Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

Post by statop » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 3:50 AM UTC

mikehollinger wrote: post #159

iainctduncan wrote: post #106

Many commenters seem to be under the impression that "because I made something, it is copyrightable". That's not how it works. What is protected under copyright is determined by long processes of lobbying, legislation, lawsuits, and court cases. For example: a melody is copyrightable, a chord progression is not, even when the chord progression is so unique as to be the primary intellectual asset of a piece. (Look up…

The issue to me here is that code is a literary work. Literary works are copywritable. Except that AI generated works without human authorship aren’t per this. Interestingly this came up when copilot was announced and one comment or another was “this will be an interesting bit of case law.” Well now we have to see who wants to go first and establish precedent for the next half-century. :-)

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 3:54 AM UTC

mikehollinger wrote: post #159

iainctduncan wrote: post #106

Many commenters seem to be under the impression that "because I made something, it is copyrightable". That's not how it works. What is protected under copyright is determined by long processes of lobbying, legislation, lawsuits, and court cases. For example: a melody is copyrightable, a chord progression is not, even when the chord progression is so unique as to be the primary intellectual asset of a piece. (Look up…

The issue to me here is that code is a literary work. Literary works are copywritable. Except that AI generated works without human authorship aren’t per this. Interestingly this came up when copilot was announced and one comment or another was “this will be an interesting bit of case law.” Well now we have to see who wants to go first and establish precedent for the next half-century. :-)

Post by Kerrick » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 3:55 AM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #52

Yay, the software development industry is saved! (only partly /s) Not that I thought AI would be writing decent code for a while yet, but the fact that AI-generated code can't be copyrighted (and therefore licensed[0]) is going to create problems. It'll be interesting where they draw the line with this, though: If the AI generates all the code, but then a human debugs it and alters it, is that copyright that can be o…

Post by sgentle » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 3:58 AM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #151

I would like the Copyright Office to delineate just how much effort is necessary for a work to possess “the traditional elements of authorship.” I type in MIDI instructions and play back a tune, but if I type in sentences it doesn’t count? Maybe they can measure entropy. Did you emit a sufficient amount of data to make the Music Box work, given the Copyright Office defined ratio? For every unit of data in your song,…

Post by Riverheart » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 4:02 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #165

brookst wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not advocating copyrightable software, but it seems clear to me that if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too. Any line of code, probably not. But a program as a whole, sure. Otherwise I think you blow up music copyrights too, since a single note isn’t copyrightable and a song is just a bunch of individual notes. At some point, choosing, ordering, and organizing a coll…

"if databases are copyrightable because they represent curation, then software must be too." Circling back around to creative works, the process of making art is also one of curation, as had been amply demonstrated over 100 years ago by the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp.[1] The curation involved in prompt selection and selection of which AI-generated works/images to use should therefore be just as copyrightable as dat…