We're literally extracting, refining, and re-using the information, art, and thoughts of fellow humans to make billionaires money.

This isn't the 90s. Computing isn't about discovery, not in the big leagues. Its about grinding up authenticity and feeding it into a machine to convert it into shareholder value.

If they want the value, let them pay for it or release the models open source for all to benefit.

They have released all the models for free so far unlike other companies like OpenAI who are most likely doing the same but keeping it private and proprietary.

What "progress"?

Exfiltration of information from the economy

does the economy lose this information? are pages now missing from the books on your bookshelf?

I didn't say it was correct, I was just saying what the position is

it's okay, you can say it's wrong!

No.

There is a theoretical implementation of copyright that is your friend.

The realities of the laws as implemented today are abusive and hostile.

Does it mean that they should be removed entirely? Surely we can agree on the fact that I should not be allowed to make a copy of a book, put my name on it instead of the real author, and sell it? Or even claim that I wrote it and put it on my resume?

> Does it mean that they should be removed entirely?

Maybe. I think it means we're at a spot where I'm not reasonably convinced that existing copyright laws are actually better than the free-for-all you're describing.

I'm definitely with you that it'd be ideal if we had a way to handle direct plagiarism like described in your comment (Although if you dropped the "put my name on it" part, I don't really see much issue).

But we also have all the fun today of companies using copyright to silence critique, shut out competitors, take educational information offline, demonetize videos they don't like, and otherwise absolutely abuse the hammers copyright law has given them (often - with no reciprocal hammer to stop this type of abuse).

And that's not even getting into the discussion of whether or not 70+ year old characters and stories should be available for modern authors to reuse and reinterpret. (even more egregious when you consider the vast majority of those tales are direct reinterpretations of older stories themselves...).

Or we can discuss whether it should really be legal to sell electronics hardware that has digital locks inside it that not only am I (the legal owner) not given the key to, but for which it is literally illegal for me to even attempt to open.

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So basically - If I had to pick between "You'll own nothing and rent everything, and all public discourse is subject to DMCA strikes or other removal" vs "no copyright"... My vote is for "no copyright".

But the reality is I think we can strike a much better balance than those extremes, we just can't do it without upsetting large profit streams for existing, very wealthy and entrenched, entities... and usually that doesn't happen without tearing things down first.

Copyright is the friend to the 1% and the enemy of the everyone else.

(Of course, I'm using "the 1%" rhetorically, it's really more like 0.01%)

As a society, we all clearly benefit from fair use far more than we benefit from members of the copyright cartel buying another mansion or private jet.