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Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

federalregister.gov

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Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#311

Post by eternalban »

lucubratory wrote: post #306
kube-system wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the answer they want to say is, “it probably does”, but they don’t want to say it and cause a big disruption to commerce until the courts intervene.

There is precedent in Authors' Guild vs Google and Perfect 10 vs Google that it doesn't, this isn't the first time things like this have come before the courts. There are also laws to consider. I know this is US law and the US doesn't have those laws, but copyright harmonisation is a thing and the EU, UK, Japan etc all have laws very explicitly stating that TDM is an exemption to copyright - some bodies would presuma…

If you (like me) were wondering what TDM means - Text and Data Mining.

A Deeper Look into the EU Text and Data Mining Exceptions: Harmonisation, Data Ownership, and the Future of Technology, Journal of European and International IP Law, 2022

https://academic.oup.com/grurint/article/71/8/685/6650009

"This paper focuses on the two exceptions for text and data mining (TDM) introduced in the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (CDSM).

While both are mandatory for Member States, Art. 3 is also imperative and finds application in cases of text and data mining for the purpose of scientific research by research and cultural institutions; Art. 4, on the other hand, permits text and data mining by anyone but with rightholders able to ‘contract-out’ (Art. 4).

We trace the context of using the lever of copyright law to enable emerging technologies such as AI and the support innovation. Within the EU copyright intervention, elements that may underpin a transparent legal framework for AI are identified, such as the possibility of retention of permanent copies for further verification.

On the other hand, we identify several pitfalls, including an excessively broad definition of TDM which makes the entire field of data-driven AI development dependent on an exception. We analyse the implications of limiting the scope of the exceptions to the right of reproduction; we argue that the limitation of Art. 3 to certain beneficiaries remains problematic; and that the requirement of lawful access is difficult to operationalize.

In conclusion, we argue that there should be no need for a TDM exception for the act of extracting informational value from protected works. The EU’s CDSM provisions paradoxically may favour the development of biased AI systems due to price and accessibility conditions for training data that offer the wrong incentives. To avoid licensing, it may be economically attractive for EU-based developers to train their algorithms on older, less accurate, biased data, or import AI models already trained abroad on unverifiable data." [reformatted]

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#312

Post by hnbad »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #213

Unpopular opinion : the government shouldn’t protect your art from getting used as training data. The government shouldn’t protect your generated art from being copied. Intellectual property is not real property. Nothing is being taken from you. Force is only justified in response to force, and you don’t get the right to throw someone in jail for “stealing” something you still have.

There is no such thing as private property. It's a fiction enforced with the threat of violence. It's even fairly recent as a concept.

If we agree that private property should exist, "it's not real" is not a good argument for why intellectual property shouldn't exist. Not all violations of private property have to be stealing. If I sleep in the empty house you own, that is trespass even if I don't cause any physical damage. If I tend to the garden of the summer home you own and eat the fruit that would have spoiled by the time you came by, I still violated your property rights even if I left the garden in a better condition than I found it.

If we abolish intellectual property, why should we keep money, which at this point is entirely virtual? Why should we allow stocks, which represent a partial ownership claim in a legal entity that lays claim on other property? Why should we allow corporations, which are afforded similar rights as real persons but don't physically exist? Why should we allow ownership of land which is unused, homes that aren't lived in, produce that isn't consumed? Why should we allow private property at all?

If you want to abolish private property, I'm all on board with you, but if you think intellectual property is tangibly different you need to take a closer look at how private property came about and what it even means.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#313

Post by amon22 »

reneberlin wrote: post #296

chatgpt4 summarized: This is a statement of policy by the U.S. Copyright Office to explain how it examines and registers works that contain material generated by artificial intelligence (AI). The statement is effective from March 16, 2023. The Office has experience and expertise in distinguishing between copyrightable and noncopyrightable works. The Office may require additional information from applicants who use AI…

Thats a pretty bad summary

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#314

Post by hnbad »

pontifier wrote: post #255
sgentle wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go: https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-... 308.2 Creativity "A work of authorship must possess 'some minimal degree of creativity' to sustain a copyright claim. [...] '[T]he requisite level of creativity is extremely low.' Even a 'slight amount' of creative expression will suffice. 'The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, 'no matte…

If I wave my camera around taking lots of pictures, and then find one that I really really like I can copyright it. If I generate a bunch of AI images and find one that I really really like, I think I should be able to copyright that too. In both, the creative spark comes from discerning what has value.

