So whose viewpoint is right here? Is downloading theft or not? These arguments always boil down to "it's fine when I do it, but wrong when a company does."
The problem is that it is enforced exactly the opposite. People have been hit with fines and jail time for pirating and seeding, without even doing so for commercial gain. But when massive tech companies pirate training data for their AI and build a product from that that, nobody goes to jail. Where is the sense in that?
1) AI companies all get sued out of existence.
2) AI companies can train networks with piracy, those networks don't fall under copyright, so give me a copy to do what I want with.