It's transformative. Not aimed at exact reproduction, so not in the scope of copyright law.

They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Their use of the BitTorrent protocol to acquire these files would not have been transformative.

> They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers.

Not necessarily. You can literally turn uploads off and leech torrents.

> They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers.

Did they?

Are you sure?

Meta argued in court that yes, they did upload when torrenting

> Meta’s reasoning is straightforward. Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works.

https://torrentfreak.com/uploading-pirated-books-via-bittorr...

I wonder which murderer will use that argument: "it wasn't my choice to shoot the person, it's just intrinsic to the technology that when pulling the trigger, the pistol fires"

SUPER interesting!

Especially since it ISN’T an inherent part of a the protocol - just the default of most clients.

Wonder if TF skipping pointing that out was intentional!

No, only in some instances maybe, they were mostly leechers.

I think you misread. There is nothing transformative about bittorrent automatically sharing parts of a file you're downloading with your peers.