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7h ago

Meta torrented over 81.7TB of pirated books to train AI, authors say

arstechnica.com ”Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

Meta’s alleged torrenting and seeding of pirated books complicates copyright case.

They also didn't seed,

Supposedly, Meta tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers, an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang said, while describing the work as in "stealth mode." 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.

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2h ago

”Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/

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Technology @lemmy.ml

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8h ago

”Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed

arstechnica.com /tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/

44 5

28 comments

“so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,”
They can't even pirate ethically, fucking landlubbers

Meta also allegedly modified settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,"

Corporation pirates millions of books to train AI: No charge
Bourgeois individual commits billions of dollars in fraud: 40 months in country club prison
Homeless man steals $100 and gives it back: 15 years in general population prison
Any questions?

torrenting and seeding of pirated books

downloading them from libgen over http

Wish I had 81tb of disk :sadness:

Imagine having all that corporate funding and still cutting costs on...stealing information.

much less that Plaintiffs’ books were somehow distributed by Meta.
While I guess that Meta may have used settings to be leech only. Unless they show that they did that (which is of course poor practice if torrenting), the nature of torrenting by default means that even one piece of a file was seeded to another user is "distribution."

81.7TB is so many fucking books
- half of it is the complete works of chuck tingle
  
  SWIM has a folder of 9GB of books and it's a lot. This is almost ten thousand times that many.

Meta also allegedly modified settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,"
and to top it all off, they're goddamn leechers!

So, they're being arrested for piracy the same way any of us would be, right?
RIGHT?!
Totally not an oligarchy!
- Rarely any person is arrested for piracy in the US. In most cases copyright infringement is a civil case, not a criminal case. That means that you are prosecuted by the copyright holder and not the state. The copyright holder has to take you to civil court to sue you.
  If we downloaded multiple terabytes of books, I think it is unlikely that there would be any consequences.
  For it to become a criminal case, you basically have to be charging money for pirated content. If Facebook is profiting from the piracy, it is possible that they are doing criminal copyright infringement.
  
  They killed Aaron Swartz for this
  
  For it to become a criminal case, you basically have to be charging money for pirated content
  Or to send a message
  
  Is meta making an AI for fun or profit?
- nah like $200k fine if anything

They should be getting a cease and desist letter any day now
- Oh goody, more kindling!

expropriation now

:no-waying:

28 comments