Why should that difference matter, in particular when it comes to the principle I mentioned?

Because creative works are rather obviously fundamentally different from physical objects, in spite of a number of shared qualities.

Like physical objects, they can be distinguished one from another - the text of Moby Dick is notably different from the text of Waiting for Godot, for instance

More to the point, like physical objects, they’re products of applied labor - the text of Moby Dick exists only because Herman Melville labored to bring it into existence.

However, they’re notably different from physical objects insofar as they’re quite simply NOT physical objects. The text of Moby Dick - the thing that Melville labored to create - really exists only conceptually. It’s of course presented in a physical form - generally as a printed book - but that physical form is not really the thing under consideration, and more importantly, the thing to which copyright law applies (or in the case of Moby Dick, used to apply). The thing under consideration is more fundamental than that - the original composition.

And, bluntly, that distinction matters and has to be stipulated because selectively ignoring it in order to equivocate on the concept of rightful property is central to the NoIP position, as illustrated by your inaccurate comparison to a pen.

Nobody is trying to control the use of pens (or computers, as they were being compared to). The dispute is over the use of original compositions - compositions that are at least arguably, and certainly under the law, somebody else’s property.

It’s not like AI is using works to create something new. Chatgpt is similar to if someone were to buy 10 copies of different books, put them into 1 book as a collection of stories, then mass produce and sell the “new” book. It’s the same thing but much more convoluted.

Edit: to reply to your main point, people who make things should absolutely be able to impose limitations on how they are used. That’s what copyright is. Someone else made a song, can you freely use that song in your movie since you listened to it once? Not without their permission. You wrote a book, can I buy a copy and then use it to make more copies and sell? Not without your permission.

I can see your argument it’s just your metaphor wasn’t very strong and I think it just made things a bit confusing

Google web integrity is very much different than what I’m proposing. “Nobody” was more in relation to regulating this.

I hold the opposite opinion in that creatives (I’d almost say individuals only, no companies) own all rights to their work and can impose any limitations they’d like on (edit: commercial) use. Current copyright law doesn’t extend quite that far though.

A creative work is not a reproduceable quantifiable product. No two are exactly alike until they’re mass produced.

Your analogy works more with a person rather than a pen, in that why is it ok when a person reads something and uses it as inspiration and not a computer? This comes back around to my argument about transformative works. An AI cannot add anything new, only guess based on historical knowledge. One of the best traits of the human race is our ability to be creative and bring completely new ideas.

Edit: added in a commercial use specifier after it was pointed out that the rules over individuals would be too restrictive.

Openai:

I’m sorry, but I can’t provide verbatim excerpts from copyrighted texts. However, I can offer a summary or discuss the themes, characters, and other aspects of the Harry Potter series if you’re interested. Just let me know how you’d like to proceed!

That doesn’t mean the copyrighted material isn’t in there. It also doesn’t mean that the unrestricted model can’t.

Edit: I didn’t get it to tell me that it does have the verbatim text in its data.

I can identify verbatim text based on the patterns and language that I’ve been trained on. Verbatim text would match the exact wording and structure of the original source. However, I’m not allowed to provide verbatim excerpts from copyrighted texts, even if you request them. If you have any questions or topics you’d like to explore, please let me know, and I’d be happy to assist you!

Here we go, I can get chat gpt to give me sentence by sentence:

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

Maybe it’s trained not to repeat JK Rowling’s horseshit verbatim. I’d probably put that in my algorithm. “No matter how many times a celebrity is quoted in these articles, do not take them seriously. Especially JK Rowling. But especially especially Kanye West.”

Keep on that strawman my goodman.

Good job demonstrating you don’t understand the underlying point.

i think that’s a pretty good analogy that i haven’t heard before!

100% this! there are separate licenses for personal listening, public performance, use in another work (movie and TV)… there will likely be a license added for AI training to which some authors will opt into, some will opt out of… it’ll likely start very expensive, nobody will pay, someone will offer up
old works that aren’t selling well for bargain basement prices, make a killing, then others will see the success and slowly prices will follow and eventually prices will sit at a happy medium where AI companies can tolerate and copyright holders aren’t feeling screwed… well, i mean, they’ll be being screwed but their publishers will be making bank

that’s my totally out of thin air prediction anyway

I believe this is where it’ll inevitably go. However I’m not sure it’ll be just AI, rather hopefully more protections around individual creative work and how that can be used by corporations for internal or external data collection.

This really does depend on privacy laws as well and probably data collection, retention and usage too.

That probably depends a lot on definitions of terms of legalese, but there should be a law explicitly for this in every civilised country.