Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data in AI Piracy Probe

Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by loeg on Monday January 20, 2025 @07:21PM (#42774794)

> “By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other users of pirated books,” the amended complaint notes.

> “Put another way, by opting to use a bit torrent system to download LibGen’s voluminous collection of pirated books, Meta ‘seeded’ pirated books to other users worldwide.”

It is possible to (ab)use the bittorrent ecosystem and download without sharing at all. I don't know if this is what Meta did, or not.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by butterandguns on Monday January 20, 2025 @08:24PM (#42775310)

Hypothetically you could just not seed.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by loeg on Monday January 20, 2025 @10:22PM (#42776156)

Right, that's what I'm talking about. I.e. https://github.com/pmoor/bitthief and similar.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by cactusplant7374 on Monday January 20, 2025 @08:32PM (#42775368)

That is probably exactly what they did if they were smart about it.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by qingcharles on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @01:15AM (#42777132)

I was (partly) responsible for obtaining recordings for a Very Large Online Streaming Service(tm). Sometimes the studios would send us trucks filled with CDs. Sometimes they didn't have any easily accessible copies of the albums and would tell us to just "get it however..." which often involved SoulSeek, Limewire, etc.

We were not smart about it. We just found the stuff and hit download. To the point where there were days the corp Internet was saturated from too many P2P clients running.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by wongarsu on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:41PM (#42776702)

However since this is a civil case they don't have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Meta seeded torrents. If they did use torrents the presumption would be that they used a regular bittorrent client with regular settings, and it would be on Meta to show they didn't do that.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by loeg on Monday January 20, 2025 @11:51PM (#42776749)

I am not commenting on any legal mechanics. Just technical details.

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Re:Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data ... by anon373839 on Tuesday January 21, 2025 @01:56AM (#42777299)

Meta can show this with testimony. (Employee: “I opened the settings and disabled sharing.”)

This is a difficult theory for the plaintiffs to prevail on, since they would have no evidence of their own to contradict Meta’s testimony to keep the issue in play. Which is why they’re asking for client logs - and good luck with that.

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