upvote
People could always simply argue in court that their torrenting was free use.

If you're just some nobody representing yourself instead of an expensive lawyer acting on behalf of a large company, maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

reply
Sadly, in many courts, when it comes to the corporate and the government, the judges rule on the axiom, "Show me your lawyer first, and I will rule, rather than show me the law, and I will rule".
reply
deleted
reply
> maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

The thing everybody ignores about this is context.

Suppose you upload a copy of a work to someone else over the internet for <specific reason>. Is it fair use? That has to depend on the reason, doesn't it? Aren't there going to be some reasons for which the answer is yes?

The "problem" here is that the reason typically belongs to the person downloading it. Suppose you're willing to upload a copy to anyone who has a bona fide legitimate fair use reason. Someone comes along, tells you that they have such a reason and you upload a copy to them. If they actually did, did you do anything wrong? What did you do that you shouldn't have done? How is this legitimate fair use copy supposed to be made if not like this?

But then suppose that they lied to you and had some different purpose that wasn't fair use. Is it you or them who has done something wrong? From your perspective the two cases are indistinguishable, so then doesn't it have to be them? On top of that, they're the one actually making the copy -- it gets written to persistent storage on their device, not yours.

It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader and not the non-fair-use downloader who is doing something wrong is some combination of "downloading is harder to detect" and that then the downloader who actually had a fair use purpose would be able to present it and the plaintiffs don't like that because it's not compatible with their scattershot enforcement methods.

reply
> It seems like the only reason people want to argue that it's the uploader

Well there's also the issue of enablement. If you're overly enthusiastic to turn a blind eye to illegal conduct you end up being labeled an accomplice. But of course that would seem to apply to Facebook here in equal measure.

reply
It has been often said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
reply
Judges often roll this line out, but in criminal court I've seen some defendants get epic deals by going without a lawyer [0] since absolutely nobody in the justice system wants to deal with the guy who has no idea what he's doing and is going to make the most bizarre arguments about being a sovereign citizen. So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible.

[0] I don't like to say "represent yourself." I once angered a judge by pointing out that you can't "represent yourself, you are yourself."

reply
> So they give them a really low offer and get them on their way as quickly as possible.

With a guilty plea. They don’t walk away without a conviction.

reply
Interesting point that I haven't thought about before, thanks for sharing.
reply
And a lawyer.
reply
Unless I'm mistaken, the relevant copyright laws aren't limited to enforcement when money exchanged hands.
reply
No, but it does matter how much money the alleged infringer has.

Property law is mostly concerned with protecting the rich from the poor, so when a rich person violates the property of a poor person, the courts can't allow the inversion of purpose and will create something called a "legal fiction," which is basically the kind of bending-over-backwards that my children do to try to claim that they didn't break the rules, actually, and if you look at it in a certain way they were actually following the rules, actually.

reply
This sort of thing used to be heavily downvoted on HN. How the site has changed in the last year.
reply
Yes, the VC-backed startup ecosystem that was the origin of this website does rely on propagating the myth that we live in a meritocracy to ensure it has enough cheap labor to build prototypes that its anointed few can acquire at rock bottom pricing. But we've been through enough cycles of it now that we've started seeing the patterns.
reply
> rock bottom pricing

Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it.

Browsing in a thrift store can be very enlightening!

reply
> Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it.

Is a human life literally worthless, because they never pay to be born?

The map is not the territory, the price is not the value.

reply
History clearly establishes that the open market assigns substantial value to human life. We just happen to have outlawed trading in it. Human life has been deemed worthless by force of law.

Less facetiously, you're committing a semantic error.

reply
Some people will pay a great deal to have a baby. Some will pay to abort their baby.

What value something has is totally dependent on who is valuing it.

More formally, it's the Law of Supply and Demand.

reply
It can be empirically observed that human lives are not assigned much value when choosing to start a war.
reply
> Value is not set by what you put into it, it is set by what people are willing to pay for it.

What do you base that belief upon?

reply
Have you ever bought something that you didn't think was worth the money at the time?
reply
"Markets clear" is one of those meritocracy myths that we the hoi paloi get taught explicitly all the while the elite will tell you to your face they don't believe. Google and Meta are massively profitable companies built on the idea that the concept of value is manipulable.
reply
Where did you get the idea that those ideas are mutually exclusive?
reply
maybe the judge will even try to be extra nice when he explains why the argument doesn't hold water.

Many judges take a dim view of expensive lawyers trying to pull the wool over their eyes with sophisticated but fallacious arguments. You have to deal with a lot of BS to be a long-standing judge, so it seems like resistance to BS may be selected for among judges.

reply
Sorting BS from non-BS is pretty much the daily job description for a judge.
reply
Of course not. It is just yet another example of a 7-8 figure expensive attorney and their billions dollar corporation wasting everyone' time, tax payers dollars, and demonstrating that the law applies to us and not them. I expect them to just stop showing up in court in time. What can the court do when these people own the people that write the laws?
reply
There really should be some type of panel for frivolous legal arguments. If they are used by corporation all of the lawyers, leadership and shareholders involved are thrown into jail. Could even get jury on this and have them give majority opinion.
reply
That seems like a bad idea to me.
reply