In one of the AI lawsuits faced by Meta, the company stands accused of distributing pirated books. The authors who filed the class-action lawsuit allege that Meta shared books from the shadow library LibGen with third parties via BitTorrent. Meta, however, says that it took precautions to prevent 'seeding' content. In addition, the company clarifies that there is nothing 'independently illegal' about torrenting.

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[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

And that is transferring the data.

I don't even have the data. I can't do anything involving the actual data. I can't copy it. I can't transfer it. The UPLOADER is the only one with the capability of transferring the data.

You then initiate the actual transfer. Your computer actively does that.

No, it does not. It requests the data. The server is perfectly capable of answering that request with "Fuck off, I don't want to."

It keeps the transfer going and recieves the network packets.

It keeps telling the server "I received that part, thanks, can I have some more?" The server is free to never start the transfer, or to stop it at any time.

Receiving those packets is neither "copying" nor "distributing".

It literally copies them into RAM and then copies them again onto your harddrive.

And then back again, into and out of ram every time you watch it... That's not copying. If that was copying, you wouldn't be able to use a DVD, as that act "copies" the disk every time you watch it. That theory has been raised a few times; to my knowledge, it has never been successful.

Can you instruct someone to do something illegal and you're fine?

Generally speaking, yes. The examples you gave certainly don't fit the general case, though. Suppose you're my Uber driver. I break no law when I ask you to drive faster than the speed limit, or blow through a stop light. You're free to refuse such requests.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The UPLOADER is the only one with the capability of transferring the data.

You don't seem to understand that there are 2 machines required to make a transfer. One uploads. One downloads. The two together make a copy. A machine cannot upload into the ether.

[–] Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Two are needed to complete a transfer, but only the first can originate one.

Only the first knows what the transfer actually is. I could request a nice video on pirates, and you could send me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 months ago

only one needs to read the data. Only one needs to write it (the receiver)