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Posted by spankibalt 4 days ago

Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement(variety.com)
https://apnews.com/article/meta-mark-zuckerberg-ai-publisher...
489 points | 452 commentspage 2
ipython 4 days ago|
Just gonna say... Aaron Swartz faced years of prison time and ultimately decided to take his own life... for downloading scientific journal articles... to share freely with the world (aka not even profiting from it).

But a multi-billion dollar corporation downloading millions of copyrighted creative works so that they can reshape the entire labor market by training a new type of artificial intelligence model on that data set? Meh, sounds like Silicon Valley disruption, give the man a medal!

defen 4 days ago||
One man illegally downloading copyrighted material is a crime. Multinational corporations illegally downloading copyrighted material is the only remaining growth area in the US economy and vital to national security.
platevoltage 4 days ago||
They should make another one of those PSAs. "You wouldn't steal 10,000,000 cars".
lesuorac 4 days ago|||
And Jstor dropped the lawsuit when Aaron deleted his local copy. DOJ didn't drop theirs.

I doubt Meta has deleted their local copy though ...

qingcharles 4 days ago|||
It's absolutely unthinkable that Meta and friends aren't still using a corpus containing the entirety of every book they can obtain. There is no way they're building frontier LLMs without it. You can be sure as hell the Chinese are doing it, so the US corps are absolutely still doing it.
alex1138 4 days ago|||
And also I think MIT didn't defend Aaron but maybe I'm wrong about that
spongebobstoes 4 days ago|||
Aaron Swartz was treated unjustly because copyright sucks. we should oppose such laws and treatment, not wield them as retributive tools against our opponents

it is wrong to advocate for everyone to be treated equally unjustly. better to advocate for the removal of the bad laws/structures

ipython 4 days ago|||
It would be easier to advocate for the reform of those laws if they were actually applied evenly.

I’m not calling for its use as a “retributive tool”. Just that it be applied evenly.

spongebobstoes 4 days ago||
advocating for more punishment under copyright law is directly opposed to reform or removal of the laws

court precedent is a useful tool of advocacy

ipython 4 days ago|||
Technically he wasn’t charged with any copyright violations. See indictment: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/217117-united-states...
jmye 4 days ago|||
What an asinine argument. Advocating for enforcement of existing laws is advocating for enforcement of existing laws. That’s it. Good god.
stevenhuang 1 minute ago||
You seem confused.

Laws follow societal norms, not the other way around.

Once norms change then the laws will.

jmye 4 days ago|||
> not wield them as retributive tools against our opponents

No, we should apply them equally to Mark Fucking Zuckerberg (which is decidedly not retributive, however much you want to make an emotional appeal) until such time as they are repealed as laws. It’s not really that complicated.

Melatonic 4 days ago|||
Truly ahead of his time
zajio1am 4 days ago|||
Well, Meta also shared their AI models freely with world
bamboozled 2 days ago||
They released products for free use, they didn't release the code of those models for free. Which IMO would make some of what they did here right.
alex1138 4 days ago|||
Had Aaron copied Snapchat 5 times the DOJ would've been fine with it all. His fault for not having the foresight
alex1138 4 days ago||
(I'm being sarcastic. Zuck gets rewarded for continually copying Snapchat features into his products)
TiredOfLife 3 days ago||
> Aaron Swartz faced years of prison time and ultimately decided to take his own life.

According to comments here that was totally deserved. You should not mess with copyright.

bawolff 4 days ago||
Does it matter? The company's liability would (i assume) not change if the ceo authorized it or some other high level figure authorized it.

The question to answer is, did it happen and if so is this copyright infringement (not covered by fair use), not which company official authorized it.

coolThingsFirst 3 days ago||
I love how there's not even a class action lawsuit against AI companies that stole the work of everyone to train their models on.

Who gave permission to Anthropic/ClosedAI to scan hundreds of thousands of books to feed to their systems which they commercially sell. Why is this the new normal. Even GitHub a month ago was like if you don't opt out we will read even your private repos for AI training.

Tech is turning into next level BS, I don't know if it always was like this but this has pierced even the very bottom.

