Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 166 posts

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#141

Post by kelseyfrog »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #71
blibble wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no because it's not done on an industrial scale the purpose of producing art is for people to see it not for some megacorp to ingest it on a huge scale to then make the entire concept of art redundant

So if a Human Artist did this on an "industrial scale" you would sue them for having similar a style, how do you think that lawsuit would turn out for you? You are actually mad at the moral implications of Capitalism and not the legality of AI art?

There's a parallel in policing: driving around and looking up plate numbers is perfectly fine in the opinion of some, but automating the same task by fixing cameras to police cars and using computer vision to do the task makes it qualitatively different. Scale can have an impact on the way tasks are viewed.

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#142

Post by shagie »

pitaj wrote: post #76

Our copyright systems are broken, and have been broken for decades at this point. I don't think copyright should be a thing, ESPECIALLY at the current durations. It's obvious to me that reform is necessary. Here's what I propose: - Reduce the duration of existing copyrights to 20 years. - Reduce the duration of new copyrights to 5 years (maybe 10). - Provide some form of remittance for individual copyright holders wh…

As a photographer, I do not want to lose the ability to be the sole seller of the photographs that I create in 5 or 10 (or 20) years.

That I don't sell many nor is it my declared profession doesn't change how I should be compensated for the photographs that I sell.

The Library of Congress only applies to the United States and has little sway on any of the rest of the signatories of the Berne Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention and the TRIPS agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement

The changing the term of protection provided by the Berne Convention or TRIPS would mean that the United States would be leaving those treaty... which has quite a few implications for how other countries would treat copyrighted works within the US.

> TRIPS requires member states to provide strong protection for intellectual property rights. For example, under TRIPS:

> Copyright terms must extend at least 50 years, unless based on the life of the author. (Art. 12 and 14)[8]

> Copyright must be granted automatically, and not based upon any "formality", such as registrations, as specified in the Berne Convention. (Art. 9)

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#143

Post by pitaj »

shagie wrote: post #142
pitaj wrote: post #76

Our copyright systems are broken, and have been broken for decades at this point. I don't think copyright should be a thing, ESPECIALLY at the current durations. It's obvious to me that reform is necessary. Here's what I propose: - Reduce the duration of existing copyrights to 20 years. - Reduce the duration of new copyrights to 5 years (maybe 10). - Provide some form of remittance for individual copyright holders wh…

As a photographer, I do not want to lose the ability to be the sole seller of the photographs that I create in 5 or 10 (or 20) years. That I don't sell many nor is it my declared profession doesn't change how I should be compensated for the photographs that I sell. The Library of Congress only applies to the United States and has little sway on any of the rest of the signatories of the Berne Convention https://en.wik…

I don't believe anyone has a right to a monopoly on information, even if they created it. I don't believe in the validity of intellectual property in general. Even 5, 10, or 20 years is a compromise.

The Library of Congress is just an example, I'm sure some international agreement could be made for an independent entity.

As for the Berne Convention or TRIPS, I wasn't just talking about the US. The international copyright laws should also be reformed.

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#144

Post by deelly »

roenxi wrote: post #11

I downloaded the Llama model using a torrent. That is, I think, enough of a counterexample to show that lawsuits will not stop this. Raw economics are at play here and the legal system usually loses to economic realities. 1) We just need 1 jurisdiction that allows model training. 2) There is no mechanism to stop model distribution short of banning general purpose computing and the internet. That would cause more harm…

Honestly, I`m not very optimistic about it.

1) same as with torrent trackers. you can download anything, but most of the times you can't legally use it.

2) yet. also harm/good point is a bit hypocritical. pirating of software is good? what about pirating of open source?

3) that`s could become issue for a model creator.

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#145

Post by shagie »

pitaj wrote: post #143
shagie wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a photographer, I do not want to lose the ability to be the sole seller of the photographs that I create in 5 or 10 (or 20) years. That I don't sell many nor is it my declared profession doesn't change how I should be compensated for the photographs that I sell. The Library of Congress only applies to the United States and has little sway on any of the rest of the signatories of the Berne Convention https://en.wik…

I don't believe anyone has a right to a monopoly on information, even if they created it. I don't believe in the validity of intellectual property in general. Even 5, 10, or 20 years is a compromise. The Library of Congress is just an example, I'm sure some international agreement could be made for an independent entity. As for the Berne Convention or TRIPS, I wasn't just talking about the US. The international copyr…

Here's a photograph I created nearly 20 years ago - https://www.deviantart.com/shagie/art/Burney-Falls-1-H-43105...

