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How do they get to the conclusion that AI uses are protected under the fair use doctrine and anything otherwise would be an "expansion" of copyright? Fairly telling IMO

EFF is bought and paid for. Not once does this piece mention that "AI" and humans are different and that a digital combine harvester mowing down and ingesting the commons does not need the same rights as a human.

It is not fair use when the entire output is made of chopped up quotes from all of humanity. It is not fair use when only a couple of oligarchs have the money and grifting ability to build the required data centers.

This is a another in the long lists of institutions that have been subverted. ACLU and OSI are other examples.

"Here's What to Do Instead" misleading title, no alternatives suggested. Just hand-wavey GenAI agitprop.

Let’s play out what the successful story looks like, for example in music generation:

* thousands of composers and musicians “contribute” their works for free to OpenAI and their ilk.

* models are trained and can produce movie scores, personalized sound tracks, etc

* the market for composers dwindles to a small sliver. Few if any choose to pursue it.

* OpenAI et al have a de facto monopoly on music creation.

* Soon the art of composition is lost. There are a few who can make a living as composers by selling their persona rather than their music. They actually just use OpenAI to write it for them.

Is that the future we want? Inevitable.

One of the few times I vehemently disagree with the EFF.

The problem is this article seems to make absolutely no effort to differentiate legitimate uses of GenAI (things like scientific and medical research) from the completely illegitimate uses of GenAI (things like stealing the work of every single artist, living and dead, for the sole purpose of making a profit)

One of those is fair use. The other is clearly not.