The point I'm trying to make is the ways the laws are structured leaves them open to interpretation - and that's deliberate because trying to nail down everything up front is bound to fail and will allow people to evade the spirit of the law.

ie what matters - both in interpreting todays laws and if they are insufficiently clear, drafting future amendments - is why the law was created in the first place.

The UK law is well drafted and makes it very clear that the aim of copyright is not to stop you copying something per se - but to copying something for commercial gain that is simultaneously damages the copyright owner. I suspect those principals are the same the world over - whatever the exact drafting.

So the question you have to address is do the actions of the AI companies fit these critieria.

Are they copying copyright material without permission - tick.

Are they making money as a result ( it's a commercial operation ) - tick.

Are they damaging the original copyright holders in the process - this is the only one remotely in doubt - but I'd argue it's pretty clearly a tick in many areas - bit bit less clear in others.

In terms of lobbying - it's the big tech companies that are currently trying to get the law changed in the UK - to make what they have done legal ( while stil arguing they haven't done anything wrong..... as laws are not typically changed retrospectively ).

> The UK law is well drafted [...]

From what I read, I agree. However, UK law isn't very relevant to the matter. It's a small market among many that doesn't create the models or much of the content to train them.

Perhaps - though the UK punches above it's weight in UK English language cultural output - I'm sure you have come across some of it.

By the way, once the UK ruled large part of the world - including the US - but that empire wasn't sustainable for a small country as the other countries caught up in terms of development.

The US is currently facing that issue, and I have to say, not dealing with it very well. The US is going to need friends on the way down and right now all it's doing is making enemies.

Yeah, the US is doing some terribly stupid stuff. No disagreement there.

However, the UK might be more relevant if you hadn't withdrawn from the EU. From the outside it sure looks like you guys decided it was more important to keep out the poor people (or other ethnic backgrounds) than to be part of something with actual collective bargaining power.

The debate about leaving the EU was multi-faceted [1] - but a significant part was a kind of nostalgia for when Britain was indeed Great, and the idea that a UK free from the shackles of the EU could be great again. Take back control was the slogan - a complete misunderstanding of the difference between lost sovereignty and pooled sovereignty.

I see the same forces driving the US now as it undermines international organisations.

[1] and sure xenophobia played a depressingly large part.

I hadn't thought about it before, but I think the nostalgia angle can explain a bunch of the US attitudes. It seems like a lot of people across the spectrum think the 1950s were a better time: The bigots because of race issues, the incels because of sexual expectations, the young generations envying (and resenting) how the boomers "had it easy", and the hippies thinking new technology is ending the world.

I think they're all wrong, but there's no fixing it. Assuming there are no civil or world wars in the near future that radically change the trajectory, China will rise and the US will end up lower on the ladder.

> nostalgia for when Britain was indeed Great

I'm sure you didn't intend it, but that capital G sure sounds a lot like the slogan for a US political party.