Why shouldn't I be the only one with the right to sell that image?

The course of action for "lose the rights in 20 years" isn't "ok, that's fine" but rather "ok, then I won't publish any of them and deal only in direct sales of prints from a gallery."

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#146

Post by yencabulator »

hashmap wrote: post #46

Shouldn't it be decided on an image-by-image basis? If the resulting image doesn't infringe copyright, what's the relevance of how it was made? That's how it's worked up until this point. I mean, maybe because the impact is so severe we should HAVE new laws affording more protections to artists, but that's a different argument right?

Copyright holders have been attacking copyright-infringing tools for quite a while now, there's nothing new about that.

Imagine an image-generating ML dataset that has been trained on nothing but images of Mickey Mouse. Surely the Disney corporation would come after that, I have no doubt about that. Why does commingling Mickey with other inputs change that, if the tool can still reproduce images of Mickey Mouse when asked for that?

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#147

Post by yencabulator »

Bedon292 wrote: post #66
sebstefan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what Adobe Firefly is already doing, it's trained on Adobe Stock photos along with copyright-free content https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html

The tricky bit is that those stock photos include generative images too. Many of which aren't labeled as generative. So I wonder if theirs is already including potentially problematic content.

I would be surprised if they hadn't externalized that risk when they started their stock photo library.

Generally, whenever a company buys a photo, there's a release form where the claimed-author of the photo has to state that they own the rights to the photo. So, the infringement is on the part of the seller, and you have a high barrier to sue Adobe for that.

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#148

Post by larry_ralph_ »

bugglebeetle wrote: post #109
justrealist wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but an alternate view of the copyright is that a person get a degree in English literature and carefully reads all of Shakespeare's writing, and then goes onto write a screenplay which thematically derives from Hamlet. Obviously you get the Shakespeare influence, but the bar on copyright infringement is very high for a reason — we don't want to sue artists for being influenced by another writer.

I don’t really care about the copyright argument as it relates to human learning because I think this is all a Napster-style false flag by capital owners to enclose ALL data on the internet. The intent isn’t to argue about these models from first principles such that we all have IP-restriction free access from them. It’s to make them do enough legally gray things at scale that they get restricted to only a few power…

[flagged]

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#149

Post by bugglebeetle »

larry_ralph_ wrote: post #148
bugglebeetle wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really care about the copyright argument as it relates to human learning because I think this is all a Napster-style false flag by capital owners to enclose ALL data on the internet. The intent isn’t to argue about these models from first principles such that we all have IP-restriction free access from them. It’s to make them do enough legally gray things at scale that they get restricted to only a few power…

[flagged]

I made a reasonable argument: the intent with Stable Diffusion is to do the same thing that many startups have done, i.e. break the law enough that you establish a dominant market position/raise a ton of money, but create enough externalities that the state has to intervene. Then, bribe politicians to legalize your former law breaking and to lock out any of your competitors. This is what myriad companies in the gig economy have done, for example.

Instead of reflexively spewing a series of ideological non-sequiturs, perhaps engage with what I actually said.

Re: Stable Diffusion copyright lawsuits could be a legal earthquake for AI

#150

Post by jrm4 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #122
jrm4 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I strongly suspect that in court the visceral impact of "Look, there's the image, it was in there ," of even just ONE might just be enough to sway a judge or jury, percentages be darned.

Eh, there's a lot of space for argument and deliberation in a courtroom, moreso than a hacker news comment section... This is a rare issue with an obvious fix, so I wouldn't expect a ruling to hinge on it. (Additionally, the Lott image doesn't have any real harm; it's heavily reproduced already and freely enough licensed to appear on Wikipedia.) My guess is that because there's a lot of these cases coming the courts…

But a "rare issue with an obvious fix" sounds like a good Streisand effect type-target to me.

Technologically I know that this is a pretty honest statement of the problem, but I'd expect A LOT OF PEOPLE to read this as "oh, look, they're trying to tweak it to 'destroy evidence.'"

Post reply on HN