I didn't buy into the "copying unauthorized zeros and ones is theft" narrative (because it's not even an argument) when old music industry executives were screaming about Napster, and I'm certainly not gonna start now.

There's absolutely a moral debate to be had in this topic, but if your starting position is redefining common language and twist the meaning of words beyond reason, then you've already shut it down before it's even started.

I don't think it's twisting common language, but let me clarify: Tensors are a form of compression. If I take a song that a musician put out for free, convert it to a different file format and sell it (that's the key here, the commercial use), that's theft. It was theft when it was Napster, too, but even then there's a big difference between freely distributing pirated stuff and selling it.

The LLMs hoovered up everything, compressed it, and put it up for sale as bootleg IP. That's especially offensive since so much of what they took was already freely available with attribution.