[wpietri]

Yes, if one over-narrowly construes any analogy, it can be quickly dismissed. I suppose that's my fault for putting an analogy on the internet.

We've had copying technologies since people invented the pen. It was such an important activity that there were people who spent their whole lives copying texts.

With the rise of the printing press, copying became a significant societal concern, one so big that America's founders put copyright into the constitution. [1] The internet did add some new wrinkles, but if anything the surprise is is that most of the legal and moral thinking that predates it translated just fine to the internet age. That internet transmission happens to make temporary copies of things changed very little, and certainly not the broad principles.

I understand why Facebook and other people lining their pockets would like to claim that they are entitled to take what they want. But we don't have to believe them.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C8-1/...

[autoexec]

I don't think that facebook should be allowed to violate copyright law, but clearly they have the same rights as you do to copy works made publicly avilable on the internet.

[wpietri]

We are talking about more than the current law here. We're talking about what the law should be, based on what people see as right. And I'd add that Facebook is doing a lot more here than just quietly having a copy of something.

[autoexec]

If the concern isn't copyright infringement what would the new law be about? What's the harm people want solved? Is it just some philosophical objection, like people not liking the idea of other people doing something they don't like? Is it fear of future potential harms that haven't been seen in real life yet?

Is it just "someone else may be using what I published publicly to make money somehow in a way that is legal and doesn't infringe on my copyrights but I still don't like it because they aren't giving me a cut?" What would the new law look like?

[wpietri]

I think you haven't really grappled with how laws get made.

Copyright is a thing we made up because of "people not liking the idea of other people doing something they don't like". The current specific boundaries are a careful compromise about exactly when we protect "using what I published publicly to make money somehow".

Those boundaries in large part exist because of responses to specific technologies. Before the technologies, people didn't care. After, people got upset and then we changed the laws, or the court rulings that provide detailed meaning to the laws shifted.

As an example, you could look at moral rights, which are another intellectual property right the laws for which came much later than copyright. Or you could look at how intellectual property law around music has shifted in response to recording, and again in response to sampling. Or you could look at copyright for text, which was invented in response to the printing press. And more specifically in response to some people using pioneering technology to profit from other people's creative work.

And we might not need any changes in the law here. The people at OpenAI and elsewhere know they're doing something that could well be illegal. They've been repeatedly sued, and they've chosen to make deals with some data-holders. They wouldn't be paying for published data at all if they knew they were in the clear, but they've chosen to cut many deals with publishers powerful enough to sue. They're hoovering up data anyhow because, like too many startups, they've decided they'll do what they want and see if they can get away with it.