If what you’re calling “human progress” involved something other than continued concentration of capital in the hands of the few at the expense of the many, then I would agree with you. To me, it seems more like the rich using technology to steal from the poor.
That's exactly my point. Copyright maximalism, which is suddenly suspiciously fashionable on HN, is a recipe for elevating powerful incumbents (and foreign powers who DGAF about copyright) to a level of control from which they will never be dislodged.
Premature decisions about "ethics" and reckless regulation by captive legislators will have an outsized influence on the future, which is why certain players are pushing so hard for both. They appear to have plenty of useful idiots in their corner, judging by how these threads typically play out.
That's unfortunate. Your attitude will end up empowering those you disagree with. By the time you understand who benefits from your position and why they are doing everything they can to encourage you to think that way, it will be far too late.
I'm not going to "keep doing this," but you can bet others are. Whining about alienation and 200-year-old copyright law isn't going to accomplish anything.
People have no idea what's coming. The personal computer was the biggest deal since electricity. The Internet was the biggest deal since Gutenberg. Large language models are the biggest deal since fucking Aristotle.
Nothing will look the same in 20 years. Absolutely nothing. Whatever you're clinging to now won't be there after the storm, so you'd better learn to swim.