Meta pirated books to train its AI (opens in new tab)

Well, the fruit of it, Llama 3, is public. Maybe it comes with some sort of license, but considering how it was made, I wouldn't feel guilty about violating it.

Then again, I would happily train a model on Anna's Archive myself without feeling guilty about it, if I had the resources to do so.

I think it ranks very, very low on the list of bad things Facebook has done.

I think you are right on all counts, but it doesn't make me depressed, it's just the way humanity moves forward.

Since deepseek it's clear that regulary capture just doesn't work in this case, only pure competition. If USA doesn't let NVIDIA sell GPUs to the world, Huawei will be happy to in a few years.

It is the golden rule. Whoever has the gold rules. Laws are for mortals, while big-tech can do whatever they please while channeling their masculine energy. Basically, behave in a self-serving manner violating basic norms such as dont do unto others what you dont want done to you.

As content gets polluted with ai-garbage, human-generated content will regain value.

Here is a startup idea: A startup that protects creator's content from violations. For a nominal subscription fee, ensure content is not ripped off on major social platforms and AI. Track regulations in different jurisdictions, and keep a legal team on the beat. Sue big-tech for damages when found. ie, police for the creators.

HN - take it and run.

I think it is a good thing to undermine copyright by creating various carve-outs that will eventually make it untenable to maintain, which is probably one of the faster ways to reform the obsolete system.

Piracy doesn't care about borders, and if US firms don't do it, Chinese firms will. It is a national competitiveness issue in that sense, which is the easiest argument to get the government to do things to weaken copyright.

Laying the groundworks for the eventual defeat of MAFIAA is a great benefit to society if it happens, and in my opinion outweighs the nonexistent "damage" they did. There wouldn't be llama if they didn't pirate the books, and the authors won't get paid anything either. Bonus points if we can get rid of DRM anti-circumvention as well.

For what it's worth Facebook doesn't seem to be doing the regulatory capture part, unlike "Open"AI and Anthropic.

Often it happens because there is a lot of market demand for the thing they are doing even if there are regulations against it, so you get Uber instead of normal taxis because the taxi service was no good, in this case you get informed AI instead of the information being tied up in court battles for years. So often the benefits to society do outweigh the cons, though not necessarily in every case.

I've been quite glad of Ubers and LLMs. I think it would be good if the LLMs could read the stuff Google Books scanned but was unable to make public. (this stuff https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/67fkkj/somewhere_at_...)

No, you're just right, and you should feel upset about it. Think about the systems and incentives that create this outcome. Think about what needs to change for better outcomes to be possible. Find people and work towards those goals.

The benefits to society outweigh the cons. If AI and copyright are really destined to fight each other -- an exercise in question-begging if there ever was one -- then copyright must lose.

If only because any other outcome will radically empower corporations (and entire countries!) that don't GAF about copyright.

There. We good?

Nah, you are right it is that simple. It was like that for years.

Russians have a phrase for this: "Never ask a billionaire how they made their first million".

I can't prove you wrong and I don't think there is any benefit to society when a company with a black box doesn't give back to the community (aka humanity as a whole) and doesn't pay anyone. Copyright may be broken, but the only realistic way to encourage creators is to give them money. We don't live in a utopia, and people need money to eat.

Also, in France and as an individual, if I were to openly torrent all the content of Libgen or Anna's Archive, I would have to spend the rest of my life in jail whereas Zuck can enjoy having more billions with the same behavior.

Some kind of rant: The world is truly fucked right now if such behaviors are rewarded, but at my grand old age of almost 50, I'm starting to move away from all this and it's relaxing: I live a simpler life, I buy from small creators, and I learn whatever I want. I have also gained a lot of time that I can now spend by helping people around me. Life can be fun if you ignore that you'll never be in control of all the bad behaviors around you.

Downloading pirated material isn't illegal in the U.S., sharing it is.

Let’s look at this like food, instead of knowledge. You ate a donut, and you got energy. Maybe you’ve eaten 5 donuts per year, for 20 years…so a hundred donuts. Maybe you didn’t pay for all of them, you got some at work or at a friends house.

They stole a billion donuts.

You paid for those books though, presumably.

this is similar to situation of War - obviously "wrong" actions bring an advantage that cannot be undone, the winners press onwards without pause.. crowds and commentators are left red in the face and helpless. Extra bonus credit -- the economic empires being built with the wins will have this approach to society built-in .. ordinary becomes normal.

Instead use Chinese AI which pirated the same?

I'm pretty sure Facebook/Meta isn't earning any profits from this. They are mostly doing it to "commoditize their complement" and probably prevent the rise of another company to the Big Tech status.

Tax doesn't reward the authors. Especially foreign authors.

> [D]ownloading with BitTorrent typically involves uploading to other users simultaneously.

The key word here is "typically". Mutual sharing is designed into the protocol itself, particularly in the early seeding period, where higher priority is given to peers that re-share their portions of the torrent.

Yes, you can turn off uploads, but that's not the default in any client I've ever used. So I don't see anything wrong with saying the typical user will re-upload files.

Llama models are open weights, so all is well

It does if you want AI to write fantasy prose with wizards.

That's a very interesting and refreshing take. But that's the culture that has been nurtured in the capitalist present - climb up to the top and push the ladder behind you.

Sure it can:

"Meta's internal culture is seemingly hostile to ethical practice".