Meta Claims Torrenting Pirated Books Isn't Illegal Without Proof of Seeding

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just because Meta admitted to torrenting a dataset of pirated books for AI training purposes, that doesn't necessarily mean that Meta seeded the file after downloading it, the social media company claimed in a court filing (PDF) this week. Evidence instead shows that Meta 'took precautions not to 'seed' any downloaded files,' Meta's filing said. Seeding refers to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and because there's allegedly no proof of such 'seeding,' Meta insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books with anyone during the torrenting process.

Meta... is hoping to convince the court that torrenting is not in and of itself illegal, but is, rather, a 'widely-used protocol to download large files.' According to Meta, the decision to download the pirated books dataset from pirate libraries like LibGen and Z-Library was simply a move to access 'data from a 'well-known online repository' that was publicly available via torrents.' To defend its torrenting, Meta has basically scrubbed the word 'pirate' from the characterization of its activity. The company alleges that authors can't claim that Meta gained unauthorized access to their data under CDAFA. Instead, all they can claim is that 'Meta allegedly accessed and downloaded datasets that Plaintiffs did not create, containing the text of published books that anyone can read in a public library, from public websites Plaintiffs do not operate or own.'

While Meta may claim there's no evidence of seeding, there is some testimony that might be compelling to the court. Previously, a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, had testified (PDF) that Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings 'so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,' which seems to support authors' claims that some seeding occurred. And an internal message (PDF) from Meta researcher Frank Zhang appeared to show that Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to 'avoid' the 'risk' of anyone 'tracing back the seeder/downloader' from Facebook servers. Once this information came to light, authors asked the court for a chance to depose Meta executives again, alleging that new facts 'contradict prior deposition testimony.' 'Meta has been 'silent so far on claims about sharing data while 'leeching' (downloading) but told the court it plans to fight the seeding claims at summary judgement,' notes Ars.

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