Steeeve 3 days ago||
The title of the article and the content of the article are not the same. Zuck has been accused, according to the article, but then the article itself basically says that Meta was pursuing licensing and then at some point the business unit responsible for pursuing that licensing was told not to, presumably because there was a fair-use strategy of some sort in place so licensing would not be required.
theonemind 2 days ago|
I saw something about this. It would seem like it would be hard to obtain all of those licenses, probably impossible, and then if you want to go on to pirate more, that you licensed stuff kind of makes it look like you knew or believed you should've done it for all of them, which I think would make infringement willful, and imply some cognizance of guilt?

When you think about the objectives and constraints on the table, and how disproportionately light penalties imposed on large corporations can be, if you can muster any kind of crappy argument, doing absolutely zero licensing is the no-brainer clear win. You get all of the material. You avoid a massive cost. Then the tech friendly Federal courts of the Trump administration will interpret all of the laws as far as possible in your favor and impose the lightest penalties they reasonably can.

It's a no brainer. License none of it, it's more data, it's cheaper, it's easier, the win is blinding. But if you license, you pay so much, if you use anything you didn't license you've tipped your hand on cognizance of guilt, blahblah. The contrast is stark.

SrslyJosh 4 days ago||
Rules for thee but not for me.
tabs_or_spaces 3 days ago||
Why is there only a fine and not also the seizure/forfeiture of the stolen property and the derivative works/products built on it?

Like the fine means nothing to meta, and they'll still be the beneficiaries of their infringement.

In this current state, you really just need to have enough money to bypass this lawsuit and be on your way.

spate141 4 days ago||
> a Meta spokesperson said, “AI is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use. We will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

> Authors have sued AI companies for copyright infringement before - and lost.

So, basically nothing will come out of this

anthk 4 days ago||
Until Sony, Nintendo, Disney... sues them and Zuck craps down his pants. And the NSA themselves, too; because for sure they are half-backed from them. If they keep pirating down Japanese and European media, these can just wipe their asses with USA licenses and declare all media from the US un-Copyrighteable Europe and Japan.
fantasizr 4 days ago||
they'll litigate how meta acquired those materials to train. you can do whatever you want with a book after it's in your house. but how did it get there?
gizajob 4 days ago||
They’re already on record as hoovering up Library Genesis and Anna’s Archive. For their “fair use” copyright bonfire to train their LLM.

So not are these publishers rightfully pissed, Meta didn’t even give them the $6.99 for each epub to begin with. They’ve stolen the whole thing as part of this “fair use” campaign to destroy human authorship free of even the most basic remuneration.

alex1138 4 days ago||
Fun fact, if you link AA on FB it gets removed
gizajob 3 days ago||
I’m not a user but that doesn’t surprise me.

It’s also that Library Genesis was one of the best things on the internet until it came out that Meta had scraped it, at which point it became harder and harder to access. So not only did they pirate, their doing so made it harder for everyone else to enjoy piracy too.

runjake 4 days ago||
I don't have strong opinions on Zuck needing to be punished for this, because I have friends and family doing the same thing, although perhaps not at the same scale. I myself do not download copyrighted content. I think "rules for thee, not for me" goes both ways.
FireBeyond 4 days ago|
How much revenue have your friends and family made from "doing the same thing"?
runjake 4 days ago||
Some. In some cases they've "stolen" tens of thousands in content. Like I said, not at the same scale, but the same "crime" nonetheless.

I'd much rather prosecution focus on Zuck's more serious crimes against privacy and civilization as a whole. But maybe this is a small start?

pessimizer 4 days ago||
> Some. In some cases they've "stolen" tens of thousands in content.

That's not revenue.

zx8080 4 days ago||
Can someone explain why are we reading this instead of "Meta was fined for copyright infrigement" news?
tbrownaw 4 days ago||
Well the article says this is the start of a lawsuit, so maybe wait for it to work its way through the courts?
2ndorderthought 4 days ago|||
Because meta will delay any case for several years. Then the lawyers will settle for 1/100th to 1/1000th of what they stole quietly. Meta will rebrand and change its name again just like it did after its last major scandal.

No accountability for rich people has funny patterns like this.

