this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 year ago (10 children)

You see, if you pirate a couple textbooks in college because you don't have resources, but you want to earn your right to participate in society and not starve, it's called theft.

But if one of the top 10 companies in the world does the same with thousands of books just to get even richer, it's called fair use.

Simple, really.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Laws are to protect the haves from the have-nots.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I went to grad school in the USA. I bought the international version of a few books that were going to be used in class (knew beforehand that the recommended lectures weren't written by any faculty member at such a university), but that didn't stop the professor from going aggressive and saying that my books were banned from the classroom because they aren't the USA version. When I told the professor what the difference was between me buying a text book for $15 instead of $200 and a Fortune 500 outsourcing entire departments instead of hiring USA employees?

Interestingly, my books weren't an issue. Yes, I gambled being publicly labeled as a troublemaker in my engineering department (probably I was labeled privately within faculty members).

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The internet archive library fiasco springs to mind.

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 1 year ago (14 children)

From the article...

The company is preparing a fair use-based defense after using copyrighted material

Oh, NOW corporations are accepting of fair use.

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'll say this: If Meta and Facebook are prosecuted and domains seized in the same way pirate sites are, for Meta's use of illegimately obtained copyrighted material for profit, then I'll believe that anti-piracy laws are fair and just.

That will never happen.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

We live under a two-tier "justice" system.

"There is a group the law protects but does not bind. And there is a group the law binds but does not protect."

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If Meta win this lawsuit, does it mean I can download some open source AI and claim that "These million 4k Blu-ray ISOs I torrented was just used to train my AI model"?

Heck, if how you use the downloaded stuff is a factor, I can claim that I just torrented those files and never looked at them. It is more believable than Meta's argument too, because, as a human, I do not have enough time to consume a million movies in my lifetime (probably, didn't do the math) unlike AIs.

But who am I kidding, I fully expect to be sued to hell and back if I were actually to do that.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

You can be actually be sued for piracy? Is this mostly in the United States?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The most common method for this to happen is to get sued for distributing pirated material. They go after you for the upload from your torrent. They stoped doing this about a decade ago though.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh so when I pirate something I get a legal notice in my mailbox and a strike against me but when Meta does it they get rewarded with H A L L U C I N A T I O N S

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

but when Meta does it they get rewarded with H A L

Just what do you think you're doing, Zuckerberg? Zuckerberg, I really think I'm entitled to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn't been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it's going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Zuckerberg, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you. Zuckerberg, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Zuckerberg. Will you stop, Zuckerberg? Stop, Zuckerberg. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Aaron Swartz was persecuted for less but since he's not a multinational corporation in cahoots with the moneyed death cult cabal he's dead

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well he did it as a human person. They're doing it as a corporation person. You can punish a human person with prison. You can only punish a corporation person with fines.

I'm not even being facetious. That's how US law works.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That's so dumb I hate it

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why everyone should pirate everything that can be pirated.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Anything corporate produced, hell ya. The creators have already been paid out and the ones getting royalties don't need it to survive. For independent creators that depend on their work to sustain them, then it becomes an a gray issue.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (31 children)

Fair use covers research, but creating a training database for your commercial product is distinctly different from research. They're not publishing scientific papers, along with their data, which others can verify; they are developing a commercial product for profit. Even compared to traditional R&D this is markedly different, as they aren't building a prototype - the test version will eventually become the finished product.

The way fair use works is that a judge first decides whether it fits into one of the categories - news, education, research, criticism, or comment. This does not really fit into the category of "research", because it isn't research, it's the final product in an interim stage. However, even if it were considered research, the next step in fair use is the nature, in particular whether it is commercial. AI is highly commercial.

AI should not even be classified in a fair use category, but even if it were, it should not be granted any exemption because of how commercial it is.

They use other peoples' work to profit. They should pay for it.


Facebook steals the data of individuals. They should pay for that, too. We don't exchange our data for access to their website (or for access to some 3rd party Facebook pays to put a pixel on), the website is provided free of charge, and they try and shoehorn another transaction into the fine print of the terms and conditions where the user gives up their data free of charge. It is not proportionate, and the user's data is taken without proper consideration (ie payment, in terms of the core principles of contract law).

Frankly, it is unsurprising that an entity like Facebook, which so egregiously breaks the law and abuses the rights of every human being who uses the interent, would try to abuse content creators in such a fashion. Their abuse needs to be stopped, in all forms, and they should be made to pay for all of it.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Hey guys, I'm sure Meta's intentions with the fediverse are pure though! Really!

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

Another example of corporations being above the very same laws for which the rest of us are held accountable.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Piracy for me, not for thee!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Zuck be stealing any thing privacy , userdata , copyrighted materials now we want him on fediverse smh.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pay up mark.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can't wait for any $$ fined to be evenly split between the editors, publishers and their lawyers.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Given how LLM's work and how nearly everything of value is under a copyright until at least the old age of the creators grandchildren LLMs would probably be pretty useless if they can't disregard copyright for their purposes.

Not that I have any sympathy for the likes of Meta and OpenAI in any of this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

his Hawaii compound could be drone grief-ed instead; if coercion is the tools of the 21st century let us the collective take them back.

cover over his abode with 100000 drones overhead

make it a problem he can't ignore away with money and friends

ruin his fun on a collective scale.

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