Judge Allows BitTorrent Seeding Claims Against Meta, Despite Lawyers 'Lame Excuses' * TorrentFreak
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To gather material for its LLM training, Meta used BitTorrent to download pirated books from Anna’s Archive and other shadow libraries.

In an effort to gather material for its LLM training, Meta used BitTorrent to download pirated books from Anna’s Archive and other shadow libraries. According to several authors, Meta facilitated the infringement of others by “seeding” these torrents. This week, the court granted the authors permission to add these claims to their complaint, despite openly scolding their counsel for “lame excuses” and “Meta bashing.”

  • LedgeDrop@lemmy.zipEnglish
    27·
    10 hours ago

    While the BitTorrent angle is not new, the authors previously only included a ‘distribution’ claim based on direct copyright infringement. This claim has a higher evidence standard, as it typically requires evidence that the infringer shares a whole work with a third party.

    Since BitTorrent transfers break up files into smaller chunks before they are shared, it might be difficult to prove that a whole work is shared.

    If the case sides with Meta, I can see future defenses pouring in “Ya, see your honor - I’m innocent cause I only seeded 99.99% of that movie.”