categorically false.

What is categorically false?

that artists pay a license fee to learn from other artists work. it’s an utterly ridiculous argument.

Bullshit. You can look up all works up for free online. What a sorry argument. Copyrighted means you can’t reproduce it, not not look at it.

There’s probably an argument against my point, but this sure ain’t it. I can watch every Disney movie for free on the internet, but that doesn’t make it legal.

It's legal in Germany.

What's illegal here is unauthorized distribution. Downloading a copy of something from a public server cannot get you in trouble here. Only publishing does.

It's not and never was. In 2008 it even got raised from a civil to a criminal offense. It's a common misconception because it is more lucrative to go after people that also upload/publish due to higher possible damages.

For the most part we’re talking about static images here, atleast for the current state of LLMs and those are all freely viewable online.