Yes. This has always been, and will always be, the case. It's the same in things like copyright law - you can violate any software license if the copyright holder doesn't know you're doing it, or doesn't want to sue you, or doesn't sue you in time. It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB.
What Altman and Brockman did still seems highly unethical.
That shouldn’t surprise anyone.
The tech industry largely does not care about ethics.
You misspelled “finance”.
> It's the same with taxi medallions or hotel regulations if you're trying to start Uber or AirBNB.
They didn’t do any lobbying? ^_^
They pretty much just broke the law, scaled fast and then their lobbying was "the whole population would hate you if you shut us down now"
Well, you're allowed to violate the contract if you aren't sued quickly enough. You're allowed to violate the law if you aren't prosecuted quickly enough (for some crimes).