Meta Reuploaded 30% of Pirated Books It Downloaded for AI Training, Participating in Digital Piracy - WinBuzzer

"New expert findings suggest that Meta may have played a larger role in digital book piracy than previously understood. While it has long been reported that the company used pirated books from shadow libraries to train its AI models, a recent analysis indicates that roughly 30% of the books Meta obtained via BitTorrent were subsequently reuploaded.

This raises fresh legal and ethical concerns about the company’s role in sustaining digital piracy.

BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer structure means that when a file is downloaded, it is also often uploaded in small portions for other users.

However, experts say that Meta’s upload rate was unusually high, suggesting that the company may have inadvertently contributed to the ongoing distribution of pirated books.

While AI developers have argued that training on publicly available texts falls under fair use, these findings complicate the discussion—Meta may not have just used pirated materials; it may have also helped spread them...."