I think you have done a good job arguing the facts but you missed intent and context, which I believe are vital to differentiating between AI copyright theft and meme copyright theft.

For one thing, companies aren’t replacing living artists with memes - but they do intend to replace people with AI. When thousands of hard working people have dedicated their lives to developing a skill and craft, it’s atrocious that someone can just steal their work with the excuse that “AI needs it”.

Memes are likely to fall under “fair sure” given they are purely created to get a giggle out of someone, not to create financial gain. Sure there are some very popular meme sites and they should be held to account for the money they earn publishing copyrighted works that memes are made from…

Personally I would be fine with LLM AI if the underlying dataset is properly authorised and paid for. It’s disgusting that the largest companies on Earth are now hammering the world wide web hoping to feed their personal Galactuses with enough data to create some shitty new product. As if the corporate and business communities parasitic relationship with the open source world leading up to AI wasn’t bad enough!

I think the issue isn’t with “Digital ID” per se, but rather with another issue the article touches on which is how people end up lost as data in a vast system.

In Australia, we’ve had ongoing class action lawsuits and scandals relating to our welfare system because past governments implemented aggressive (and illegal) rules that cut payments early and even made up enormous fake debts which drove some people to suicide.

So far no criminal charges have been laid on the people who came up with these cruel ideas.