> Especially its application to creative works contradicts thousands of years of the development of human culture. Consider folk songs.
First, let’s note that creative work includes a lot more than just arts (crucially, invention).
In music, by your logic you may disagree with recognising song composition as IP, but you have to agree that being able to earn royalties from businesses playing your performance (even if it is a cover) serves as a proxy to people coming to listen and express their appreciation to a performer back when audio recording didn’t exist.
Also, let’s distinguish IP in general and its current legal implementation, such as protections lasting longer than author’s life. It should be noted that complexity in art did also grow since then, but it may or may not (I have no strong opinion here) make sense to grant the author post-humous protections.
> you run into different contradicting conclusions about how LLMs should interact with copyright depending on exactly what line of logic you follow, so the courts will never be able to resolve how it should work.
The courts can identify which ways of LLM use follow the spirit of the IP framework, encouraging innovation and creativity. As it is, current commercial LLMs slowly erode it, creating a feeling of “nothing belongs to anyone in particular, so why bother putting in the hard work”, profiting a minority of individuals while harming society over longer term. It is not difficult to see how applying the copyright as is could put an end to this, ensuring authors have control over their work, with the only consequence being slightly worse bottom lines at a handful of corporations with market caps the size of countries.