'Meta mocked for raising “Bob Dylan defense” of torrenting in AI copyright fight' - ars Techina
- Kai Amode
- Mar 13
- 2 min read
Authors think that Meta's admitted torrenting of a pirated books data set used to train its AI models is evidence enough to win their copyright fight—which previously hinged on a court ruling that AI training on copyrighted works isn't fair use.
Moving for summary judgment on a direct copyright infringement claim on Monday in a US district court in California, the authors alleged that "whatever the merits of generative artificial intelligence, or GenAI, stealing copyrighted works off the Internet for one’s own benefit has always been unlawful."
In their filing, the authors accused Meta of brazenly deciding to torrent terabytes of pirated book data after attempts to download pirated books one by one "posed an immense strain on Meta's networks and proceeded very slowly."
Knowing that such activity has been deemed infringing for more than two decades, the authors alleged, Meta took a risk, seemingly hoping to evade detection while struggling to catch up in the AI race and needing speedier access to large chunks of data. To cover its tracks, the social media company allegedly deviated from usual practices and attempted to conceal the torrenting by using Amazon Web Services.
"In most cases, and in this case too, users who download via torrent also upload the same file they are downloading to reap the benefits of faster file sharing," the authors alleged.
In February, authors argued that Meta's torrenting of the pirated books was infringing, even if Meta limited seeding when the downloads were completed, as the company claims it does. They explained that Meta's leeching during the download process (allowing other users to download partial files before the download was completed) is allegedly evidence enough that Meta shared pirated books with others.
"There is no genuine dispute that Meta made widely available and even reuploaded to other online pirates at least some quantity of the pirated data as part of the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing process," the authors alleged. "Meta's response in this case seems to be that a powerful technology corporation should not be held to the same standard as everyone else for illegal conduct."
The authors mocked Meta for raising what they call "the Bob Dylan defense" of its torrenting, citing song lyrics from "Sweetheart Like You" that say, "Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king."
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