In order to help train its AI models, Meta (and others) have been using pirated versions of copyrighted books, without the consent of authors or publishers. The company behind Facebook and Instagram faces an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, and one in which it has already scored a major (and surprising) victory: The Californian court concluded last year that using pirated books to train its Llama LLM did qualify as fair use.
You’d think this case would be as open-and-shut as it gets, but never underestimate an army of high-priced lawyers. Meta has now come up with the striking defense that uploading pirated books to strangers via BitTorrent qualifies as fair use. It further goes on to claim that this is double good, because it has helped establish the United States’ leading position in the AI field.
Meta further argues that every author involved in the class-action has admitted they are unaware of any Llama LLM output that directly reproduces content from their books. It says if the authors cannot provide evidence of such infringing output or damage to sales, then this lawsuit is not about protecting their books but arguing against the training process itself (which the court has ruled is fair use).
Judge Vince Chhabria now has to decide whether to allow this defense, a decision that will have consequences for not only this but many other AI lawsuits involving things like shadow libraries. The BitTorrent uploading and distribution claims are the last element of this particular lawsuit, which has been rumbling on for three years now, to be settled.
I read this as setting precedent that others couldn’t. Court cases like this are one way to make it possible for everyone to break an absurd law.
Precedent only applies equally if we are able to prove the same in court as Meta did. Are you going to need petabytes of pirated data to train your AI? Can you afford a team of top quality lawyers to fight your case and prove you were training a small locally-hosted AI at home? Do you think Meta, of all companies, really is fighting for you to be able to do the same as them? You will still get taken to court, you will still have to fight your case, “precedent” isn’t an automatic get out of jail free card. Do you have the money to fight massive copyright holders with endless money? Of course you don’t, none of us do.
Precedent is, in effect, new law and it absolutely does change who gets taken to court and the costs of defending your case. So, depending on which arguments the court accepts, I won’t need fancy lawyer. And it won’t require nearly the risk, creativity, or time that it requires of Meta’s legal reps today. Look at civil rights or environmental protections case law; big profile early cases were horrifically costly, and now compliance by company’s is largely by default.
Horrible people and companies can set good precedent, often without intending to. For example, plenty of criminals set and clarified due process law. So we absolutely could all benefit from Meta’s bad intentions.
We benefit from institutions that will be training their own AI, hosting data publicly, and have the resources to mirror a precedent. Care to cite sources that the arguments being accepted are going to carve out Mark Zuckerberg by name as the one person who can ignore copyright? I haven’t read the fillings, but this should be easy.
And unlike Meta, you will be thrown in prison like Jeremiah Perkins.
Even if found completely guilty, the worst that will happen is Meta has to pay a fine: which means nothing because any fine is rolled into the cost of doing business. Meta knows it is stupid to not break the law.
That’s also precedent, and a template for using on institutions to break copyright. Still seems like good news to me.
Precedent means we can cite it, so yes, this helps a bit. The rest you wrote is a fair bit of assumption or unnecessary: evidence to back your points would help. Otherwise, it just looks like inconclusive defeatism.