this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.world 178 points 1 month ago (3 children)

So, piracy is legal if you don't distribute? What the fuck is Zuck smoking?

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 98 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)

Well, that's how it tends to be in most places.
You don't get caught for downloading; you get caught for uploading.

Using a similar logic to distribution via DVDs. Only the seller gets into trouble. The buyer does not.


Another point, opening a web page means downloading it, so if someone wanted to frame someone for downloading something, it would be very easy to make such a trap. This, accompanied with CSAM and network monitoring could be used to easily get any person using the internet, in jail, just for opening the wrong link. So, the laws require much more information regarding intent and such.

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 41 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

The buyers/downloaders don't get caught is just because there are too many of them and going after the distributor is an easy target.

[–] gon@lemm.ee 31 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Not the case, necessarily.

In Portugal, for example, it's legal to download pirated content. It's not a matter of not pursuing it because it's hard or being difficult to catch or distributors are an easier target, it's just that, legally, you're not doing anything wrong.

[–] OwlPaste@lemmy.world 17 points 1 month ago

sooooo.... vpn should point to Portugal...

[–] umami_wasbi@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

Oh for real? Learn something new today.

[–] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago

In Canada it’s legal to download and watch content for personal use, so it’s when it’s shared that it becomes an issue.

Just like you could record anything with a vcr, you just couldn’t share it with your friends.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

Is it not also because it was easier to feign ignorance for the time the laws were passed?
And that nobody thought of Tor, while at the same time, leechers who don't seed are actually being worse for the Torrent?

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[–] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

Elitism. He is of the belief that he is better than you, and doesn't live in the same world as you.

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And the copyright owners have no problem with them profiting from derived works that were made using pirated content?

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[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 89 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Another example of Republican principles. Corporations are protected by laws but not bound by them, while the average citizen is bound by laws but not protected by them.

[–] EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In group and out group baybee!

[–] spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I want to know how to switch groups.

[–] dabaldeagul@feddit.nl 7 points 1 month ago

Too late, you should've been born with lots of money. Actually, you could marry someone who's rich I guess..

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[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 81 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So not just they pirated them, which may or may not be a crime and where I may or may not be impartial, but they are also leeches who would be banned on any decent torrent tracker of the olden days.

[–] Podunk@lemmy.world 40 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Truly despicable. Seeding to at least 1 to 1 is the bare minimum of courtesy and humanity. If you dont, its unethical

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Seeding shouldn't be done on ratios - being the only one seeding 10 seasons of a tv show and getting it to 0.4:1 is way more helpful than seeding the same movie as everyone else and getting to 20:1, you're noy contributing anything there other than decreasing your bandwidth for things that aren't already at 100,000% availability

[–] Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I'd you are the only one seeding it and get to 0.4, you just left others hanging with incomplete downloads.

However I do agree in general

[–] 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

That's what I'm saying

It's better to not even half-way seed a torrent with low availability than it is to seed one that everyone else is seeding, regardless of how high your ratio goes - it's a point on how pointless it really is to waste your resources seeding something like that

The lazy approach is the best approach IMO. Seed everything, and if the ratio gets high, drop it. That way you get rid of useless popular torrents and keep the less popular ones. If everyone does that, things will work better.

[–] Fedegenerate 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Seeding to ratios is self correcting, in my inexperienced opinion as I only share ISOs.

Unpopular thing sits on someone's computer (not mine) for ages just happily waiting until it's useful. Popular thing is in and out. Purely for files intended to be churned; try a distro (in facebook's case a book), use it, and delete it.

1:3 could be said to be a minimum (1 for to pay back, 1 to pay forward, and 1 to pay for a leecher)

Things that are going to be archived can be set as limitless as long as strain on hardware can be tolerated.

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[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey now some of us just have wildly shit upload speeds and couldn't hope to reach 1:1 without spending an entire year seeding a single movie.

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Yeah, I always went for 2:1. It doesn't really cost me anything, so why not?

[–] singletona@lemmy.world 55 points 1 month ago (3 children)

So where's the MAFIAA? Here you go guys, literal industrial scale piracy.

Or are you afraid to go after someone that isn't a teenager in their parent's back room?

[–] Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Fighting Meta will cost easy more money than fighting a teenager.

[–] singletona@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am aware. I was simply demonstrating they were never about money, simply bullying people who couldn't fight back.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Especially since in the height of my pirating years during teenagerdom, no amount of cajoling or coercion could get me to pay for whatever it was because I didn't have any money. Which not at all coincidentally was why I was pirating it in the first place.

These dweebs always operate from the frankly invalid preconception that if the pirate had not pirated the media they would have paid for it and therefore they're "owed" a sale, but that's not how it works. I imagine that if the vast majority of people were unable to pirate their thing, they simply would not watch/listen/read/play/consume the thing at all.

