I fucked with the title a bit. What i linked to was actually a mastodon post linking to an actual thing. but in my defense, i found it because cory doctorow boosted it, so, in a way, i am providing the original source here.
please argue. please do not remove.
News media is usually for-profit, though. Commentary and criticism is also a staple of for-profit media. That ordinary people can and do publish their own takes via the internet is much more recent than section 107.
Much of medical research is for-profit. Biontech is a for-profit company, but their covid vaccine benefits the public.
I agree that the public benefit aspect is there, but I’d go higher to find it, right to the constitution. Congress is empowered To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. It’s a fascinating turn of phrase. Congress is not quite empowered to make copyright law (limiting the freedom of the press). It is empowered to promote progress through certain means.
The whole idea is that one can serve the greater good by introducing a profit motive to the production of, among other things, creative works. Without copyright, everything would be public domain.
Come to think of it, it is kind of weird how you apply your moral views on profit to this fair use issue. You’re saying that copyright owners should make a profit. If it’s not fair use, then the copyright owners have to be paid, right? That means that, EG, newspapers, like the NYT, can demand money for training on its archive. That’s all paid off. The production cost has been recouped (or not). Any licensing payments now are pure profit. AI developers still have to put in the work to actually develop the AI.