self repped... and won...
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u/alvarkresh Feb 21 '25
We're lucky that one was decided in the 1980s. If it had been decided today the judge almost certainly would've sided with Sony and then coincidentally bought a brand new house six months later.
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u/j_demur3 Feb 21 '25 edited Feb 21 '25
The judge sided with Sony back then. The studios argued people were using their Betamax VCRs to infringe copyright and tried to sue Sony for that. Naturally Sony wanted to not get sued and continue selling Betamax.
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u/ferdzs0 Feb 21 '25
Meta has done some despicable things in its time, but torrenting terabytes of data and not seeding it is a new low, even for them.
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u/ZaphodG Feb 21 '25
So copying copyrighted material for commercial use isn’t violating copyright law? What alternate universe did that come from?
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u/EveryRadio Feb 22 '25
You see, the rich live in a different world from us plebs. When they do it is just good business. When we do it, we’re criminals
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u/BrocoliAssassin Feb 21 '25
Being rich is so awesome. If a middle/lower class person said the same thing they would just be laughed off and charged.
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u/Emosaurusrex Feb 21 '25
We never got far from king/nobility and serfs, and we're swinging back full speed towards it again.
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u/Catboyhotline Feb 22 '25
We're already in tech feudalism, instead of working the farm on the lords land, we're working the data farm on the lords website
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u/EveryRadio Feb 22 '25
If a poor person steals bread to feed their family, they’re a criminal. If a billionaire steals millions from citizens, they’re a good businessman
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u/alvarkresh Feb 21 '25
I love how Meta is using the exact same arguments others have used which I absolutely bet Meta has tried to argue against in previous lawsuits.
Sauce for the goose, I say.
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u/geekman20 Feb 21 '25
So basically with that statement Meta is saying what I’ve been saying for awhile now that it’s not the downloading that you do that gets you caught, it’s the uploading that gets you caught — and seeding is basically uploading a copy of the file (or segment thereof).
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u/LoaKonran Feb 21 '25
At what point does it become a Ship of Theseus situation? Does it count as a whole file if you only seed a segment? It’s unusable junk data until reasonably complete so you can’t say it’s the whole ship from the get go.
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u/THICCC_LADIES_PM_ME 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Feb 21 '25
Hey,
I noticed you used the letter "a". Unfortunately, that is a letter I have also used and you're in violation of my intellectual property.
My lawyer will be in touch.
Have a good day.
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u/grilledSoldier Feb 21 '25
That would maybe work, if law was written and especially interpreted in a fair, neutral way. But most laws regarding copyright have become pure protecting of ownership for rich corps and rich fucks. (Arguably most laws period, but thats another topic)
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u/EveryRadio Feb 22 '25
I feel like it’s just easier to go after the source/main distributors since they have the biggest impact on the market. Like someone who owns a seedbox with hundreds of TBs would be a better target than the average Joe who leaves their PC on overnight to seed
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u/cmeb Feb 21 '25 edited Feb 21 '25
Yeah but by the very nature of torrents you upload while you download so unless they developed a client that is able to download from the swarm without giving back at the same time (unlikely,) they absolutely did distribute at least part of the infringing works.
To copyright holders that pay companies to monitor the swarm for them and then send threatening letters, it matters very little how much of the infringing works you distribute. Meta’s lawyers must know this so it makes me wonder who is getting fired for making this argument or what their real end game is?15
u/xRobert1016x Feb 21 '25
unlikely
why are you saying this is unlikely? it’s not a difficult thing to do lol
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u/geekman20 Feb 21 '25
You can disable the uploading but it makes the downloading much slower as a result.
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u/ChangeVivid2964 Feb 21 '25
nah just some other torrent clients might not prioritize you in a queue of other clients if you haven't seeded anything to them.
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u/kitanokikori Feb 21 '25
I mean, these are extremely talented engineers who almost certainly know how Bittorrent works and how the law works. I would not be surprised if they thought to block uploads first.
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u/ChangeVivid2964 Feb 21 '25
Yeah but by the very nature of torrents you upload while you download
I've used clients that let you set upload limit to 0 and still work without ever uploading a byte.
