For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged by Copilot.
For myself, I am skeptical of intellectual property in the first place. I say go for it.
When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded.
I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor, another set of rules for the masses.
That can't possibly be a valid claim, right? AFAIK copyright is "gone" after the original author dies + ~70 years. Before fairly recently it was even shorter. Something from 1640 surely can't be claimed under copyright protection. There are much more recent changes where that might not be the case, but 1640?
> When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued.
Again, that doesn't sound like a valid suit. Surely she would win? In the few cases I've heard of where suits like this are brought against someone they've easily won them.
For literally everything but music, yes.
Even by the standards of copyright technicality, music copyright is weird. For example, if you ask a lawyer[0] what parts of copyright set it apart from other forms of property law[1], they would probably answer that it's federally preempted[2] and that it has constitutionally-mandated term limits.
Which, of course, is why music has a second "recording copyright", which was originally created by states assigning perpetual copyright to sound recordings. I wish I was making this up.
So the musical arrangement that constitutes that song from 1640? Absolutely public domain. You can tell people how to play Monteverdi all damned day. But every time you record that song being played, that creates a new copyright on that recording only. This is analogous to how making a cartoon of a public-domain fairy tale gives you ownership over that cartoon only. Except because different performers are all trying to play the same music as perfectly as possible, the recordings will sound the same and trip a Content ID match.
Oh, and because music copyright has two souls, the Sixth Circuit said there's no de minimus for sampling. That's why sample-happy rap is dead.
If you want public domain music on your YouTube video you either record it yourself or license a recording someone else did. I think there are CC recordings of PD music but I'm not sure. Either way you'll also need to repeatedly prove this to YouTube staff that would much rather not have to defend you against a music industry that's been out for blood for half a century at this point.
[0] Who, BTW, I am very much NOT
[1] Yes, yes, I know I'm dangerously close to uttering the dangerous propaganda term "intellectual property". You can go back to bed Mr. Stallman.
[2] Which means states can't make their own supra-federal copyright law and any copyright suit immediately goes to federal court.