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Comment by crmd | Hacker News Reader

I am trying to imagine the legal contortions required for the US Supreme Court to relieve Meta of copyright infringement liability for participating in a bit torrent cloud (and thereby facilitating "piracy" by others) in this case, while upholding liability for ordinary people using bit torrent.

Would love if any lawyers here can speculate.

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They have been appointed by the president who Zuckerberg stood beside at the inauguration of the age of grift. Legal specifics don't feel very relevant anymore.

Not a lawyer, but I could see an argument that Meta’s use is transformative whereas just pirating to watch something is not. Not asserting that myself, just saying it seems a possible avenue.

The issue with bittorrent isn't so much that you are acquiring material but that you are also distributing it. There are cases where downloading copyrighted material is legal. But distributing it without consent never is, and is generally punished much worse.

You can turn off uploading in some torrent clients, such as Transmission.

Thats the argument they are using before they were likely seeding.

If anything, and the seeding can be proven, there will be a lot of entities seeking restitution.

Its a technicality but its better than breaking fair use to appease authors.

The use might (might!) be transformative, but the work is copyrighted. How Meta copied it is an issue. Is the way they acquired it illegal?

After all, Google Books did not acquire their books through torrents. They got physical books.

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