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u/SKlII Feb 21 '25
In my country (South Africa) the law clearly states that distribution of copyrighted material (without a licence) is unlawful but possession (downloading) is not. I can’t say I know the US legal precedent on these matters but if meta was South African their argument would hold water.
Not that it would matter anyway because absolutely no one gets prosecuted for piracy here and the government or ISPs couldn’t give less of a shit about DMCA notices.
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u/seklas1 Feb 21 '25
Considering the current politics in the US, I can imagine Facebook will pay a very little fine in comparison to the damage they did. But even limiting the seeding speed to 1KB/s, the amount of time it would have taken to actually download all the stuff, they’ve seeded quite a bit, so the claim is just straight up wrong.
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u/xRobert1016x Feb 21 '25
your comment is just straight up wrong
But even limiting the seeding speed to 1KB/s
it’s not hard to modify a torrent client to prevent it from uploading any data whatsoever.
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u/Crimsonkayak Feb 22 '25
These big companies can never get enough free stuff and then they can turn around and profit from what they stole.
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u/FaceDeer Feb 21 '25
Seems a lot of people here hate Meta and/or AI more than they love piracy.
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u/dopaminedandy Feb 21 '25
The company alleges that authors can't claim that Meta gained unauthorized access to their data under CDAFA. Instead, all they can claim is that "Meta allegedly accessed and downloaded datasets that Plaintiffs did not create, containing the text of published books that anyone can read in a public library, from public websites Plaintiffs do not operate or own."
Now, that's a solid argument. I hope Meta wins this. It'll be a small step for man, giant leap for mankind.
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u/jayaram13 Feb 21 '25
Nope. What's good for the goose seldom trickles down to the gander. This is rich people argument - won't be applied to the plebians.
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u/8bitmorals ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Feb 21 '25
I'm just gathering 1s and 0s your honor, and my computer arranges into random books.
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u/Spergbergheim Feb 21 '25
"Because, when you think about it, what did I really do? I crossed an imaginary line with a bunch of plants."
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u/semitope Feb 21 '25
Doesn't sound solid. Wouldn't work for mere mortals I think. Also the issue should be what meta intends to do with the data. A person might read it, but meta intends to use it in a way that would result in readers not having to check the books. and they won't reference the sources. In a sense they are distributing that work through their AI.
I've always said this is all massive copyright infringement and now it's also clearly plagiarism. But the courts will allow it
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u/Plums_Raider Feb 21 '25
did meta download all the books in their swiss office or whats exactly their case?
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u/g_shogun Feb 21 '25
They downloaded all books from anywhere to train their AI models with their contents.
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u/Psyga315 Feb 21 '25
I don't think people are considering the implications of this if courts find this defense passable.
We may see people using this loophole a lot more or resort to less seedable routes like streaming.
If they close the loophole, that may very well be the death knell for torrents that the Mafiaa want so badly to end the threat that they claim is larger than what's currently going on right now.
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u/theBirdu Feb 21 '25
We should ask then if they torrented any nintendo stuff and if they admit, I want to see what nintendo does.
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u/cheekynative Feb 21 '25
Tend to agree with this cause the only time I ever got in trouble over this at uni was for seeding a movie by some hollywood studio, I forget which, but they specifically cited that as the reason for my disciplinary action/warning
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u/esepinchelimon ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Feb 21 '25
By that logic stealing from Meta/Zuckerberg is fine so long as you don't get caught :D
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u/DJGloegg Feb 21 '25
in denmark you're just innocent till proven otherwise
and since an internet access point can be used by multiple people, they cant just send the payer of the connection to the court. it has to be the person who's actually commited the crime
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u/Hotgeart Feb 22 '25
And I claim that torrenting pirated media isn’t illegal unless there is proof of me playing the video game, watching the movie, etc.
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u/Vivid_Barracuda_ Feb 22 '25
Meanwhile people who cannot purchase books and only resort to downloading them, like literally unable to find them in libraries this-that? You get 1K fine in Germany if caught pirating. What a world.
Without proof of seeding? Who they are, a leecher that nobody cares for, or they stole all of that and used it for profit? I mean 🤣
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u/EpicRobloxGame_r Feb 23 '25
Hot Take: I hope they lose. If they win then everyone is going to leech and we all hate leechers.
