I recently came to the conclusion that it was never about copyright. It's about corporate control, about punishing contempt for business model.

Aaron Swartz was punished because he disrespected a business model. All the kids sued by the MAFIAA were punished because they disrespected a business model. Copyright was merely the mechanism to make it stick. But AI companies and Meta can disrespect copyright all they want, because in their case, it serves a corporate business model, and those hurt or disenfranchised by it are regular people or much smaller companies.

The law doesn't exist to protect the weak from the powerful, but to enable the powerful to punish the weak.

What do you think copyright is in service of? It doesn’t exist for its own sake.

> Aaron Swartz was punished because he disrespected a business model.

Exactly. And what's more, it's a business model, keeping behind paywalls scientific papers that we the public have already paid for once with our tax dollars, that shouldn't even exist in the first place.

This is pretty close. They attacked the business model, which was an attack on the law itself, which was an attack on the civil structure, which was an attack on everyone who benefits from it.

Lots of people have a vested interest in civil structure, from the poor to the rich. Everyone would be worse off if the US looked like Haiti.

That said, people benefit in different amounts from the system at Large, and lose or benefit from Individual policies