So in that world you envision someone could hack into openai, then publish the weights and code. The hacker could be prosecuted for breaking into their system, but everyone else could now use the weights and code legally.
I think that would depend on whether OpenAI was justified in retaining and restricting access to that data in the first place. If they weren't, then maybe they get fined and the hacker gets a part of that fine (to encourage whistleblowers). I'm not interested in a system where there are no laws about data, I just think that modeling them after property law is a mistake.
I haven't exactly drafted this alternative set of laws, but I expect it would look something like this:
If the data is derived from sources that were made available to the public with the consent of its referents (and subject to whatever other regulation), then walling it off would be illegal. On the other hand, other regulation regarding users' behavior world be illegal to share without the users consent and might even be illegal to retain without their consent.
If you want to profit from something derived from public data while keeping it private, perhaps that's ok but you have to register its existence and pay taxes on it as a data asset, much like we pay taxes on land. That way we can wield the tax code to encourage companies that operate in the clear. This category would probably resemble patent law quite a bit, except ownership doesn't come by default, you have to buy your property rights from the public (since by owning that thing, you're depriving the masses of access to it, and since the notion that it is a peg that fits in a property shaped hole is a fiction that requires some work on our part to maintain).
Is that understanding correct?