"It's perfectly OK for a police officer to observe a street corner, see crime happening, and go take action, therefore, building a complete, panopticon surveillance system that watches all street corners simultaneously and deploys police to take action, is perfectly OK, too, since that is exactly the same thing."

4 friends walk together, it's just normal. 400 "friends" walking can and will be treated differently.

Moving around with a couple of bills is treated differently from carrying huge bundles of cash.

Those laws or exceptions were probably added later as a reaction to abuse of existing laws.

The problem with AI/scraping is that we can't afford to be reactionary because it may be too late by the time we realize what has happened and change the law.

It will be too late because governments and judiciary have been largely about maintaining the status quo and minimizing disruption when it comes to big tech related cases even when they have been found guilty of wrongdoings. We already see the too big to fail vibes with AI.

Simple possession of drugs vs possession with intent to distribute. In jurisdictions that make difference base on quantity (so, scale) alone.

I'm sure there's other examples too.

If nothing else, a sense of justice tells me that if somebody's work directly helps create a profitable tool, that person should share some of the profit. The size of the share can be negotiated, but the AI companies didn't even reach out before the law suits. And even then, only to major sources of content (some of whom don't have the copyright for their content, just a limited license for distribution on a website and all the nitty gritty involved in that).

1: In a sense, a world with these models has more capabilities and is therefore better. But this is the real world with real people, who are emotional and competitive. So let's see how it actually plays out.

There's plenty (even a majority?) of authors that publish and will continue to publish without any expectation of direct remuneration. Open source software developers and companies hiring such developers. Not-for-profit organisations increasing awareness of a cause. Private companies wanting to reach an audience for marketing reasons.[1] Government organisations. Researchers funded by government grants. Universities publishing books or coursework openly (they're in the business of selling their stamps on degrees, not selling books).

[1] Even includes the likes of Warner Music with CC-BY music videos on YouTube for some artists, seemingly for marketing reasons to try and build the name and following of a particular artist.

Not all of society at all. Let's discuss this when AI is better integrated and a large fraction of people are laid off in 5 years.

I think that part is debatable

Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s start with redistributing the profits from AI companies and then move on to all profits from all companies because the logic is the same.

I.E. Anthropic can not pirate a bunch of books and then use those for training, but it can legally purchase the same books and then use those purchased books for training.

Would you rather resurrect IP law, or find some new way to pay creators, then finish killing it?

But it didn't change form much. Still around 50 million people enslaved nowadays.

I'm guessing it's people knee-jerking that you're being political?

I can't understand the people who don't see it.

The data centers strain the power grids then electricity costs go up for everyone else. This is de facto a regressive tax because everyone needs electricity and the poor pay proportionately more of their income for the increased cost.

Live in San Francisco? Probably not now unless you're rich because of the skyrocketing cost of living due to Tech and AI money. Another de facto regressive tax, driving away other people.

Environmental damage? The poor are the most impacted and the least able to absorb the costs. Do they have the property or renter's insurance to protect them from these disasters? Another de facto regressive tax.

Need a new phone? Or a computer? Same problem.

Want to dabble in AI? You're not going to get too far on $20/month. It's mostly a wealthy person's game.

Or there are the statistics that the vast majority of successful founders from up upper middle class families or wealthier.

Wealth centralization is what our economic system does. The purpose of a system is what it does. If it wasn't, the system would have been changed.

This sounds rather obvious, but I feel people forget it far too often.