Comment by stevage
9 months ago
> 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.
Are they actually claiming only that they didn't share after the torrent completed? Or is the journalist just confused?
My understanding with bittorrent is that normally during download you are also uploading. "Seeding" is just what the uploading part is called when you're not also downloading.
I think it is possible to download without doing any uploading at all, but I feel like the onus of proof should be on them to show that they actually did that.
You're right that torrent clients typically share during downloading, although one might limit this by limiting the upload bandwidth.
However, while we have no idea the lengths that Meta went to (or not), I suspect they have the engineering chops to fork and tweak their own 'download-only' torrent client.
But that’s not quite how the law works. Meta’s response here is “you have no evidence of any wrongdoing”.
The fact we’re even discussing this shows that there’s at least some doubt that Meta could be successfully prosecuted for downloading alone.
With regards to uploading, legally speaking, it sounds like they’re right. Generally, the presumption of innocence means that whoever’s doing the accusing carries the burden of proof, and without any evidence that Meta did anything wrong, it also sets a worrying precedent that Meta would proactively have to prove their innocence in the face of no evidence to the contrary.
I think it's possible with the optimistic unchoking feature of BT but it would be slow and rely on generous clients.
But at the end of the day I don't think Meta care enough. They see themselves as being above the law and likely didn't seed 'more than necessary' only because it didn't benefit them.
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