“Removing copyright information from a copyrighted work is fundamentally different from creating a new work that didn’t have CMI in the first place.”
The plaintiffs in Doe v. GitHub could not win on infringement. So they tried to turn a DMCA labeling rule into a brand new copyright. The Ninth Circuit said no. Nobody should cheer for Copilot here. A win on this theory would have handed every rightsholder a claim that needs no copying at all.