It matters because that is what the plaintiffs are arguing - that the use of copyright material for AI training is not fair use. They are not solely arguing that meta engaged in copyright infringement through piracy.

One could argue a student going to a library and reading a book is analogous and legal.

Information contained in subjective mental experience is not a medium which can qualify as a copy (infringing or otherwise) in copyright law, whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is, so they are not similar circumstances with regard to copyright law, however analogous you might feel they are from some other perspective.

What if there was a camera watching the student read in the library, such that the words could be seen?

That doesn't change anything about the student reading.

The recording made by the camera would be a whole different issue.

> whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is

Exactly.

Plus, Thomson Reuters recently won a case regarding using copyrighted material for AI training:

https://www.wired.com/story/thomson-reuters-ai-copyright-law...

> Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States. In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedented AI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor, finding that the company’s copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence’s actions.

Though a cynical way to read this would be that the larger corporation won against the smaller, so the actual precedent here is Meta winning.

But as others have noted in these comments, even that has a silver lining: should Meta win, then everyone can pirate books to read, right? /s

If I remember right, that particular case was Ross Intelligence almost copying a database of Westlaw's summaries completely and with the intent to compete directly too, with their only real addition being adding AI to the search capabilities, making it much more nuanced of a decision than just ruling against the use of AI.

Thank you for confirming what I meant. The crux is learning is learning.

Pirating the book is copyright infringement ... reading in a library is not.

Training of a neural network on copyrighted work is the algorithmic equivalent of a "subjective mental experience".

> The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and learn from it

Presumably, there would be no requirement for the student to learn from it - making the unauthorised copy would be itself an infringement.