March 7, 2026
Pirates in Pinstripes
Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues
Meta says ‘we had to share while downloading’ and the internet loses it
TLDR: Meta now claims uploading pirated books via BitTorrent was fair use because it’s part of how torrents work and helped train its AI. Commenters are roasting the “the tech made me do it” defense, split between irony, outrage for authors, and jokes about pirates in suits.
Meta just told a judge that uploading pirated books to strangers while using BitTorrent is fair use — and the comments section went feral. The company says sharing happens automatically when you download with torrents, and it needed those shadow‑library book dumps (think Anna’s Archive) to train its chatbot. Cue the chorus: “So… crime but make it innovation?”
The community’s split between jaw-dropped irony and pure roast. One user summed up the vibe: in the old days activists defended piracy from Big Tech; now Big Tech is defending piracy from artists. Another dropped the meme-y classic: “oh how the tables have turned,” while a third remembered the 90s when the FBI chased guys selling bootleg DVDs — “and now it’s Silicon Valley in a suit.”
Critics pounced on Meta’s “the tech made me do it” line. A top reply argues that it’s easy to disable uploading, calling the defense “provably false.” Others went full courtroom comedy: one joker suggested the judge should “upload Meta’s lawyers to jail” because, you know, “that’s how the technology works.”
For context: last summer a court said using the books to train Llama (Meta’s chatbot) was fair use, but the question of sharing copies remained. Authors like Sarah Silverman are suing, and they’re mad Meta rolled out this new defense late. Drama level: seeding-to-maximum.
Key Points
- •A 2023 class-action by authors accuses Meta of using pirated books from shadow libraries to train AI without permission.
- •A prior ruling found Meta’s use of pirated books to train its Llama model qualified as fair use, but left direct infringement claims for BitTorrent transfers unresolved.
- •Meta now argues that uploading to others during BitTorrent downloads is also fair use because it is inherent to the protocol and necessary to obtain datasets available only via torrents (e.g., Anna’s Archive).
- •Meta characterizes any incidental uploading as “part-and-parcel” of acquiring works for a transformative fair-use purpose (LLM training) and says the data aided U.S. AI leadership.
- •Plaintiff authors filed a letter to Judge Vince Chhabria objecting that Meta’s new fair-use defense was introduced after discovery deadlines, asserting Rule 26(e) doesn’t permit adding new defenses late.