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Comment by otterley

9 months ago

Both the headline and the theme of the story are incorrect and misleading. Meta isn’t claiming that everything they’re doing is lawful. They’re claiming that their activities don’t run afoul of a particular California state law, CDAFA, and section 1202(b)(1) of the DMCA.

It’s very common in litigation for the plaintiff to accuse the defendant of every violation they might be guilty of or liable for (“throwing the book at them”), and for defendants then to systematically try to strip them away.

As far as I know, Meta is not yet claiming their activities were completely lawful.

Here is the actual filing: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Kadre...

14 comments

otterley

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JKCalhoun  9 months ago

Feels like their defense for some state incursion is an admission of a larger crime. I still don't get it.

I'm not going to murder someone, steal their car, then put out a statement that I was unaware the car had expired tags and I shouldn't be prosecuted for it.

  • grayhatter  9 months ago

    Is this your first experience/exposure to the us legal system?

    Defending yourself from an accusation using a hypothetical admission doesn't actually admit to it. e.g. I didn't murder anyone, and I didn't steal that car, but if even if I did murder them, and steal their car, the car's expired tags wouldn't apply to me because [reason].

    If you care about justice, you want to enable every truth to come out, and be decided on. If you prohibit someone from making an argument, because it might imply something that is separate, you limit the the possible outcomes to something strictly less fair. If someone did murder a person them and took their car, they should be prosecuted for that, but just because you did commit crime a, and crime b, doesn't mean you should be convicted of crime c. Even if crime c is the least significant. That's still not just.

  • gosub100  9 months ago

    A YouTube video I saw talked about the charges faced by the accused killer of the United Healthcare CEO.

    Aside from murder , he faced:

    - criminal possession of a weapon

    - illegal possession of a silencer

    - illegal possession of an automatic weapon (it wasn't full auto, but somehow due to the large capacity magazine, NY state considers it an automatic weapon)

    So had he used a hammer or a knife, he might be able to get out again because murderers in NYS can be out in as little as 20 years. But all the firearms charges can effectively double his sentence.

  • BeetleB  9 months ago

    Of course you will if you've been caught and charges are being filed and there's evidence you were in the car.

tiahura  9 months ago

Won't named plaintiffs have the burden of proving meta actually seeded blocks containing their works? How could they ever do that?

  • otterley  9 months ago

    The plaintiffs do have the burden of proof, but there are many ways to Rome. Any evidence they can find, whether it be packet captures, client and server logs, incriminating emails, or even admissions, will be proffered to the court and/or jury.

    • tiahura  9 months ago

      many ways to Rome

      Fair enough, but I wouldn't be surprised if none of those methods pan out.

      1) Given the timeline, it seems unlikely that anyone was doing a packet capture.

      2) Why would anyone at META have been paying attention to, or logging, which blocks were being seeded and which weren't? Who would have personal knowledge such that they could admit that transmission didn't seed the declaration of independence 6 million times?

      1 reply →

  • papercrane  9 months ago

    The plaintiffs will, eventually, need to prove that their claim is likely true ("preponderance of the evidence" standard.) Right now they're fighting about expanding discovery to try and uncover more evidence.

braiamp  9 months ago

> 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.

They are addressing both the second and third counts. The "Direct Copyright Infringement" isn't being addressed by these claims. This is even quoted on the filing you provided:

https://torrentfreak.com/images/seedingprecautions.jpg.webp