Comment by fwn

> Had a couple of drive-by downvotes... Is it that stupid an opinion?

While I do not agree with your take, FWIW I found your comment substantive and constructive.

You seem to be making two points that are both controversial:

The first is that generative AI makes the availability of lyrics more problematic, given new kinds of reuse and transformation it enables. The second is that AI companies owe something (legally or morally) to lyric rights holders, and that it is better to have some mechanism for compensation, even if the details are not ideal.

I personally do not believe that AI training is meaningfully different from traditional data analysis, which has long been accepted and rarely problematized.

While I understand that reproducing original lyrics raises copyright issues, this should only be a concern in terms of reproduction, not analysis. Example: Even if you do no data analysis at all and your random character generator publishes the lyrics of a famous Beatles song (or other forbidden numbers) by sheer coincidence, it would still be a copyright issue.

I also do not believe in selective compensation schemes driven by legal events. If a legitimate mechanism for rights holders cannot be constructed in general, it is poor policy craftsmanship to privilege the music industry specifically.

Doing so relieves the pressure to find a universal solution once powerful stakeholders are satisfied. While this might be seen as setting a useful precedent by small-scale creators, I doubt it will help them.