Because copyright is a tradeoff. Society wants information to be free. But authors won’t publish if anyone can republish their work for free. Hence the distinction: The ideas you write are not protected - only your expression is.
In a sense, AI changes nothing. Society profits from having AI just as it profits from having people learning from others. In both cases, those who stand on the shoulders of others still make money for themselves. But the economy as a file is richer, too, because people can choose to buy something better now that wasn’t available before.
Allowing AI companies to get away with this because we're "better off"¹ is like eating our seeds. Sure, we built something cool with the massive corpus available, but how will it affect future decisions to develop or share creative work?
If nothing else, a sense of justice tells me that if somebody's work directly helps create a profitable tool, that person should share some of the profit. The size of the share can be negotiated, but the AI companies didn't even reach out before the law suits. And even then, only to major sources of content (some of whom don't have the copyright for their content, just a limited license for distribution on a website and all the nitty gritty involved in that).
1: In a sense, a world with these models has more capabilities and is therefore better. But this is the real world with real people, who are emotional and competitive. So let's see how it actually plays out.
Agreed. The most damning behavior was Meta.
Specifically, reaching out and discussing licensing material, then pirating because it was too expensive/slow to legally acquire it.
Heaven forbid Meta have to pay for something.
> authors won’t publish if anyone can republish their work for free
There's plenty (even a majority?) of authors that publish and will continue to publish without any expectation of direct remuneration. Open source software developers and companies hiring such developers. Not-for-profit organisations increasing awareness of a cause. Private companies wanting to reach an audience for marketing reasons.[1] Government organisations. Researchers funded by government grants. Universities publishing books or coursework openly (they're in the business of selling their stamps on degrees, not selling books).
[1] Even includes the likes of Warner Music with CC-BY music videos on YouTube for some artists, seemingly for marketing reasons to try and build the name and following of a particular artist.
Again, incentives.
The people who publish are people who have reason to publish when they can be copied. Typically either they have already been paid, or they expect to gain market share by being free.
People who need renumeration to continue working will not publish.
Intellectual property rights, as much as I dislike the RIAA and MPAA, created a way for more players to enter the market, because it created a way for their needs to be met.
>Society profits from having AI
Not all of society at all. Let's discuss this when AI is better integrated and a large fraction of people are laid off in 5 years.