I mean memes that use a photograph (eg a screenshot from a movie) as background with some text over it.

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/who-owns-memes

But if what you have asserted is true then me reading anything that I casually come across on the Internet is okay then it is okay for a web-crawler to do the same and feed that data to an AI.

Just a followup I think you (4death4) are missing the original comment that I am replying to. In that the Poster asserts that "I think there is a good amount of content that has been consumed that was neither in the public domain or properly licensed".

I am saying this is probably the same for humans using the Internet. They don't have an explicit license to read or learn from much of what they read on the Internet.

You are asserting that most of the edge cases are fair use or similar.

The problem is that OP is asserting that an explicit license is required for an AI to learn from content.

My main point is that it is a contradiction to believe that it is legal for humans to read and learn from anything and illegal for machines to do they same. Either it is legal or illegal for both.

My point is that you really do have a license to consume most of what you see. Sure, there are some exceptions, like using archive.ph to read news, but most people consume content that conforms with copyright regulations. E.g. you use Spotify to listen to music. Netflix to watch movies. Consume UGC on TikTok posted by the creator. Etc.

Did you read your own link?

> Generally, posting and sharing memes online as a form of expression is not actionable and is usually protected under the First Amendment and the doctrines of fair use.