Cider9986 4 days ago|||
They might not need to change their name. I don't think that copyright infringement is seen as bad by Americans compared to the privacy stuff that Facebook is known for—not that most Americans care about privacy, I guess I don't really know why Facebook rebranded.

Personally, I would be happy if AI companies are what finally take down intellectual monopoly (intellectual property). I know being anti-intellectual-monopoly isn't a common view, but i don't see average people thinking it is so important—as you can see by the huge increases in piracy recently. Could be wrong about this, I haven't done research on public opinion about copyright.

Honestly, this whole case could be great. Either copyright loses, good for us. Or Zuckerberg loses, also good for us.

I would say that copyright loses is better for society than Zuckerberg loses because, my wish for Zuckerberg to lose is from hatred, while my wish for copyright to be abolished is from my wish to help humanity.

Even Supreme Court justices[1] have said the case for copyright is thin.

[1] (before he became a justice) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uneasy_Case_for_Copyright

2ndorderthought 3 days ago||
You are entitled into your world view. What I personally would prefer to see would be laws that strengthened individual copyright and weakened the predatory behavior of big players who copyright and patent every single thing.

I see the ability for trillion dollar companies to wash their hands of any wrong doing for stealing all the intellectual property of the world as incredibly dangerous for innovation in the US.

So for me I would rather see reform then an abandonment. There wouldn't be much of anything to pirate if there was no incentive or protection to create in the first place.

In my mind the biggest threat the average person faces would be billionaires who can operate with impunity. Rather then a fine for pirating a book or a movie. It would be nice if the fines were proportionate to the value of the item... I digress

gizajob 3 days ago|||
They don’t need to rebrand - “Meta” (after / exceeding) is a catch all for whatever they’re being meta at today: piracy / privacy infringement / theft / slop production etc.
wrxd 3 days ago||
Nah, it’s short for metastasis. The only apt name for a company that is after growth an any cost
solid_fuel 4 days ago||
In 2024, voters signaled that they don't care about corruption when they reelected the most corrupt administration in American history. Since then, there has been a widespread understanding that the rich will not face consequences in this country. For example, take a look at the Trump administration's suppression of the Epstein files. Or the Trump families cryptocurrency schemes. Or the ridiculous ballroom.

Anyway, the point is - there will be no justice until the citizens of the united states demand it.

k33n 4 days ago||
[flagged]
2ndorderthought 4 days ago|||
This is rage bait and isn't worth spending any oxygen on it.
k33n 4 days ago||
[flagged]
jkubicek 4 days ago||||
https://www.readtangle.com/the-everything-everywhere-all-at-...

This article doesn’t even remotely itemize all of Trumps corruption, but it’s long and extremely damning.

I would hope that anyone still supporting this administration reads this article and does some introspection on why. I’m guessing that ship probably sailed 6 years ago, though.

k33n 3 days ago||
None of that is really very damning at all. I was excited to support Trump from day one. When people claimed he supported white supremacy, and it turned out that he condemned it out loud in press conferences countless times, I stopped taking the criticism too seriously. The Russian agent allegations increased my skepticism. Then when his opposition claimed he instructed the nation to inject bleach I just tuned it out for good. None of it is real. Egg prices were the big issue until they drastically decreased. It will be the same with gas prices.
throwaway-11-1 4 days ago||||
probably this, since it was 7 years after he was convicted for prostituting a minor, so its hard to believe any excuse saying they didn't know his background: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/epstein-secret-pic-wild-...

Also that there are over 2,000 emails with Peter Thiel. Or maybe the part where Sergey Brin was helping Epstein shop for an aircraft carrier (also after conviction). Honestly it was incredibly revealing that none of these people care that he raped kids. I would love to see the Trump files which were withheld but clearly thats never gonna happen.

Anyway, congrats to everyone involved on the MAGA golden age!

k33n 3 days ago||
It’s terrible that Epstein did that. And Thiel is a really odd duck, that’s for sure.

Do you have any evidence that files related to Trump were held back? I don’t believe that’s the case.

He’s mentioned in many of the files. I found it particularly interesting that Trump was an FBI informant that worked with the government to get Epstein convicted.

Have you done more than Trump has done to stop human trafficking? If so, please be specific.

