I have no patience or sympathy for the Elseviers and Disneys of the world, and I agree the endless copyright extensions are terrible, but multiple things can be bad at once. Tearing down a bad system doesn't guarantee a better outcome will result. Even if we accept that those systems need drastic reform, the billions of authors, artists, musicians, programmers, and creators of all stripes still deserve more than just the pride and satisfaction of having made AI companies rich.

I'm also not arguing that siloing is good, only that it's a rational reaction. Creators are uncomfortable having their work used that way and have to protect themselves against scrapers driving up their hosting costs. Other businesses quite reasonably want a share of all the money flowing around. People got tired of the wolves eating their sheep, so they built barns and fences and trained dogs.

If we want to stop the siloing, we need to address the what's causing people to resort to it.

I agree with your conclusion, but it looks like our views of “what’s causing it” are exact opposites. We made it 30,000 years with creators having “just the pride of creation”. I’m deeply skeptical that the IP monetization regime of the past 100 years is the natural state of things.

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