The better question is: why have the people's representatives failed to protect their interests? Why didn't they foresee the abuses that hurt us all?
Because there are no "people's representatives" after the voting is done. They just go with the biggest bidder. That's why companies are spending bilions on lobbying.
Nobody cares about copyright.
There is a vocal minority of us who do. But we're only slightly more useful on it than the privacy advocates, both sharing a good chunk of people who are lazy or nihlistic about the political process to the point of being politically irrelevant. As a result, a representative who brings up copyright reform gets like one call in support and zero net new votes. Meanwhile, they get powerful and patient adversaries from the Big Tech to the record companies and their billionaire artists.
Artificial Intelligence is going to change how we work. Many top software engineers on Hacker News may be ok for a while. Although everyone could use help.
But already many artists and junior engineers feel pressure. Lack of copyright protection can make that even worse for many. These are allies and people who we mentor.
Just brainstorming, Social Purpose Corporations could provide innovative co-op opportunities for artists and engineers. That's just one example.
I don't see the management class failing to forsee the financial reality in the global workplace. But I do worry about dependents facing division and hate. Bully that, right?
I can't fucking forsee every possibility, traps and all, though. Maybe not social purpose corporations but just hyper-incubators that enable a million small indy corps. Man, I'm imagining Jar Jar binks manning the hyperspace lychgates across from the content generators.
Sorry, stupid digression. I'm sorry for wasting cycles on that.
Whether AI decimates the likelihoods of everyone is only more likely with unchecked corpo power in control of everything.
AI is just the latest iteration of endless corporate abuses. They think copyright exists to keep the likes of us in line while they get to do whatever they want. If we infringe copyright, they compare us to raping and pillaging high seas pirates but then they turn around and say it's OK to infringe copyright on a massive scale so long as they launder it via AI first.
I want intellectual property gone so that we can do the same. I want them to be forced to open their weights too.