The angry tone is making the details harder to grasp. The first thing the article does is point to an older article about a previous FTC statement. In it, TechDirt seems to disagree about what fair use is and then uses that disagreement to say that the FTC is saying that fair use itself is bad.

Am I reading this right? That posturing is frustrating.

Still... The argument that developing these tools under the assumption that publicly available data is fair use is what allows upstarts to develop LLM AI tools instead of giant companies is very astute. I think it's 100% correct. It makes me understand why LLMs are a battleground for copyright reform.

I appreciate that the article makes the stance of both sides understandable. It's enough to make me begrudgingly say that I'm glad for having read it.