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[–] Mohamed@lemmy.ca 50 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is irrelevant because Meta should not be tried for this the same as a private individual would be.

The case for torrenting being illegal for private individuals is one or both of:

  1. Downloading in of itself is stealing.
  2. Uploading is giving unauthorized access to someone else who otherwise might have had a harder time finding it. Anything else, such as watching, reading, listening, learning, etc. is not illegal (or does not make sense to make illegal). The exception might be publishing. This is rare for private individuals (e.g. using pirated FL studio to make a commercial song).

For corporations, a lot change. Firstly, a corporation downloading a torrent is necessarily making unauthorized material available for some people of the company. It's like a group of 20 friends all downloaded and uploaded to each other. Secondly, they used this copyrighted material commercially (like playing pirated music in a public night club). Both should be illegal.

However, all of this is still a distraction. The real issue is using copyrighted materials to train commercial AI. Does Meta require permission from copyright holders to make AI based on their work? The law is grey on this, and desperately needs regulations.

Just my thoughts.

[–] Geodad@lemm.ee 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

AI has already stolen everyone’s work. The internet is officially a free for all.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

just like back in the good ol' days.

[–] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Except in the good ol' days just about everything on the 'net benefited most of us in some way ... and it was free. Now it sure as hell ain't free and it's been co-opted to benefit billionaires only.

I started torrenting 23 years ago and it was easy. Just a client, no VPN required. Now I need not only a VPN, but a good router that I can flash with firmware, hours of working out how best to set up the router with wireguard etc, then scroll through dozens of links to try and find a stable stream to watch hockey.

It's fucking exhausting.

[–] molten@lemmy.world 42 points 1 month ago

Of course that fuck isn't a good seeder. Leech.

[–] JustJack23@slrpnk.net 39 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also I love how they they don't say they didn't seed, just say there is no proof

[–] FireTower@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago

This is a motion to dismiss not an answer. That's how those work. It is linked to by the journalist in the article.

[–] daikiki@lemmy.world 32 points 1 month ago

It's not illegal to download books without yourself offering them for upload. What's illegal is when you feed those books into your reality devouring content monster and it outputs all that copyrighted content in a slightly different order and you profit off that content vomit.

[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 31 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

This is honestly a win-win. Either the courts recognize that the LLM uses stolen copyrighted content, or they recognize that torrenting is legal by default.

Though with the way courts have been bending case law into knots recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if they somehow word the ruling in a way that favors Meta and makes torrenting outright illegal.

[–] WrenFeathers@lemmy.world 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Ahh, but you’re forgetting the Rules for Thee clause that protects any and all wealthy, white, corporate gremlins from facing the same or similar consequences that any of the poors might face for the same infraction.

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[–] distortwave@lemmy.ml 26 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Well, at least they released llama for free, But honestly, their hypocrisy is so pathetic.

Hey, who knows? Maybe now they're gonna like start funding legal defense funds for people torrenting. Part of their whole corporate social responsibility, If they feel so strongly about it... right? /s

[–] daytonah@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 weeks ago

Let's just make legal the evil we do...

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[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean isn't that at least some extent technically true to a level.

I mean if we weren't talking a shitty corporation to begin with. If this were say, a 20 year old mcdonnalds worker pirating game of thrones.

IMO the bigger concept is still rather than if they got it... defining whether using that data after the fact is legal. I mean hypothetically speaking lets just say they bought 1 copy of each of the millions of books, or bought used copies, or say had a machine that could scan every book in a library. IMO the issue shouldn't be whether or not anyone managed to download the books in their pure form afterwards. The focus should be the AI trained on their books, is going to be distributing portions of their book to millions of people, and any potential profits of such will be going to meta and uncredited to the original authors. The idea that meta's involvement in torrenting may have let little timmy get a copy of his text book 15 seconds faster... shouldn't be the driving force here.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 13 points 1 month ago

I mean isn't that at least some extent technically true to a level.

It's completely true. That's why a lot of people don't seed. And why your ISP won't bother you if you don't.

[–] brightandshinyobject@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago

So it's okay if we download content from well known online repositories?

[–] kingblaaak@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You wouldn't download car....and then upload its stats to a centralised system

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[–] badbytes@lemmy.world 8 points 4 weeks ago

My class action Spidey sense is tingling

[–] timewarp@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well good news if they are successful in their arguments it can set precedent to make piracy legal.

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[–] phillycodehound@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Double Standard!

[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 month ago

Facebook got FBI_README.txt at the root of their DC++ share.

[–] b3an@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Rules for thee and not for me, plus we PROFIT off of it to boot. But none of you guys can do that. Only for Richys.

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