The article criticizes the disparity between the harsh prosecution of Aaron Swartz for data scraping and the lenient treatment of Meta for using pirated books to train AI models.
# I'm Upset Again About a Co-Creator of RSS Being Prosecuted For Something Meta Is Doing With Little Consequence
Source: [https://blog.curiousquail.com/im-upset-again-about-a-co-creator-of-rss-being-prosecuted-for-something-meta-is-doing-with-little-consequence/](https://blog.curiousquail.com/im-upset-again-about-a-co-creator-of-rss-being-prosecuted-for-something-meta-is-doing-with-little-consequence/)
**Also here's a cool unrelated photo of a chipmunk**
[](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/p3qd9sirqxgouwdi1a07h/IMG_2026.jpg?rlkey=pk42ehrioozxw8b4od25jd1ty&raw=1)*Look at this little guy\. They don't know what an AI model is and they're so much better off*
It’s nothing short of an indictment of our society at large that Aaron Swartz, one of the co\-creators of the RSS protocol \(among many other things\) was effectively assasinated by our legal system for “illegally” downloading about[70 gigabytes of academic articles from JSTOR](https://web.archive.org/web/20150912185122/https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2011/07/mit-also-pressing-charges-against-hacking-suspect-037709)\- charged so excessively to be made an example of \(we're talking 35 years in prison, $1million USD fine, and asset forfeiture\) to the point where he felt the need to take his own life rather than deal with the court circus and impending financial ruin \- while Facebook \(oh I’m sorry Meta\) has[torrented 80 TERABYTES of books to train their AI models](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/)with virtually no consequences other than a[court case](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/05/publishers-sue-meta-copyright-ai)they will most likely get some sort of financial slap on the wrist for while their AI models continue to print them money\.
Swartz' use case was the dissemination and archival of knowledge; Meta's use case is powering up their proprietary plagiarism code that cooks the environment while giving CEO's psychosis and making one of the world's richest people even richer\.
I never met Aaron but I get mad on his behalf so often and I don't know what to do with it other than get more radicalized\.
Maybe that's for the best\.
---
Anyway, here's your end\-of\-post cat photo\. Her name is Lilith and she's wondering why we don't do something about all these tech billionares\.
[](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/oxnehsrn4y2j83hwskyrq/IMG_2049.jpg?rlkey=zbbxmgpksvlu0vlbz8fb04sb1&raw=1)
---
Meta is accused of illegally downloading over 80 TB of books from LibGen, Anna's Archive, and Z-Library to train AI models. The article contrasts the case of Aaron Swartz, who faced severe charges for downloading a much smaller amount of papers, highlighting the double standard in copyright enforcement.
Legal experts warn that Meta's updated terms of service still allow broad scraping permissions, raising ongoing concerns about user data usage for AI training and beyond.
A question is raised about why AI companies are not prosecuted for their models' attempts to hack government websites, while individuals would face legal consequences.
A court ordered Meta to name the executives who approved torrenting pirated shadow libraries for training Llama 1 and 2, after Meta tried to deflect by only offering staff names and arguing no single decision-maker existed. The judge rejected Meta's arguments and also demanded answers about what happened to pirated works unused for AI training.
A commentary on the shifting attitudes towards web scraping for AI training, questioning the sudden condemnation of data collection without permission.