Meta Says it Made Sure Not to Seed Any Pirated Books

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.

Over the past two years, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

Most of these cases allege that AI developers used copyrighted works to train LLMs without first obtaining authorization.

Using copyrighted content without permission can be problematic, but many AI companies cite fair use as a defense. Whether that is valid will vary from case to case. Just last week, a Delaware federal court denied a motion for summary judgment based on fair use in a case between Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence, reversing an earlier decision.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is also defending itself against several AI copyright infringement claims related to the development of its Llama models. This includes a class-action lawsuit filed by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, who accuse Meta of using their work without permission.

Sharing Millions of Pirated Books?

Interestingly, the allegations in this case don’t stop at unauthorized use of copyrighted works. The authors alleged that Meta downloaded millions of pirated books from LibGen via BitTorrent and distributed the same content to third parties.

Sharing copyright infringing material with third-parties will certainly be difficult to characterize as fair use and the plaintiffs realized this too.

Last month, the authors filed an amended complaint which added these BitTorrent-related allegations to their existing claims. The plaintiffs pointed out that BitTorrent users typically upload content to third parties and suggest that Meta did the same here.

“Meta downloaded millions of pirated books from LibGen through the bit torrent protocol using a platform called LibTorrent. Internally, Meta acknowledged that using this protocol was legally problematic,” the third amended complaint (TAC) noted.

“By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other users of pirated books.”

The amended complaint lists three specific claims against Meta. In addition to direct copyright infringement, the authors also accuse the company of removing copyright management information, as well as violating California’s Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA).

– Count I: Direct Copyright Infringement  
– Count II: Removal of Copyright Management Information  
– Count III: Violation of California Penal Code § 502 (CDAFA)

‘We Took Seeding Precautions’

Meta responded to this complaint with a motion to dismiss. In a supporting reply filed on Tuesday, the company notes that the ‘torrenting’ allegations, relating to the removal of copyright information and the CDAFA violations, don’t hold up.

These claims rely on the notion that Meta seeded the files they downloaded from ‘pirate’ sources, but Meta notes that there is no evidence for this. On the contrary, Meta says it took precautions to make sure that downloaded files were not shared with others.

“Focused on ‘torrenting,’ which is a widely used protocol to download large files, Plaintiffs push a narrative that ignores evidence in their possession, including a detailed expert report, showing that Meta took precautions not to ‘seed’ any downloaded files.”

While taking precautions is not the same as preventing something entirely, Meta believes that without evidence of seeding, the court should dismiss counts II and III for now.

“Plaintiffs, thus, plead no facts to show that Meta seeded Plaintiffs’ books – a claim that Meta will address at summary judgment,” Meta notes.

‘Torrenting is not Illegal’

The torrenting element is also important for the CDAFA claim. According to Meta, this is an “anti-intrusion” statute and, since Meta downloaded data from third-parties, it didn’t intrude the plaintiffs computer systems in any way.

“Plaintiffs do not allege that Meta employed technological measures to obtain any data from Plaintiffs or that the data was subject to any access restrictions. They allege only that Meta downloaded the data from a ‘well-known online repository’ that was publicly available via torrents,” Meta writes.

Just to be clear, in a footnote Meta adds that there is nothing inherently illegal about using BitTorrent to download files.

“Contrary to Plaintiffs’ assertion, there is nothing ‘independently illegal’ about torrenting on its own. Torrenting is merely a means of enabling users to download (i.e., copy) files.”

Leeching?

The authors who filed the complaint are not convinced that Meta didn’t share anything with third parties. They previously obtained additional evidence on Meta’s torrenting activity, but whether that’s sufficient is up to the court to decide.

To complicate matters further, the authors previously noted that Meta may have shared data with others while it was ‘leeching’. That is, it may have shared data without having first obtained a full copy of the file; in other words, before they were ‘seeding’.

Whether the court will dive deeper into the BitTorrent terminology has yet to be seen, but for those who are interested in file-sharing technology, it is definitely one of the most intriguing AI copyright cases out there.

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A copy of Meta’s reply supporting the motion to dismiss the third amended complaint, filed on February 18 at the California federal court, is available here (pdf)

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