this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
300 points (97.5% liked)

News

22961 readers
4658 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

An artist who infamously duped an art contest with an AI image is suing the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register the image’s copyright. 

In the lawsuit, Jason M. Allen asks a Colorado federal court to reverse the Copyright Office’s decision on his artwork Theatre D’opera Spatialbecause it was an expression of his creativity.

Reuters says the Copyright Office refused to comment on the case while Allen in a statement complains that the office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

You can copyright a combination of words, though, and it was his unique combination that created the art. The artist doesn't copyright the palette, and the shop that sold the pigments holds no ownership over the painting. If the art is created with paint, pixels, or phrase, the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 17 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (33 children)

It has to be fixed in a tangible medium.

In this case they’re not “fixing” their words and the final art is the created expression. Yet in this case their created expression wasn’t created by them but the program.

In this case their combination is the palette and paint but the program “interpreted” and so fixed it.

For example you can’t copyright a simple and common saying. Nor something factual like a phone book. Likewise you can’t copyright recipes. There has to be a “creative” component by a human. And courts have ruled that AI generated content doesn’t meet that threshold.

That’s not to say that creating the right prompt isn’t an “art” (as in skill and technique) and there is a lot of work in getting them to work right. Likewise there’s a lot of work in compiling recipes, organizing them, etc. but even then only the “design” part of the arrangement of the facts, and excluding the factual content, can be copyrighted.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 6 points 17 hours ago

Using stuff like controlnet to manually influence how images are shaped by the ML engine might count, there's some great examples here (involving custom Qr codes)

https://medium.com/@ssmaameri/ai-generated-qr-codes-with-controlnet-huggingface-and-google-colab-a99ffeee2210

[–] Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee -2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It has to be fixed in a tangible medium.

Hard disks are pretty tangible.

But if they are not as you suggest, does this mean all digital photography is not copyright able?

So many arguments as to why this shouldn’t be subject to copyright seem to fail simple questions of logic.

If the output of ML isn’t copyright able, then the inputs should not be subject to copyright either. The whole system is broken and only serves to enrich the few at the expense of the many. It doesn’t protect the small time artists, only the exceptionally wealthy ones who earn more than the typical worker will make in many lifetimes.

[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

Here’s more if you’d like to read about it.

https://www.copyright.gov/engage/visual-artists/

I remember when the DMCA was introduced and all the various issues arising from what and isn’t copyrightable when it comes to digital vs physical copies, etc.

Again I’d like to recommend Leonard French (Lawful Masse) on YouTube and Twitch for a copyright lawyers breakdown of these kinds of issues.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 3 points 10 hours ago

In general these art pieces are not created simply with words. Users control the output using ControlNet which allows drawing on the image to force regeneration only to specific areas. It seems that if your only logic around it being non-copyrightable is due to them using words and that the program “does it all”, but that’s just not how it works.

I’m not in favor of copyrights for stuff like this, but you have a terrible misunderstanding of how these art pieces are created and it’s affecting your argument negatively.

load more comments (30 replies)
[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (14 children)

You can copyright a combination of words, though, and it was his unique combination that created the art

so its literature, then?

The artist doesn’t copyright the palette, and the shop that sold the pigments holds no ownership over the painting.

Sure, the artist doesn't copyright a palette, or the shop does not hold ownership of pigments. But Companies do patent pigments.

If the art is created with paint, pixels, or phrase, the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

If you commission an Art piece, with a detailed description of what it should display. The artist comes back to you with a draft, you tell them to adjust here and there, and you finally after several rounds of drafting got the commissioned art piece. Did you draw it?

Thats what LLMs do and nothing else.

load more comments (14 replies)
[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If I use a combination of words to commission an artist to paint a picture, I don't own the copyright on that picture.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 11 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If it's a commission, you might. Depends on the how the contract is worded.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, let's see the contract in this AI case that grants this man the copyright.

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago (10 children)

The contract is set by the company, let's say Midjourney, which passes ownership to the person who generate the "art." What needs to be defined is if ai generated art is art? So far, no one seems to have a definite answer. I come down on the side of yes, but there are a lot of others that say no.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

the final product belongs to the artist, and so should be protected by law for them.

Then the real artist, the AI, should request the copyright. And sue the charlatan that tried to take its work and claim all credit.

load more comments (4 replies)