RE: https://mastodon.social/@AlSweigart/116602626276300598

I really want to stress that copyright infringement is a civil infraction unless you pass the specific tests set out in US law that make it a criminal infraction (>$1000 retail value worth of infringement). I am not a lawyer but it seems clear to me that every frontier model provider should have its models seized (as they are derivative works) and all their executives should spend a year in jail https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506

This is a bad law and I oppose its presence on our books. I do not think that copyright infringement should be a criminal offense. But the only thing that I dislike about copyright law more than its bad design is its selective enforcement. We cannot have "heads I win, tails you lose" enforcement of the law for oligarchs.
If Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and his business partner Dario Amodei want to change this law, they are in a significantly more efficacious social position to do so than I am. I hope they will devote their considerable personal resources to its fair reform. They should go do that. Until then, though, regrettably, they must all go to federal prison.
@glyph but why bother? They prefer selective enforcement, in case someone makes a "universal pirated library" people likes more than their slop, they can still bribe someone to have them thrown in jail
@ehproque @glyph This is correct. They don't want to make crime legal for everyone - just for themselves, with the option to still have anyone else punished.
@jwcph @ehproque as the saying goes, "that's the joke"