> then used that material to generate billions of dollars which they kept for themselves?
Hasn't it also lead to distilled, free and open models that everyone can benefit from?
A courtesy. There was never any need to justify it.
> Isn't that at least something?
Yes, it's a joke. Why do they get to infringe copyrights with impunity while normal people get destroyed? Either go after them like the copyright industry always does and punish them properly, or abolish copyright straight up. This "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense is straight up disgusting.
> How many people pirating software ever settled with the companies they "victimized?"
Too many to list. Also, nobody is victimizing billion dollar corporations.
I mean, what is this? Their balls suddenly drop off? They only have the audacity to prosecute random people? Smaller companies? When they're up against trillion dollar AI companies they suddenly become cowards? That's so incredibly disgusting, and it made me completely lose even the small amount of respect for copyright that I had managed to rationalize over the years.
So either enforce the law the same way against everyone correctly and proportionally, or your law and its enforcement are illegitimate and shouldn't exist. If some activity is harmless enough for some billionaires to do at massive scales and settle in court like it was some footnote in history, then nobody should be punished for it at all.
No that's not something. That's just having infinitely more money to fight legal battles.
The AI companies knew that and bet, correctly, that it would be worth the cost.
1. The copyright infringement of big corpos fully justifying my copyright infringement in the face of law
2. The copyright infringement of big corpos being prosecuted in the same exact way as my copyright infringement would.
There is really no middle ground.