French publishers and authors sue Meta for allegedly training AI models on their books without consent, say they have evidence of “massive” copyright breaches.

Oh wow. That's not a small misunderstanding.

Law is basically territorial. French police can arrest people in France. If, say, Russian police tries to arrest someone in France, then it is, at best, a criminal kidnapping and, at worst, an act of war. Extradition hearings are a thing because a country decides on its own terms, by its own laws, whether to hand over people to another jurisdiction.

Sovereignty is a big deal for countries. If you think about it in terms of kidnapped or armed, uniformed foreigners running around, then you understand why.

If France were to send out fines to people in the UK for driving on the wrong side of the road, then the UK would refuse to collect them. France could collect fines for something people have done in the UK only if these people pass through France. Obviously, that would cause serious international tension.

In the same way, if France awards special privileges to its citizens that allow them to collect money from people around the world, other countries would not entertain such demands. What France can do, is make laws that force French residents to pay money to people around the world. That's how copyright law works.

There are international treaties on intellectual property. Signatory countries generally agree to have certain minimal standards in their laws. They also agree to treat all nationals equal. So, France couldn't make special privileges for its citizens. They also agree that their copyright laws only apply in their territories.

So, I don't see quite what a French court could be doing here, that would be compatible with international law.