[williamcotton]

I mentioned VCRs specifically because in 1976 Universal Studios sued Sony over the claims that because Sony manufactured a device that could be used for copyright infringement the company was liable for infringement committed by consumers of Betamax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....

Take a note of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court ruling:

> The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home.[7] [...] [W]hen one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work... and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact... that the entire work is reproduced... does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use.

Stable Diffusion is also capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses. It is to be expected that the lower courts will continue to follow the precedence set by the Supreme Court that there is a clear distinction between a mechanical device capable of making copies and the distribution of those copies.

To put in the context of Stable Diffusion, this is why legal experts keep saying there are two things to consider: The model, which is almost guaranteed to be protected by fair use, and the outputs of the model, in which the users of the model are liable for any copyright infringement.