Yeah you're right about the derivative works thing. I glossed over it mostly because that seemed pretty much useless to me in the realm of visual art. But I suppose there are a few scenarios where that ability to get protection is meaningful.
Either way, I can't see a way that this would have been good for anyone if this guy got what he wanted.
I'm pretty sure that he wanted to go this route so he could have automatic copyright ownership of literally anything people using his AI generator prompted from it. There's already ways that artists can take AI output and pretty easily make it something that can get copyright protection. It really seems like he was just angling to own by default anything that is generated using his AI.
Eh I think it would have been worse if this guy won. To my knowledge he was trying to get the AI to be considered the author and then himself to be the owner of the copyright via the "work for hire" clause. As I understand it that would have been catastrophic. It would have likely meant that anything users prompt from these generators would automatically be the copyright of the people running the AI.
The process you describe could likely still be protected under this ruling since there's human involvement in the selection of output to use and the altering of it afterward to fit whatever creative vision the person had. If this had won a person doing that it seems would at best be making a derivative work and still not be able to protect it.
I don't think there's been another time once in the twenty plus years that I've been concerned with politics have I agreed with the position of the state department. But to me that means that I for damn sure am not about to interrupt them when they're finally for once in my life taking the morally correct action in funding the defense of Ukraine. I'll save that for when they inevitably get back on their bullshit thanks.
Even some otherwise good regular leftists have absolute dogshit takes on Ukraine. It's like they're allergic to even being coincidentally on the same side as the US State Department that they start falling all over themselves to be like "Remember guys, US Bad," and start like saying that we should be pushing Ukraine to give up territory to appease Russia so they don't use nukes. When we already know because of Crimea that Putin will almost certainly just regroup and try again if they give him anything.
I'm sure they're hoping it cleans the air of people telling them to "do something" about "climate change" and let them get back to giving huge giveaways to oil companies.
Seriously, I might be wrong but last I knew carbon capture tech wasn't anywhere near good enough. How long would this thing have to run to do much as break even on the emissions building it caused?
Wanting to raise the threshold isn't inherently bad. But from what I've read on this their legislature previously banned August elections like this because of poor turnout and they're also trying to make it effectively impossible to even put a measure like this on the ballot to get that increased majority by requiring a large amount of signatures from every county in the state. Meaning it would only take one county to not get enough people and it theoretically wouldn't matter if literally every single other person in the state signed onto the petition; It wouldn't get in the ballot.
It seems like the 60% rather than 50% is just to try and hide the ball so they can effectively outlaw popular grassroots action going directly to the ballot.
My wife is the same way. Not ginger that we can tell but the pain meds and anxiety are pretty similar. She's gotta throw back a full Klonopin to not have ridiculous anxiety in the dentist and still needs multiple vials of numbing to do anything. Took her forever to find a dentist that actually listened to her about the Novocaine not working well and to actually get proper numbed before dental work.