Meta: Pirated Adult Film Downloads Were For "Personal Use," Not AI Training.
[...] As the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States, the adult film producer has filed tens of thousands of lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates. This summer it expanded its scope by taking aim at Meta.
[...] The adult producers discovered the alleged infringements after Meta's BitTorrent activity was revealed in a lawsuit filed by several book authors. In that case, Meta admitted that it obtained content from pirate sources.
[...] Meta clearly denies that the adult video downloads were used for AI purposes. Since there is no evidence that Meta directed this activity, it can't be held liable for direct copyright infringement.
The tech company doesn't just deny the allegations; it also offers an alternative explanation. Meta suggests that employees or visitors may have downloaded the pirated videos for personal use.
Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for "personal use".
This week, Meta asked a US district court to toss a lawsuit alleging that the tech giant illegally torrented pornography to train AI.
The move comes after Strike 3 Holdings discovered illegal downloads of some of its adult films on Meta corporate IP addresses, as well as other downloads that Meta allegedly concealed using a "stealth network" of 2,500 "hidden IP addresses." Accusing Meta of stealing porn to secretly train an unannounced adult version of its AI model powering Movie Gen, Strike 3 sought damages that could have exceeded $350 million, TorrentFreak reported.
Filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Monday, Meta accused Strike 3 of relying on "guesswork and innuendo," while writing that Strike 3 "has been labeled by some as a 'copyright troll' that files extortive lawsuits." Requesting that all copyright claims be dropped, Meta argued that there was no evidence that the tech giant directed any of the downloads of about 2,400 adult movies owned by Strike 3—or was even aware of the illegal activity.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Revek on Sunday November 02, @08:43PM (6 children)
When its almost impossible to prosecute a large corporation any lie they tell can tie up the courts until they back channel a dismissal.
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(Score: 5, Touché) by HiThere on Sunday November 02, @09:07PM (4 children)
OTOH, as lies go, that one's pretty believable.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 02, @09:18PM (3 children)
The coincidence of timing with the Meta product migration into the "mature" space is a bit too coincidental. If Meta could show that they've been streaming the adult videos at roughly comparable rates for the past 10 years, then sure I'd believe it.
I think Meta was actually dumb enough to start the massive streaming for training campaign, oops we'd better cover our tracks, then inadequately cover their tracks and proceed.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by crm114 on Sunday November 02, @11:03PM (2 children)
Did a stint of auditing "inappropriate" internet access for a multi-national organization. I think your comments are spot-on. They happened, but outliers were immediately obvious. In those cases, they did not escalate beyond termination-of-employment for a single/few individuals.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday November 02, @11:45PM (1 child)
FFS, if you're gonna go incognito, just have the employees stream from home and bring the data in on flash drives, or... use TOR???
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03, @07:53AM
Does the AI pass the age verification requirement?
(Score: 5, Informative) by khallow on Monday November 03, @12:49AM
The obvious rebuttal is discovery. If Meta gets caught in a lie, even a minor one, that can trigger the discovery process and allow the plaintiffs to search through a bunch of Meta communications. And in this case, now that the defense has a story, they'll likely need to prove this narrative with company communications. And if any of that communications implies that there are relevant communications which aren't part of the Meta document drop, then discovery can continue by subpoenaing for that missing communications.
For a low budget plaintiff, this can be an effective stonewall. But for "the most prolific copyright litigant in the United States", I don't think that will be an effective obstacle. More likely is that Meta will pay danegeld to make the lawsuit go away.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02, @09:29PM (2 children)
Rational observers would expect to see a correlated increase in tissue paper consumption. What do the audits show?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday November 02, @09:44PM (1 child)
Also doesn't Meta have one of them modern open office spaces, no walls cubicles or rooms except for senior management ... Even if there are walls the office is probably mostly glass walls.
So is this "personal use" torrenting part of the benefits package?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Username on Monday November 03, @10:17AM
Doesn't mean they are masterbating at work, could just be downloading porn at work as to not hit their transfer limit at home. It could even be unbeknownst to the porn consumer, could have started torrenting porn at home, closed the window thinking it ended the program, with the torrent client still active in the background. These are a few steelman meta doesn't allow porn arguments. What I really think, is that porn, especially trans porn, it welcome and is acknowledged as a right at meta. A trans woman download trans porn there, is a strong and beautiful thing, and if you turn them in for it, you're a bad racist transphobe. Considering meta allows the ports to be open, are not blocking the common torrent trackers, and have a long history of activism.
(Score: 5, Funny) by istartedi on Monday November 03, @04:57AM (1 child)
Has anybody done the math? How many hours of smut would their employees and visitors have to have watched for this to be true? Are we talking, "sneak 15 minutes on lunch break" or "Monday: Watched porn for 4 hours. Came twice. Had lunch. Watched porn for 4 hours. Decided to watch overtime porn for 8 hours. Died. Came back to life. Came. Watched porn for 12 more hours. Broke for dinner. Watched porn. Two hours. Came. Tuesday: Decided to catch up on my porn watching backlog..."
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Username on Monday November 03, @10:28AM
Probably pretty close. Addiction is a terrible thing, especially with the younger generation not having relationships. Add in the level of degeneracy that is accepted now. Why wouldn't porn at meta be accepted? They probably have to pass several naked men doing sexual things on the street just to get into the meta office. I have no doubt there is probably a few fentanyl stashes in meta HQ as well. Higher ups probably have coke stashes.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday November 03, @05:19PM (1 child)
As everybody who's torrented something, then received a lawyer letter asking for extortion money to "settle the infringement", it's a-okay to download stuff for personal use.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday November 04, @09:45AM
Downloading is o.k. Uploading is not. Torrenting means also uploading. This is why litigation (at least in Europe) has been successful.
(Score: 1) by whatnow on Monday November 03, @08:40PM
In order to block adult content from minors, they have to train the AI on adult content so it knows what adult content actually is.
Or that could just be a conspiracy theory, IDK.