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134

Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 days ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Sure, porn-trained AI seems a core function.

Porn sites may have blown up Meta's key defense in a copyright fight with book authors who earlier this year said that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train its AI models.

Meta has defeated most of the authors' claims and claimed there is no proof that Meta ever uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on the BitTorrent network used to download training data. But authors still have a chance to prove that Meta may have profited off its massive piracy, and a new lawsuit filed by adult sites last week appears to contain evidence that could help authors win their fight, TorrentFreak reported.

The new lawsuit was filed last Friday in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings—which says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites that serve as "ethical sources" for adult videos that "are famous for redefining adult content with Hollywood style and quality."

After authors revealed Meta's torrenting, Strike 3 Holdings checked its proprietary BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to detect infringement of its videos and alleged that the company found evidence that Meta has been torrenting and seeding its copyrighted content for years—since at least 2018. Some of the IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, while others appeared to be "hidden," and at least one was linked to a Meta employee, the filing said.

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[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Top notch journalism. Even today, the "legit" sites either have an "I am over 18" button at best, and in general they just block users from states with more stringent requirements. Are we really supposed to hate seeders, just because arstechnica says so?

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 43 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They're pointing out the double standard.

If you seed porn, its a federal offense.

If Meta does it, its capitalism.

[–] MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

While I agree with you to a point, they didn't stop there or even bother to really make that point at all. They are escalating the seeding of porn to the willful distribution of porn to children. The fact its a corporation doing the seeding just makes for an easy target for such escalation.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 10 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Ars Technica is not asserting that themselves, that's the argument that Strike3 is making. Strike3 and other porn companies attack non-professional porn on these grounds as well, to try to kill their competition.