And thank you. I’m really happy that Trump was elected. I found this year’s tax credits for social security income, overtime, and car payments on American vehicles to be especially great. Most favored nation drug pricing was also a really impressive achievement!

sjsdaiuasgdia 3 days ago||
There is zero evidence Trump informed the FBI about Epstein.

Trump was Epstein's close friend for many years. There are many photos of Trump partying with Epstein and young women.

It is impossible that Trump did not know what Epstein was up to. At a minimum, he knew about tremendous abuse of children and did nothing to stop it, despite being a wealthy and powerful man. At worst, he fully participated.

Fuck you and your willingness to be misled.

k33n 3 days ago||
There is evidence that Trump informed the FBI and local law enforcement about Epstein. You may not find it convincing, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

History is an ordered list. Yes, Trump was friends with Epstein for a number of years. But then what happened?

Yes, Trump knew Epstein was a creep. The documentation indicates that he did do something about it.

You can yell at me and be rude all you’d like though. This is the internet after all.

sjsdaiuasgdia 3 days ago||
If I was a rich and powerful person, and my rich friend was running a child sex trafficking ring, I would stop being friends with that person, immediately, once I knew about it.

It's extremely clear that Trump did not do that. He continued the friendship.

What would you do in that situation? I'd burn that friend to the ground, legally, socially, every way I could. I certainly wouldn't still be hanging around with him, talking about how cool he is, etc.

Your standards for human behavior suck.

k33n 3 days ago||
In reality, Trump stopped associating with Epstein when employees of his club complained about Epstein’s behavior. He also expelled him from his club.

My standards for human behavior are high. So high that I’m disappointed when people join in on slandering a person that doesn’t deserve it.

I’m sure it’s nice to imagine yourself as a brave person who would punish Epstein more than Trump did, but I guess we’ll never know if that’s true or not. I’d wager you’d probably just go along with whatever provided you the most social affirmation.

sjsdaiuasgdia 3 days ago||
Keep drinking that kool-aid. Wow.

BTW we haven't even talked about the 100000 other things that make Trump a terrible person. Even if a timeline could be produced that fully exonerates Trump regarding Epstein (it can't), you'd still have so many other reasons he's a trash person.

You are not a good judge of character.

k33n 3 days ago||
You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard 100 times in the media. How many more “Trump bad” slanderous narratives that wind up debunked will you believe before you ask yourself if you were wrong?

I’m a really good judge of character. When folks don’t think for themselves, and instead join in on unfounded slander campaigns, it usually doesn’t speak well of their character.

I won’t join in. I don’t mind being insulted for it by random strangers on the internet. It’s a small price to pay for advocating for clear thinking and decent morals. If just one person questions their assumptions, then I’ve done my part.

sjsdaiuasgdia 3 days ago||
Trump is a rapist, per the courts, per Ivana Trump, and per statements of Epstein victims.

Trump is the most corrupt president in US history, by a few orders of magnitude.

Trump lies continuously, obviously, ridiculously. Hell, how many times has the Iran war "ended" in the last 2 months, per Trump?

You do not have decent morals if you excuse Trump.

Fuck off with your calm fascist game.

k33n 3 days ago||
None of those words carry any weight, sorry. That whole line of attack is just not credible. It’s comical that anyone could possibly think it would be effective in 2026.
sjsdaiuasgdia 2 days ago||
You choose not to believe the clear evidence.

Trump's been a known sex pest, liar, and cheat since the 80s. He hasn't changed in the decades since.

k33n 2 days ago||
No one ever claimed any of that until he ran for President. And you fell for it.
dragonwriter 2 days ago|||
That’s not true. People have been saying it since, at least, the 1980s.

Not a lot of people were listening to it until he started to be considered a serious Presidential candidate.

k33n 2 days ago||
It is true. I’m not sure what more I can tell you. Good luck.
dragonwriter 1 day ago|||
> It is true.

It's literally not. Like, I personally was aware of some of the allegations before he ran for President. And not even the time in 2016, the time he made an effort for the Reform Party nomination in 2000 and bailed early on in the process.

> I’m not sure what more I can tell you.

