> Either prosecute copyright infringement or don't
This is the absolute core of the issue. Technical people see law as code, where context can be disregarded and all that matters is specifying the outputs for a given set of inputs.
But law doesn’t work that way, and it should not work that way. Context matters, and it needs to.
If you go down the road of “the law is the law and billion dollar companies working on product should be treated the same as individual consumers”, it follows that individuals should do SEC filings (“either require 10q’s or don’t!”), and surgeons should be jailed (“either prosecute cutting people with knives or don’t!”).
There is a lot to dislike about AI companies, and while I believe that training models is transformative, I don’t believe that maintaining libraries of pirated content is OK just because it’s an ingredient to training.
But insisting that individual piracy to enjoy entertainment without paying must be treated exactly the same as datasets for model training is the absolute weakest possible argument here. The law is not that reductive.
This is the absolute core of the issue. Technical people see law as code, where context can be disregarded and all that matters is specifying the outputs for a given set of inputs.
But law doesn’t work that way, and it should not work that way. Context matters, and it needs to.
If you go down the road of “the law is the law and billion dollar companies working on product should be treated the same as individual consumers”, it follows that individuals should do SEC filings (“either require 10q’s or don’t!”), and surgeons should be jailed (“either prosecute cutting people with knives or don’t!”).
There is a lot to dislike about AI companies, and while I believe that training models is transformative, I don’t believe that maintaining libraries of pirated content is OK just because it’s an ingredient to training.
But insisting that individual piracy to enjoy entertainment without paying must be treated exactly the same as datasets for model training is the absolute weakest possible argument here. The law is not that reductive.