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If big companies are allowed to pirate content to train their models, so do I. I have to train my brain after all

Is watching pirated movies for "educational purposes" also Fair Use? If not , what is the rational argument?

Using copyrighted material for massive profit can be fair use so long as a billionaire's (or billionaire funded) company is doing it.

At the risk of sounding smug, obviously. Whether or not something is fair use has never been related to how it was obtained, only how it's used.

Fair use is an affirmative, after-the-fact defense.

> prominent intellectual property law professors

These guys are part of the problem IMHO. Having studied some law at university and then reading all of Lawrence Lessig's works when he dissected IP law 20 years ago for the Creative Commons project, I was left with the distinct feeling that "IP law" is ugly, unfair, arbitrary, ineffective, crippling to the mind, and devastating to progress and the economy.

I now strongly agree with the likes of Richard Stallman that "intellectual property" is a grotesque and bankrupt mess that should be avoided if you want to have any semblance of a mature conversation.

Actually, people training AI have a point. New technologies expose the silliness of bad ideas we've clung to for three centuries. And the only way forward is to hugely reform or repeal most of IP law for EVERYONE.

The truth is that long before the Statute of Anne "copyright" has its roots in censorship and political control. We used to burn the printers of "seditious works" on pyres of their own books in St James' square in London.

Much of "IP law" still functions the same today but hidden behind a cover story about "protecting creators".

I now mentally substitute the phrases "intellectual property" with "coercive control of information" (CCI).

CCI gets to the nub of power relations instead of pretending we have nice IP "laws" that are applied uniformly. In reality copyright, patents and trademarks have become tools of censorship and denial for those with money, and they do almost nothing to protect individual creators. Things like the DMCA are simply monstrous. If we can't reform and enforce it to actually protect creators it's time to scrap the whole rotten show in my opinion.

Whilst I'm generally not against piracy - I think there are valid reasons as to why it's a thing - I can't help but feel like disguising pirating content under the veil of fair use is a bit far fetched and disingenuous.

Using copyrighted material in a fair use way seems fine to me and is important. But these companies not wanting to pay for creating their model and then just claiming fair use is silly.