That's an interesting way to look at it, however on reflection I think I usually wanted to "weaken copyright" because it would empower individuals versus entrenched rent-seeking interests.
If it's only OK to scrape, lossy-compress, and redistribute book-paragraphs when it gets blended into a huge library of other attempts, then that's only going to empower big players that can afford to operate at that scale.
The big companies will sign lucrative data sharing deals with each other and build a collective moat, while open source models will be left to rot. Copyright for thee but not for me.
> for the first time in a century there is more money to be made in weakening copyright rather than strengthening it
Nope. The law will side with whoever pays the most. Once OpenAI solidifies its top position, only then will regulations kick in. Take YouTube, for example—it grew thanks to piracy. Now, as the leader, ContentID and DMCA rules work in its favor, blocking competition. If TikTok wasn’t a copyright-ignoring Chinese company, it would’ve been dead on arrival.
We're already seeing it in things like Google buying rights to Reddit data for training. It's already happening. Only companies who can afford to pay will be building AI, so Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
You’re both correct. The legal system has absolutely no idea how to handle the copyright issues around using content for AI training data. It’s a completely novel issue. At the same time, the tech companies have a lot more money to litigate favorable interpretations of the law than the content companies.
