Every AI company used it. They all knew where it came from. It was not hidden that the provenance was piracy. It was well known that the entirety of books3 was pirated via Bibliotik, a private tracker known for disseminating tools for removing DRM from ebooks. (Last I checked, that last part about removing DRM isn’t just a civil penalty, it’s an actual fucking crime in the US)
They can say all they want. The reality is they’re playing a game of “as long as do a bigger crime than anyone else, it’s totally okay.”
We harass the living shit out of “pirates” who do nothing but share media and don’t make a profit. We still have laws aimed at attempting at removing internet access wholesale to people accused of piracy.
But when your piracy makes a cool billion, suddenly its totes okay bro.
They always knew where books3 came from and they didn’t care. They can try to claim otherwise and stop using books3 now, but the reality is they wouldn’t have been able to grow their businesses at all without it.
Copyright is bullshit and broken, but I don’t understand how copyright violation on a mass scale is somehow okay when we put the admins of The Pirate Bay in prison for far fucking less. Like we literally saw private corporations lobby an entire country and it’s courts into changing how they worked just to prosecute The Pirate Bay admins. They went after them because they knew they didn’t have the money to fight it, even though so much of the case hinged on the “obscene” amounts of money they were making off of it. Not enough for good legal counsel.
It’s just one more example of “rules for thee, not for me.” Rich scumfucks are asking for it.
They’re happy to put us under the boot of copyright, but the big players? For them it’s fine because they’re making so much money, you see?
We live in a system built on exploitation and this is just the newest flavor.