Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues

5 hours ago

Tech companies, including Meta, used copyrighted content without permission to train their LLM models.
Authors filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta in 2023 for using pirated books to train its Llama LLM.
Meta won a partial victory as the court ruled the use of pirated books for training was fair use, but remained liable for downloading and sharing books via BitTorrent.
Meta argued that uploading pirated books via BitTorrent also qualifies as fair use, as it was necessary for obtaining the data and inherent to the technology.
Authors contested Meta's new defense, claiming it was filed too late and circumvented discovery deadlines.
Meta countered that the fair use defense for BitTorrent sharing was not new and had been previously mentioned.
Authors admitted they were unaware of any direct replication of their content by Meta's models, undermining claims of market harm.
Meta emphasized its AI investments contribute to U.S. global leadership, framing the lawsuit as a broader challenge to AI development.
The court must decide whether Meta's 'fair use by technical necessity' defense is valid, a decision with implications for other AI-related lawsuits.

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