Careful with your wording: you don't generate AI images, the AI generates images. You use the AI to generate images. An argument could be made that the AI acts like the camera and the selection process is the creative act. The text hints at this when it mentions curation. But curation also provides a far more limited protection than authorship (e.g. consider the copyright of phonebooks).

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#315

Post by hnbad »

nige123 wrote: post #275

This is already a hot legal mess. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) should come up with Berne convention 3.0 that provides: - increased protection for human authorship - longer copyright terms for hoomans - shorter copyright terms for bots (5 years) - moral rights preventing 'globbing' by generative AIs - royalty system for original authors - derived computer-generated works pay I'd like to see a bl…

I think the last thing we need is even longer copyright terms for humans.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#316

Post by amon22 »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #243
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…

How do you determine if code is written by an AI?

This does not really matter in practice. The risk of legal sanctions is too high for most businesses, they will follow the law. This is kind of similar to pirate software, businesses almost never use them even if they could definitely get away with it in most cases. The issue is that a single angry former employee is all it takes to make your life hell. This is even more true for large organizations where many people would know about the unlawful practice.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#317

Post by Jevon23 »

techdragon wrote: post #113
yafbum wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still hoping it stays that way. That'd be a fantastic direction for works in the public domain.

Yeah but that assumes people are honest about the providence of their content and let you know up front that it was produced by an Ai and is thus not protected by copyright… and given the preponderance of copyright info in website footers, I expect this will be an error of omission rather than actively claiming incorrectly. By simply not giving individual articles a more specific copyright note mentioning the AI all…

People will lie, sure, but you only need to introduce a small amount of risk to make big risk-averse companies wary.

Say an ex-Blizzard employee takes a character design from the last project he worked on there and uses the exact same design for his new indie project. Blizzard sues and says they own the rights to the character design. The ex-employee pulls up a video he took on his phone showing that Blizzard employees generated the design with AI. Judge throws the case out because Blizzard can’t legitimately copyright the design.

Maybe not the most realistic scenario, since big companies can usually scare people into submission before you ever get to litigation in the first place. But the mere possibility of such a scenario would have to be something that the legal team accounted for in their risk analysis.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#319

Post by mmaunder »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #3

> If a work's traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it. > For example, when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the “traditional elements of authorship” are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user. Based on the Office's un…

What if I created the training data and instantiated and trained the AI? If this still applies it suggests an AI has human standing and can compete with me for ownership of intellectual property by negating my rights, rather than me being a programmer and it being merely an algorithm.

Re: Copyright Registration Guidance: Works containing material generated by AI

#320

Post by Retric »

dragonwriter wrote: post #286
Retric wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can own the copyright to the prompt used to generate the output. But the algorithm isn’t collaborating, every possible outcome is fixed when the algorithm is finalized and users can’t actually change the possibilities. I clearly don’t own the copyright to my Google search results even if my query is quite unique.

> But the algorithm isn’t collaborating, every possible outcome is fixed when the algorithm is finalized and users can’t actually change the possibilities. But that actually reinforces the idea that all of the creative work is in the prompt, everything else is purely mechanical process implementing the command given by the prompt. Arguably, its analogous to saying that a programmer can copyright the prompt but not th…

Compilers don’t create a new copyright the output is covered as a derivative work.

However, derivative works have clear limitations and the output of a chat program doesn’t qualify any more than you own the copyright of what someone says when you interview them.

Put another way you don’t own the copyright on the specific shape of a tree as a sculpture because you selected its species when you planted it.

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