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When Aaron Swartz, the internet activist and co-founder of Reddit, downloaded millions of academic articles from JSTOR in 2010, he wasn’t trying to profit or build a product. His goal was simple: to make information accessible to everyone. Swartz’s fight for open access would ultimately lead to his tragic death in 2013, but his legacy continues to spark debates around the ethics of information sharing and the limits of copyright law.

Fast forward to 2025, and the conversation has taken on a new, corporate twist. Recently unsealed emails have implicated Meta (formerly Facebook) in a sprawling copyright infringement case, alleging that the company illegally downloaded and seeded millions of pirated books to train its AI models. Unlike Swartz, whose actions were rooted in activism and transparency, Meta’s motivations appear far more commercial—and far less idealistic.

Meta’s Torrenting Scandal: What Happened?

Last month, Meta admitted to torrenting massive datasets from shadow libraries like LibGen and Z-Library, repositories notorious for hosting pirated academic and literary works. But it wasn’t until this week, when internal emails were made public, that the scale of Meta’s actions became clear. According to the authors’ lawsuit, Meta torrented more than 81.7 terabytes of data, including 35.7 terabytes from LibGen and Z-Library, and an additional 80.6 terabytes previously downloaded from LibGen.

In these emails, Meta engineers expressed discomfort with the practice. “Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right,” wrote research engineer Nikolay Bashlykov in April 2023, adding a nervous emoji to soften the blow. But by September, the tone had shifted to more formal legal concerns, with Bashlykov warning that seeding pirated content—an inherent part of torrenting—could be illegal. Despite these warnings, the company allegedly continued its torrenting activities, even taking steps to conceal its seeding by avoiding Facebook servers and operating in what internal messages referred to as “stealth mode.”

Aaron Swartz’s Legacy: Open Access vs. Corporate Piracy

The parallels between Aaron Swartz’s case and Meta’s current legal troubles are striking—but the motivations couldn’t be more different. Swartz believed that knowledge, especially publicly funded academic research, should be freely accessible to all. His actions were a form of civil disobedience, challenging a system that monetized information at the expense of the public good.

Meta, on the other hand, appears to have exploited pirated materials not to democratize access to knowledge, but to enhance its AI capabilities—and, by extension, its bottom line. The company’s defense hinges on the claim that training AI models on pirated books constitutes “fair use,” a legal argument that has yet to be fully tested in court. But the revelation that Meta not only downloaded but also seeded these pirated books complicates its defense, opening the door to direct copyright infringement claims.

This raises an uncomfortable question: Is there a moral difference between Swartz’s activist-driven data sharing and Meta’s corporate-driven data piracy? For many, the answer lies in intent. Swartz aimed to liberate information for the public good; Meta, critics argue, is leveraging stolen content to maintain its dominance in the tech industry.

The Slippery Slope of AI and Copyright

At the heart of both cases is a larger, unresolved question about the role of copyright in the digital age. The rise of AI has intensified these debates, as companies like Meta scrape vast amounts of copyrighted content to train their models. While the courts have yet to definitively rule on whether this constitutes fair use, the ethical implications are murky.

Meta’s case could set a precedent for how AI companies use copyrighted materials in the future. If the courts side with Meta, it could open the floodgates for other tech giants to follow suit, effectively normalizing the use of pirated data in AI development. Conversely, a ruling against Meta could force the industry to rethink its data practices, potentially stifling innovation but safeguarding intellectual property rights.

A Cautionary Tale for the Tech Industry

While Aaron Swartz became a martyr for the open access movement, Meta’s legal troubles paint a cautionary tale for corporations pushing the boundaries of copyright law. The company’s attempt to operate in “stealth mode” while torrenting pirated books suggests an awareness of the legal risks, but also a willingness to gamble with those risks in pursuit of technological advancement.

As this case unfolds, it serves as a stark reminder that the battle over information access is far from over. Whether driven by activism or corporate ambition, the lines between ethical data use and copyright infringement remain blurred. And while Swartz fought for transparency, Meta’s alleged actions highlight how that same fight can be co-opted in service of profit.

In the end, the courts will decide whether Meta’s actions were a bold exercise of fair use or a blatant act of piracy. But the broader question—how we balance innovation with intellectual property rights—remains a challenge for the digital age, one that Swartz himself might have found both familiar and deeply troubling.

Prompt: Read the article and write a new one linking to Aaron Swartz!
(“Torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn’t feel right”: Meta emails unsealed)