Most of the times this argument is fielded, including this one, it is formulated in the shape of an appeal to a general moral principle. I don't see what this p

Most of the times this argument is fielded, including this one, it is formulated in the shape of an appeal to a general moral principle. I don't see what this principle is supposed to be: as my analogy shows, there is clearly no general moral principle against learning from copyrighted material and people's hard work without their explicit permission. The more narrow interpretation, in which the claimed principle is that a machine must not learn from copyrighted material (...), is also implausible: since we have no real history of machines learning from copyrighted material in any way that is recognizable as learning, it stands to reason that a principle addressing that scenario can not yet have become general. The appeal is thus to a completely novel principle that you have come up with for yourself; and it seems that rather than presenting arguments for why others should adopt this principle, you are trying to present it in such a way that someone not paying close attention would be fooled into believing that it is common sense and widely accepted. An analogy with the classic "you wouldn't download a car" comes to mind.