You can make up whatever fiction you like, the fact is that allegations of sexual and other impropriety against Trump existed (but got far less attention) long before he was a major Presidential candidate, but got a whole lot more attention when he became that.

defrost 1 day ago|||
Maybe you're just out of touch or didn't live through the 80's.

Trump was made fun of for lying, self promotion and boosting via pseudonyms (eg: "John Barron") since the early 1980s at the very least.

sjsdaiuasgdia 1 day ago|||
Holy shit, how young are you?

I guess you did not have the experience of seeing his lying sex pest escapades spread across newspaper and tabloid headlines intermittently through the 80s and 90s like a lot of us did.

But sure, no one said aaaaaanything like that about Trump before 2016, no sir!

Ivana Trump accused Donald Trump of rape in 1990 btw.

solid_fuel 4 days ago|||
[flagged]
k33n 3 days ago|||
It’s hilarious to me that you’re under the impression you speak for a lot of people and that your anger over my personal views is so vitriolic.

You should also review the code of conduct for this website and learn to communicate in good faith if you expect to ever be taken seriously. Until then, I hope things get better for you man.

solid_fuel 3 days ago||
You’re the only one I see here crying about points, like a little child. If you want people to take anything you say seriously, you should learn to think and talk like a serious person. Until then I will give you all the respect you and your positions deserve: none.
k33n 2 days ago||
Dude, you’re positively seething at someone you don’t know, seemingly convinced that your wild haymakers have any chance of landing.

Check yourself in somewhere or go for a walk. You’re deeply unwell.

solid_fuel 1 day ago||
3 days later and you're still crying about it like a little baby. Thanks man, you really made my week. Hilarious.

If you can't handle being called out for your disingenuous behavior, maybe you should try to work on yourself. Go to church, try praying or asking god for guidance. Usually I don't recommend religion but for someone as ignorant as you maybe it would help develop some empathy and a sense of shame.

Larrikin 4 days ago|||
It is a leap of faith that they are speaking in good faith as a useful idiot.
solid_fuel 4 days ago|||
Granted, it’s far more likely that they don’t believe a single word of the drivel they’ve been spreading across this forum, but regardless of intentionality the result is the same.
k33n 3 days ago|||
I’m simply a regular guy who got exactly what I wanted when Trump was elected. Of course I’m speaking in good faith. That’s why misguided, bad faith participants flag my reasonable remarks or send insults instead of staying on topic. It’s just emotional meltdowns.
Larrikin 3 days ago||
Many people also got exactly what they wanted when slavery was legal or when your elected officials had sex with children. There has been justification for both with "reasonable" remarks about eugenics and girls maturing faster. I think you know what you want and just don't care about other people if it helps you specifically.
k33n 3 days ago||
Which of my elected officials “had sex” with children? In my Republican-led state of Florida, we give the death penalty to people who do that. Why don’t they do that in California?

As for human trafficking in general, Trump has objectively enabled ICE, the FBI and others to aggressively target that sort of behavior.

As for slavery, the US is one of the countries that fought a war to end that thousands of years old practice.

Anyway, I like Trump, and by all accounts, that goes against the grain. You’re going expressly WITH the grain. That doesn’t indicate that had you been born in the 1600’s you’d have spoken out about slavery. You’re a with the grain guy. And with the grain guys will go along with whatever the moral consensus of the times are.

_doctor_love 4 days ago|
"You can be unethical and still be legal that’s the way i live my life"

- Mark Zuckerberg

_doctor_love 4 days ago||
Note for the downvoters: this is literally what he said.
senordevnyc 3 days ago||
I downvoted because this was from an IM to a friend back in 2004, when Zuckerberg was twenty years old. I'm sure if you already hate him, this is so juicy and interesting, but I don't find 99.99% of the dumb shit young adults say to their friends in private conversations to be informative of almost anything.
_doctor_love 3 days ago||
Ordinarily I would agree, and I'm generally speaking not a fan of dredging up quotes from 20 years and holding people accountable to them.

I make an exception for Mark because he never changed his attitude or behavior, and if anything, he simply doubled down on it. I will never, ever, ever, EVER trust him to be a moral or ethical person.

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