> why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system

What is interesting is that LLM's do not directly violate copyright. The settlements we have seen are for how the works were acquired (that was a copyright violation) not the use of the works.

The vectors of a book, or a paper, are not the paper. They are, for all intents, facts about the work itself, and more generally writing. You can not copyright a fact.

It also means that the weights, the things that (mostly) matter can not be copyrighted either.