"This training data is available for free, but if you want to train your AI on it you need to pay" => Which means only Google, Microsoft, Meta and Disney will be able to train AIs.
Thanks to lawyers, a technology that had the promise to democratize art will be used by large corporations to enslave us further.
That's backwards. Do you think these companies are actually willing to negotiate deals with each artist, content creator, website, and code repository? The scale of that alone would sink their business, not to mention the cost.
Worst case scenario - you're right, they're willing to go through that and the authors actually get paid something rather than nothing.
1) That only applies to images, and crucially 2) content on those websites is published under various licenses that often require attribution, payment, or stipulate non-commercial use.
Thanks to lawyers, a technology that had the promise to democratize art will be used by large corporations to enslave us further.