[quickcheque]

In your example, both sides are equally acceptable and we just pick one. How does this apply to the present case?

[bombcar]

We made a decision years ago around copyright (we've modified it since but the general concept is "promote the arts by letting artists have reproduction rights for a time"). We could change that in various ways, if we wanted to, even removing copyright entirely for "machine-readable computer code" and leave protections to trade secrets. Even if you argue "no copyright at all is immoral" or "infinite copyright is immoral" it's hard to argue that "exactly author's life + 50 years is the only moral option".

Switching the rules on people during the game is what annoys/angers people, and is basically what these AIs have done (because they've introduced a new player at low effort).