Copyright law only considers illegal ownership of a work, so the crime - or tort - was making/acquiring copies without permission or payment.
Training from copies has been ruled fair use because it's "transformative" and not simply "derivative."
This is obviously debatable, but that's where the debate is at the moment.
So basically because they just browsed and used the information that was mostly public on the internet and they didnt copy it, they just learned from it and thats fine. Which makes sense. None of the llms let u copy someones work exactly anyways... makes total sense honestly. So in this case what happens to distilling? Is that also learning or ur trying to get to their actual weights by kind of reverse engineering it? Where would the argument fall there?
> but that's where the debate is at the moment.
Because of the rulings of a couple of judges. Is that actually what the majority of people think?
> Copyright law only considers illegal ownership of a work
That's definitely not true. File sharing, for example, is illegal even if you legally own the original copy you're sharing.
Similarly, copyright has something to say if I read a legal copy of harry potter and then create a new work in that world.
> Because of the rulings of a couple of judges. Is that actually what the majority of people think?
There's a good reason for the law not to be based on what the majority thinks.