Copyright infringement is a tort. “Illegal” is almost always used to refer to breaking of criminal law.
This seems like intentionally conflating them to imply that appropriating code for model training is a criminal offense, when, even in the most anti-AI, pro-IP view, it is plainly not.
> There are four essential elements to a charge of criminal copyright infringement. In order to sustain a conviction under section 506(a), the government must demonstrate: (1) that a valid copyright; (2) was infringed by the defendant; (3) willfully; and (4) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.
I think it’s very much an open debate if training a model on publicly available data counts as infringement or not.
This seems like intentionally conflating them to imply that appropriating code for model training is a criminal offense, when, even in the most anti-AI, pro-IP view, it is plainly not.