These are their alternatives:

What neither Big Tech nor Big Media will say is that stronger antitrust rules and enforcement would be a much better solution. What’s more, looking beyond copyright future-proofs the protections. Stronger environmental protections, comprehensive privacy laws, worker protections, and media literacy will create an ecosystem where we will have defenses against any new technology that might cause harm in those areas, not just generative AI.

AI training and the thing search engines do to make a search index are essentially the same thing. Hasn't the latter generally been regarded as fair use, or else how do search engines exist?

Not the EFF I once knew. Are they now pro-bigtech?

Basically, it’s an open question that courts have yet to decide. But the idea is that it’s fair use until courts decide otherwise (or laws decide otherwise, but that doesn’t seem likely). That’s my understanding, but I could be wrong. I expect we’ll see more and more cases about this, which is exactly why the EFF wants to take a position now.

They do link to a (very long) article by a law professor arguing that data mining is fair use. If you want to get into the weeds there, knock yourself out.

https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk15026/...

What happens when a researcher makes a generative art model and publicly releases the weights? Anyone can download the weights and use it to turn a quick profit.

Should the original research use be considered legitimate fair use? Does the legitimacy get 'poisoned' along the way when a third party uses the same model for profit?

Is there any difference between a mom-and-pop restaurant who uses the model to make a design for their menu versus a multi-billion dollar corp that's planning on laying off all their in house graphic designers? If so, where in between those two extremes should the line be drawn?

What definition of "sufficiently transformative" doesn't include "a book about wizards" by some process being used to make "a machine that spits out text"? A magazine publisher has a more legitimate claim against the person making a ransom letter: at least the fonts are copied verbatim.

There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether or not AI training should be allowed, but it should take the form of new legislation, not wild reinterpretations of copyright law. Copyright law is already overreaching, just imagine how goddawful companies could be if they're given more power to screw you for ever having interacted with their "creative works".

> EFF is bought and paid for.

by whom?