Wheelchair Worries - Can I Have My Money Back? Part 2

This isn't strictly wheelchair worries. This is MZ worries. Who or what is MZ? I have my suspicions, but it is a tough code to crack, I don't want to say in case I'm wrong. This is a follow up to a previous post I wrote about having money stolen from me on Facebook's platform. My several months of trying to get a resolution through their customer 'support' and failing, to issuing legal action against Facebook through the small claims court and receiving a letter from their lawyers telling me this is nothing to do with Facebook but with Meta. I had to stop pursuing or they would counter sue me. I won't continue to re-tell this story. If you want to know more then read the post Can I Have My Money Back?

I don't expect to ever see my stolen money again.

I stopped pursuing my money there and then. It was for a relatively low amount and as far as I was concerned it was slam dunk case. In fact it was barely even a case I assumed the money would have been returned there and then. Sorry, I appear to be retelling it. I was listening to the episode Did Mark Zuckerberg steal Richard's books from The Rest is Entertainment podcast...Argh! Sorry. I've just given away who MZ is haven't I? Sorry, I hate it when people reveal spoilers. Oh well, I doubt you were going to crack that code on your own.

On this episode I heard that a russian database called LibGen holds texts of tens of thousands copies of published books without permission. Facebook's parent company Meta has decided to train its advanced Artificial Intelligence engine, Llama 3, using the text of these books, rather than suffer the inconvenience of paying for the copyrighted material. 

Well, they are only worth an estimated $1.46trillion-dollars. The poor sods have barely got two cents to rub together. 

It has been revealed that Meta looked into licensing these books from publishers and found it wasn't particularly cheap.. Nor was it going to be quick. In a leaked email chain somebody says "it's really really important to get these books ASAP". A reply says "I've spoken to publishers and this seems unreasonably expensive and incredibly slow." A reply then comes from the mysterious MZ figure. He gives the OK to scrape the very illegal database Libgen. Another message says "doing this on my company laptop feels a bit wrong", in response they are re-assured "it's alright MZ says it's ok."

How much of this multi-billion dollar wealth isn't theirs? They say you have to make money to earn money, it obviously doesn't matter how you make that money..

I ended my previous post with this. It's probably not a question that needs asking as the CEO... Sorry this mysterious MZ figure would rather knowingly mine the data from an illegal website, for his own commercial gain, which is going to significantly add to his trillion dollar wealth.

This has all been uncovered by an article in The Atlantic. Meta's response to this, it's fair use. Whatever Llama 3 does with this it will create something new and original. Isn't this one of the major worries with AI? If it's used improperly by the worst people - I.E Meta - it will cause major problems. 

Meta are proving that if you're big enough and rich enough, laws mean nothing. They can break them, but to stop them they then hide behind the law and tie you up in court. They are untouchable and they know it. Or are they?

Has anybody thought of boycotting Facebook? All we need is the few billion users around the world to get on board... yea, they're untouchable actually.

Maybe if users around the world agree to not advertise on Facebook until I get my one-hundred-and-sixty odd quid back. There can only be a few hundred million of them!

So I've just wasted two minutes of your time by waffling on about an issue that is nothing to do with me or wheelchair worries.

You're welcome.

@fatpigeonsbook

@fatpigeonsbook