For one thing, I was replying to your own attempt to do a programmer style legalism, of "welp, you instantiated a copy, therefore it must be copyright infringement, case closed". I was already basing that on the principle you're now appealing to, to say that that isolated fact alone doesn't settle the matter (which is a much lower bar than the broader point that, all things considered, generative AI isn't infringement).
It's great that you recognize that programmer-style legalisms don't work in the law! It just wish you'd had that insight in mind when making your original comment.
Second, to the extent that I endorsed the general argument (generative AI not infringing), I wasn't claiming that the point worked because of some mechanistic technicality, but because of the very broad trend of accepting internal copies for a wide range of saleable data products. That is, in fact, how analogical reasoning works in law: courts compare the case at hand to similar ones.
Is any one point definitive? Of course not. But brushing off all analogies is unjustified deflection. If you think there are more pressing considerations that override the pattern I've pointed to -- like why the "intent, impact, etc" matter here -- great! I'm happy to have that conversation. But you can't just gesture at "legal rigor is hard" as if that's some kind of counterargument.
For one thing, I was replying to your own attempt to do a programmer style legalism, of "welp, you instantiated a copy, therefore it must be copyright infringement, case closed". I was already basing that on the principle you're now appealing to, to say that that isolated fact alone doesn't settle the matter (which is a much lower bar than the broader point that, all things considered, generative AI isn't infringement).
It's great that you recognize that programmer-style legalisms don't work in the law! It just wish you'd had that insight in mind when making your original comment.
Second, to the extent that I endorsed the general argument (generative AI not infringing), I wasn't claiming that the point worked because of some mechanistic technicality, but because of the very broad trend of accepting internal copies for a wide range of saleable data products. That is, in fact, how analogical reasoning works in law: courts compare the case at hand to similar ones.
Is any one point definitive? Of course not. But brushing off all analogies is unjustified deflection. If you think there are more pressing considerations that override the pattern I've pointed to -- like why the "intent, impact, etc" matter here -- great! I'm happy to have that conversation. But you can't just gesture at "legal rigor is hard" as if that's some kind of counterargument.