[paulmd]

The LinkedIn case already proves that you cannot impose conditions on works you freely serve to the public. The data is there to anyone who sends a request (you don’t even need to be logged in) and if they do something you don’t like with it then oh well.

So if that’s the argument it’s already been argued by LinkedIn and lost.

This is one of those things where copyright holders have gotten absurdly full of themselves though. Like what you’ve said is that copyright holders have the right to impose a contract of adhesion on data that they are broadcasting into the public without any idea with whom they are even forming a contract, and that’s a facially absurd and incredibly noxious idea if you follow it to the conclusions it implies.

Copyright is about securing to the public works of significance and encouraging their creation and the way it’s become a lifetime-plus-75-year guarantee of intellectual ownership of ideas is fundamentally noxious and goes against the intent and spirit of the idea. And if that’s where the copyright regime is headed then I’d rather see chatGPT kill off copyright entirely.