Big Tech is lobbying for anarchy in IP.
Goodwins 6/8 [Rupert Goodwins; tech editor and journalist for 36 years; 6-8-24; Breaking rules is in tech's blood – time to break the habit; The Register; https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/08/opinion_column_ai_ip/; 7-25-2024; AO]
We're now back full circle, except that while Gates helped himself to a few sheets of fanfold, Redmond's AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is claiming dibs on the open web and the content therein. It's "fair use" because of the "social contract" that anyone can copy anything – a novel legal argument of the sort only 1980s cyberpunks and 21st century giant corporations can make. Spoiler: Cyberpunk is dead and today's version rarely ends well either.
It's also remarkably short-sighted. It says that a huge body of work that absolutely does have copyright protection has had it removed by stealth. It hasn't; it is simply in Big AI's interests to strip legal protection from AI training data. Or so it thinks. In the indecent race to eat the world, those jockeying the apocalyptic horses either don't realize or don't care that lobbying for more anarchy in IP weakens protection they rely on.