I see a lot of people responding to the LLMs-and-copyright situation with calls for stricter enforcement of copyright, and honestly I think that's a terrible take.

Not because these LLM companies shouldn't see consequences (they should!), but because there's a much more important observation to make: this situation demonstrates how the whole "copyright protects artists" has always been a myth.

If copyright truly protected artists, there would have been swift enforcement against these LLM companies, in the same way that there's swift enforcement when you start a piracy website in eg. the US. But there wasn't.

And that shows what copyright *really* is; a tool of power for those with a lot of money to spend on legal warfare. It's always been like that; granting power to those who already have lots of it, and taking it away from those who have very little of it.

That's why these LLM companies seem immune to copyright law - they have money, and you as the artist do not.

Copyright is a fundamentally bad solution to protecting artists, it's designed to benefit the rich and powerful. You don't solve that by doing more of it! What we *should* be talking about is better solutions that *do* actually work.