In order to help train its AI models, Meta (and others) have been using pirated versions of copyrighted books, without the consent of authors or publishers. The company behind Facebook and Instagram faces an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, and one in which it has already scored a major (and surprising) victory: The Californian court concluded last year that using pirated books to train its Llama LLM did qualify as fair use.
You’d think this case would be as open-and-shut as it gets, but never underestimate an army of high-priced lawyers. Meta has now come up with the striking defense that uploading pirated books to strangers via BitTorrent qualifies as fair use. It further goes on to claim that this is double good, because it has helped establish the United States’ leading position in the AI field.
Meta further argues that every author involved in the class-action has admitted they are unaware of any Llama LLM output that directly reproduces content from their books. It says if the authors cannot provide evidence of such infringing output or damage to sales, then this lawsuit is not about protecting their books but arguing against the training process itself (which the court has ruled is fair use).
Judge Vince Chhabria now has to decide whether to allow this defense, a decision that will have consequences for not only this but many other AI lawsuits involving things like shadow libraries. The BitTorrent uploading and distribution claims are the last element of this particular lawsuit, which has been rumbling on for three years now, to be settled.
None of that matter if, right now, you are cheering on copyright laws. There’s no reason to stop promoting change now.
You repeating that I am cheering them on does not make it true. Get some reading comprehension. I repeat, you’re being obtuse.
Are you hoping Meta or the copyright industry wins this case? Maybe I misunderstood.
I mean a loss for meta is technically a win for everyone most of the time but I’d expect more pragmatism in this case.
There isn’t a good winner in this, both outcomes suck, but one slightly less than the other. If Meta wins, it will not trickle down to regular people’s usage of bittorrent being considered fair use, I can guarantee you that. If the copyright holders win, the outcomes still sucks, but at least large corporations will be held to the same standards as regular people instead of having another exception carved out for corporations to be able to do what is considered a crime for regular people.
There isn’t a movement to change copyright like their used to be. There isn’t a viable North American Pirate Party. Those days are gone, and have been for a long time. I remember the movement and how big it was for a while. We never got mainstream acceptance or appeal and we all started getting old and young people stopped paying attention for the most part.
Like I said, I’d rather copyright law be changed, but that’s not what will happen here. You don’t get new laws crafted out of court case wins and losses, that’s not how this works, laws are crafted in congress.
Meta is running all this on the claim that they need this to train their AI, which is all fine and good, but them winning won’t make it so I can make the same claim if I get caught pirating. Why? Because the copyright lawyers will argue reasonably that I didn’t pirate enough data to build an AI and so I can’t be held to the same standard as Meta, who absolutely needed thousands of terabytes of data to train theirs. The scales are totally different and the scale of their operation is part of their argument, that because of the scale of their AI, that there’s no way they could conceivably train it without going broke paying copyright holders. If I am caught pirating a 1/10000th of the same data as they are, the copyright holders will claim, very easily, that I cannot possibly be building the same kind of AI that Meta is building because I would need way more data for that, and that I must be held to account because I must not be actually using it for AI. People like you and me can’t afford a team of high profile lawyers to argue our cases, and so we will lose, precedent simply won’t apply to us.
Meta winning will just make it so there’s another avenue for corporations to do whatever the fuck they want while people like you and me still have to follow draconian absurd copyright laws. Laws are made in congress, and copyright length can only be changed by bills in congress becoming law. The outcome of this court case is bad either way but it is marginally less bad for people like us to at least have corporations held to the same standard we are.
EDIT:
Final note, even if copyright law does get changed in congress, it will be because groups like OpenAI and Meta will lobby the government to change it, and they will not lobby for regular people to get the same rights because they don’t want regular people building their own AIs. Like I said, both outcomes here suck ass, but these giant corporations are not and never will be fighting for people like you and I to have reasonable fair use laws. They will lobby for them to be able to do it, once again, based on their sheer scale, so nobody else can compete or make truly open products in their own home. They want ownership over the process, they won’t send lobbyists in to help regular people, they send lobbyists in to help themselves.
This applies doubly so to Meta, if you know anything about Zuckerberg or the company, you’d know out of everyone he is ruthless and will do absolutely anything to crush nascent competition.
This is why the left can’t get anywhere. You get one guy yelling “just follow the rules!” but he can’t be heard because you have another guy screaming “smash the state!”
Thats my observation for the day.