> Thousands of reviews, book reports, quotations on fan sites and so on are published daily; you seem to be arguing that they are all copyright violations unless and until the original copyright holder takes those reviewers, seventh graders, and Tumblr stans to court and loses, at which point they are now a-ok.
That is precisely what I am arguing about and how it works. People have sued reviewers for including too much of the original text in the review ... and won[1]. Or simply having custom movie poster depicting too much of the original[2].
> "transformative uses" have literally been name-checked by courts. It's also been established that commercial companies can ingest mountains of copyrighted material and still fall under the fair use doctrine -- this is what the whole Google Books case about a decade ago was about. Google won.
Google had a much simpler argument than transforming the text. They were allowing people to search for the text within books (including some context). In this case, AI's product wouldn't even work without the original work by the authors, and then transforms it into something else "the author would have never thought of", without attributing the original[3]. I don't think this will be a valid defense...
> I feel like you're trying to make a moral argument against generative AI, one that I largely agree with, but a moral argument is not a legal argument.
A jury would decide these cases, as "fair use" is incredibly subjective and would depend on how the jury was stacked. Stealing other people's work is illegal, which eventually triggers a lawsuit. Then, it falls on humans (either a jury or judge) to determine fair use and how it applies to their situation. Everything from intent to motivation to morality to how pompous the defense looks will influence the final decision.[4]
[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/471_US_539.htm
[2]: Ringgold v. Black Entertainment Television, Inc., 126 F.3d 70 (2d Cir. 1997)
[3]: Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992)
[4]: Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 642 F.Supp. 1031 (N.D. Ga. 1986)