"How do people not understand that some laws only make sense at a certain scale? "
Honestly, this is because its something that is basically never discussed or reasoned about. The closest I can think of is "personal use vs commercial use". But I'd love to see more about how to reason about how laws change at scale.
Laws do consider scale and we can see that in everyday law.
4 friends walk together, it's just normal. 400 "friends" walking can and will be treated differently.
Moving around with a couple of bills is treated differently from carrying huge bundles of cash.
Those laws or exceptions were probably added later as a reaction to abuse of existing laws.
The problem with AI/scraping is that we can't afford to be reactionary because it may be too late by the time we realize what has happened and change the law.
It will be too late because governments and judiciary have been largely about maintaining the status quo and minimizing disruption when it comes to big tech related cases even when they have been found guilty of wrongdoings. We already see the too big to fail vibes with AI.
Laws are typically implicitly considerate of scale. Very rarely are they explicitly considerate of scale.
To wit, sharing music digitally, Google scanning books, or Uber/Lyft providing unlicensed taxi services.
It's pretty rare that laws consider what should happen if it were suddenly possible to 10x or 100x preexisting throughput.
And specifically where laws balance multiple, often-opposed, stakeholders' interests, that change can drastically upset the previously negotiated compromise.
Which is why piracy at scale, before it's banned, tends to be a successful foundation for many businesses.
Murder, terrorism and genocide.
Simple possession of drugs vs possession with intent to distribute. In jurisdictions that make difference base on quantity (so, scale) alone.
I'm sure there's other examples too.
Theft was historically very scale-sensitive. In England you'd face execution for "grand larceny" if the goods in question were worth more than twelve pence. This was on the books from the 13th century until 1832 (!).
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, execution for stealing 12 pence worth of stuff? That's crazy! Adjusting for inflation[1][2], that would be the same as nowadays being executed for stealing £5!
[1] According to https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/education-resource..., 12 pence (1 shilling, or 1/20 of a pound)) in the old £sd system is equal to 5 pence (or £0.05) in the later decimal system.
[2] According to https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/in..., £0.05 (decimal) in 1832 would be equivalent to £5.02 in 2026 Aug.
When first introduced it was around the price of a sheep. The homicidal version of bracket creep [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket_creep
Damn, sheep were cheap back then.