I can make a collage from art/music/writing/etc under fair use, and it's protected by copyright. What AI does is less direct than that, and most of the people who use AI for creative purposes are themselves using AI output to create a new collage, or using it like a filter to tweak the style of an input or make it more aesthetically consistent.
If you have a problem with people vomiting unedited low-effort AI slop all over the internet, call that out and we can have a conversation, but your stance against making tools that can enable a new generation of creators to focus on the things that really matter (aesthetics, composition, structure) rather than things that don't so much (brush technique, instrument skill, word repertoire) smacks of elitism.
I like bgwalter's post above. I'd like to "democratize" Facebook. Can I download the entire set of profiles and photos and make my own mashups? Let's see what the facebook lawyers have to say over that.
There is a social good for artists making derived art/music/writing under fair use. There is only social harm in letting billionaire-owned AI's spit out trillions of garbage derivations with zero social value. We can make a choice as a society.
If they're public, it'd be fair use, and I guess they could stop you by not letting you download them in the first place, but if they're out there it's fair game. WRT the original point you were trying to make, I agree that using the pile/libgen is questionable, but so are publishers trying to gouge companies who use the materials for training by charging them a higher price than they'd charge people with the intention of reading the book.
If your problem is billionaires, that's separate from AI (which can be open source and run on commodity systems), and we can also have a conversation there. Shitting on AI because some unethical actors are pursuing it is like shitting on top hats and monocles because rich people wear them though.
