Then the AI training companies shouldn't have stolen (pirated) the material they want to train on. Pretty simple really.

That has nothing to do with AI. It's just the same as if anyone else had pirated it. Pretty simple really.

Show me the Facebook employees going to jail for pirating millions of books. Can I pirate anything I want risk free if I say it was for training AI?

Piracy is a civil offense so of course they aren't going to jail because that isn't how civil court works.

It can be both, there have been people criminally prosecuted for copyright infringement.

I will admit that it's not something that I follow daily, so I had to look for an example. But it wasn't hard to find one.

https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Published/055157.P.pdf

Criminal piracy is commercial piracy, which not even the people suing AI companies are accusing them of doing. Note the very first line in your court opinion:

> After selling 100 "bootleg" DVDs

But that's a fair point. I probably should have specified.

I couldn't quickly find a definition of "commercial piracy", so I will assume it doesn't have a specific technical meaning.

Facebook is a commercial company, so if you're working for Facebook doing piracy, that would be commercial piracy.

If I go by piracy as "the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright", and if Facebook is infringing on copyright in using these books (which the article alleges), then it follows that Facebook is engaging in piracy.

So it looks like Facebook is partaking in piracy of a commercial flavor.

I don't know why distributing bootlegs to people on the street would be worse than distributing PDFs within a company, but let's say it it. We are talking about 100s of cases vs millions. Is distributing on the street really 10000 times worse?

It would have to be even more than that. Because millions of copyright infringement within a company apparently has no punishment, but 100's on the street has prison. So, if you go by the punishment, 100's on the street is way worse.

Seems you keep repeating the same stance all over thread, without a single explanation why your opinion should be a valid one.

Not really a fruitful discussion and not a way to change anyone's opinions (maybe apart from the idea that copyright owners push their rather despised agenda via artificial accounts also on HN), care to improve this?

I don't have to explain because judges will do it for me: https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/two-california-distr...

On summary judgment too, which means the plaintiffs really had no case. Not surprising because it's the most obvious fair use ever under transformative work. So obvious that I have a hard time taking arguments to the contrary seriously and just assume they are driven by bitterness. Not that anything I have ever heard on that side actually rises to the level of an argument. Your opinion, and everyone else on this thread that agrees with you, falls under your own statement:

> Seems you keep repeating the same stance all over thread, without a single explanation why your opinion should be a valid one.