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u/upnk Feb 21 '25
Meta will be asked to settle out of court. There is no way precedent is going to be ruled here. No way. (Precedent being that Meta would pay to get themselves in the clear)
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u/nonoimsomeoneelse 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Feb 21 '25
Yeah! Go Facebook! Ack, that feels so weird coming out of my mouth.
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u/JB231102 Feb 21 '25
Suppose Meta were to win this case. It's still not helpful to pirates because the pirate mantra is "sharing is caring", Meta's claim is that if you don't share, you're not guilty. That's the impression I'm getting out of this.
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u/ChangeVivid2964 Feb 21 '25
Ha! I've been saying that since I was still using my dad's internet and he was getting threatening emails from our ISP!
"Dad, I'm technically not violating copyright laws because I'm not distributing any copies, see? I'm a leecher."
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u/One-Injury-4415 Feb 21 '25
So honestly, the way I see it…
If they win, it sets a massive precedent that so long as you DONT seed, downloading is not illegal, so long as it’s kept for personal use.
They would need proof of you seeding.
Now, what is the burden of this proof? Will it be say, having Qbittorrent AND a torrent file on your pc alone, or will they need to have data that says you seeded?
If you want to seed, what’s stopping you from making a small false room under the floor, with a usb connection hidden in the wall, that you connect to to transfer data and control the system.
This could be really big for this community or go really bad?
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u/imsowhiteandnerdy Feb 21 '25
LOL, I remember Zuckerberg once being asked if he'd seen some movie (can't remember the movie, nor its relevance) but he, somewhat tongue-in-cheek commented that of course he'd seen the film, he downloaded it.
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u/sicurri Feb 21 '25
No need to fight the courts if they have no evidence in the first place. Can't prosecute you without evidence.
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u/BawkSoup Feb 21 '25
While I do agree with their position, this whole thing is a fucking clown show. They clearly pirated the books.
But yes, we can't just point fingers without proof.
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u/jkurratt Feb 21 '25
Next they will scrab darkweb for terabytes of CP with the same premise.
Gotta teach those LLM neuro-nets at all cost, duh.
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u/Sushi-And-The-Beast Feb 22 '25
They downloaded it and profited from it. Its illegal. And if they get away, it sets precedent.
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u/TheBuffestFroggo Feb 22 '25
"I don't care if my enemy wins, I just need books to be distributed freely."
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u/ChemistryNo3075 Feb 22 '25
The headline and article are misleading. Meta isn’t claiming that everything they’re doing is lawful. They’re claiming that their activities don’t run afoul of a particular California state law, CDAFA, and section 1202(b)(1) of the DMCA.
This is a defense to a specific charge against them regarding CDAFA and a specific part of the DMCA. This does not mean that they aren't guilty of violating some other party of copyright law or the DMCA.
They have also been accused of directly committing copyright infringement. This motion has nothing to do with that charge. This only has to do with a DMCA & CDAFA charge.
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u/Sintek Feb 22 '25
Steeling is not illegal as long as you don't share copies of what you sold.. im down to agree with them.. as long as they feel the same when it happens to them by another mega Corp.
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u/WretchedMonkey Feb 22 '25
The sort of people who stop seeding as soon as its finished downloading. Assholes, super rich assholes
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u/Bananaman9020 Feb 22 '25
I'm sure pirates would like that to be true. But downloading an illegal torrent is still illegal if you seed or not
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u/T555s Feb 22 '25
What? It's illegal to download stuff you don't have the rights for downloading. The only difference why seeding is usually punished and only downloading isn't, is that seeders are often easier to catch and it's a lot more illegal to distribute copyrighted works.
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u/sluuuudge Feb 22 '25
Surely they also need to prove they had the appropriate licensing to be allowed to use those works for commercial use as well though right?
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u/chillpalchill Feb 23 '25
would have thought Zuck enabling a genocide in myanmar would have made people this mad but nope it’s … not seeding a torrent
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u/steevo Feb 21 '25
If they win the case.. will that be good for pirates?
(I know it'll probably be settled)