"seem to be" carries semantic meaning here: I'm stating my interpretation of the situation based on data we have available (which is limited) and my prior.
Put another way: "We can't say that for sure, but my money is on it not being a simple case of intellectual property theft"
> We don't have enough accurate knowledge to say [one way or the other], and it doesn't seem to be the case at all [based on our incomplete knowledge].
But it is in no way equivalent to this:
> We can't say that for sure, but my money is on it not being a simple case of intellectual property theft
That is a different sentence.
No, it's an aggravated case, since it's the same way they got all of their training data in the first place.
Apparently if I use lib-gen, that's copyright infringement and I'm exposed to legal risk but it seems fine to download all of it if your intent is "train an AI" so far.