>a proportion of what you pay for books, music, tv shows, movies goes to rights holders already.

When I borrow a book from a friend, how do the original authors get paid for that?

they don’t.

borrowing a book is not creating a COPY of the book. you are not taking the pages, reproducing all of the text on those pages, and then giving that reproduction to your friend.

that is what a COPY is. borrowing the book is not a COPY. you’re just giving them the thing you already bought. it is a transfer of ownership, albeit temporarily, not a copy.

if you were copying the files from a digitally downloaded album of music and giving those new copies to your friend (music royalties were my specialty) then technically you would be in breach of copyright. you have copied the works.

but because it’s such a small scale (an individual with another individual) it’s not going to be financially worth it to take the case to court.

so copyright holders just cut their losses with one friend sharing it with another friend, and focus on other infringements instead.

which is where the whole torrenting thing comes in. if i can track 7000 people who have all downloaded the same torrented album, now i can just send a letter / court date to those 7000 people.

the costs of enforcement are reduced because of scale. 7000 people, all found the same thing, in a way that can be tracked.

and the ultimate, one person/company has download the works and making them available to others to download, without paying for the rights to make copies when distributing.

that’s the ultimate goldmine for copyright infringement lawsuits. and it sounds suspiciously like openAi’s business model.