[CamperBob2]

At this point they've contributed a reasonably-fair share of open-source code themselves.

No one benefits from locking up 99.999% of all source code, including most of Microsoft's proprietary code and all GPL code.

No one.

When it comes to AI, the only foreseeable outcome to copyright maximalism is that humans will have to waste their time writing the same old shit, over and over, forever less one day [1], because muh copyright!!!1!

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[Retric]

> only foreseeable outcome to copyright maximalism

Nahh, AI companies had plenty of money to pay for access they simply chose not to.

[CamperBob2]

Clearing those rights, which don't actually exist yet, would have been utterly impossible for any amount of money. Thousands of lawyers would tie up the process in red tape until the end of time.

[Retric]

The basic premise of the economy is people do stuff for money. Any rights holder debating with their punishing house or whatever just means they don’t get paid. Some trivial number of people would opt out, but most authors or their estates would happily take an extra few hundred dollars per book.

YouTube on the other hand has permission from everyone uploading videos to make derivative works barring some specific deal with a movie studio etc.

Now there’s a few exceptions like large GPL works but again diminishing returns here, you don’t need to train on literally everything.