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.
The prosecuting lawyer would argue the intent was in fact criminal and not fair use.
You can’t just state “I had a fair use intent”, you state your intent (e.g. selling an AI model that creates content for financial gain) and the court determines if that intent was criminal or fair use. And considering criminal copyright law is intended to prevent others from financially profiting from your work, this can be construed as criminal intent. So I would not be so sure that the criminal matter would be dropped so easily.
Of course in this specific case, there’s a bit of a grey area, so the first case would not have criminal intent. But if ruled against the AI companies, subsequent cases could argue criminal intent as the AI companies should know by then that what they’re doing isn’t allowed.