Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#101

Post by abakker » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:55 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #91

treyd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intellectual property never really existed. Copyright is something we made up to extend the logic of commodities to the full value chain for books, which made sense 200 years ago. But it makes no sense to apply the logic of commodities to digitally produced and distributed media. The production of culture has been slowly becoming more distorted as cultural assets that should be and historically were held in common ac…

> Copyright is something we made up to extend the logic of commodities to the full value chain for books, which made sense 200 years ago. But it makes no sense to apply the logic of commodities to digitally produced and distributed media. Great! So given your articles are in the public domain on your website I can make millions out of it without given you a cent or direct credit and sources without paying you and can…

This argument kind of elides over how you will make the millions, when the author has not.

The hypothetical of lost revenue needs to be validated by the evidence of actual revenue being made in this way. Right now, I see lots of interest in paying for the _tool_, but almost none in paying human wages for the _output_ of generative models.

(I am not proposing that my above distinction is a legal test. Just pointing out that all these arguments would be more credible if actual ai generated works were being sold by AI companies)

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#102

Post by nness » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:56 PM UTC

thowaway91234 wrote: post #87

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #81

> Two of the three artists who filed the lawsuit have dropped their infringement claims because they didn’t register their work with the copyright office before suing. The copyright claims will be limited to artist Sarah Anderson’s works, which she has registered. The lawsuit is moving forward, but only on copyrighted work. This is (not yet) a story.

I’m so confused about American copyright law. I was always under the impression that copyright is granted automatically and you didn’t need to “register” it, contrarily to a trademark which must be registered and is only valid for its specific industry.

That was my belief too, but: "Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work."

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

(Makes me wonder if, back in the day, every song that was downloaded and then pursued by the RIAA was registered...)

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#103

Post by kranke155 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 12:57 PM UTC

harshreality wrote: post #95

kranke155 wrote: post #65

This will be the greatest act of Intellectual Property theft in history. All because judges will be befuddled about what to do after hearing terms like “training data” and “compression”. We will, of course get the emails in 10-20 years showing that it’s all lies and that the CEOs of these companies knew exactly what they were doing. If this continues, AI will be the great inequality machine in history. Take data from…

If you memorize all of harry potter word for word, or some famous solo vocal track from memory, are you committing a copyright violation? Or only if you then recreate it and try to redistribute your copy? The scenario where AI training is locked down doesn't result in 1,000,000 individuals getting paid. (What would they get paid, and by whom?) It results in Disney, Adobe, etc.—massive companies with existing licenses…

Yes, and you know how humans acquire works to learn from?

They pay for it.

They buy the books. They buy tickets to theatre. They buy entrance to the gallery.

The trick that's being done now is hey, we don't have to pay since it's not a person. (to the creator) But hey, it is just like a person when it learns! (legal system)

If AI models require human training data, then they should pay for it. Easy.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#104

Post by constantly » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:00 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #97

olalonde wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning is not theft and never has been. I don't care whether it's a human or machine doing it. AI will benefit everyone enormously, even if it won't be equally distributed. The real issue here is that some skills are increasingly becoming obsolete and people have a hard time coping with that. Instead of demanding compensation, which would really be impractical to implement anyways, why not focus on developing new s…

No that is not what people are upset about. They are upset that their life's work is being used without even asking permission, for someone else to get insanely rich. That's what they're upset about. If there were no use for 2D artists, then Stability Ai wouldn't be making an AI to replace them. Key word here is: replace. 2D artists are not becoming obsolete - they're being replaced by a machine that was trained on t…

> No that is not what people are upset about. They are upset that their life's work is being used without even asking permission, for someone else to get insanely rich. That's what they're upset about.

This is kind of petulant then, respectfully. They got paid to produce that work, and they sold their services for that paycheck and the knowledge that they were putting their work into the world. The fruits of their labor were already being used to make Disney, etc. massively wealthy.

But this is even another step of indirection from that totally fine and reasonable situation: people (or machines) are learning from the work and producing their own. They might as well be angry at interns who learned their style to get junior jobs at Disney and who are now up and coming, replacing them.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#105

Post by kranke155 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

constantly wrote: post #104

kranke155 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that is not what people are upset about. They are upset that their life's work is being used without even asking permission, for someone else to get insanely rich. That's what they're upset about. If there were no use for 2D artists, then Stability Ai wouldn't be making an AI to replace them. Key word here is: replace. 2D artists are not becoming obsolete - they're being replaced by a machine that was trained on t…

> No that is not what people are upset about. They are upset that their life's work is being used without even asking permission, for someone else to get insanely rich. That's what they're upset about. This is kind of petulant then, respectfully. They got paid to produce that work, and they sold their services for that paycheck and the knowledge that they were putting their work into the world. The fruits of their la…

Where did you get this idea that Disney or someone paid for all these works to be produced?

A lot of the works were just ripped off Arstation and similar websites. It's likely a very large number was never "paid for".

A lot of that work was never paid for to begin with. It was just spec work by artists who a. might be too young b. might be in between jobs c. just doing passion work.

Again a lot of people at HN don't really seem to know the story very well, or how artists are compensated.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#106

Post by roenxi » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #91

treyd wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intellectual property never really existed. Copyright is something we made up to extend the logic of commodities to the full value chain for books, which made sense 200 years ago. But it makes no sense to apply the logic of commodities to digitally produced and distributed media. The production of culture has been slowly becoming more distorted as cultural assets that should be and historically were held in common ac…

> Copyright is something we made up to extend the logic of commodities to the full value chain for books, which made sense 200 years ago. But it makes no sense to apply the logic of commodities to digitally produced and distributed media. Great! So given your articles are in the public domain on your website I can make millions out of it without given you a cent or direct credit and sources without paying you and can…

Anyone who programs for a living should be making whatever preparations are possible for being replaced by an AI. If AIs are good at art they'll be better at coding.

I have sympathy for the artists, but frankly this is progress and it can't be stopped. The economics are so lop-sided in favour of silicon that the law won't be able to hold it back without crippling society at large. Artists aren't the only ones affected and they may not even be the profession most impacted.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#107

Post by TotalCrackpot » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:04 PM UTC

nness wrote: post #100

TotalCrackpot wrote: post #74

This is consistent with historically intellectual property being a construct that benefits owners of capital and not actual innovators. That's why I think it should be abolished, this is yet another mechanism to monopolize a space to profit through some kind of rent-seeking procedure.

What should it be replaced with — a system where no one retains intellectual rights over the works that they create?

What is intellectual right? I respect authorship, with obvious consideration that no intellectual activity happens in a vacuum, as Isaac Newton said: "if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.". I believe that I should never be able to get financially hurt or go to prison because I used other person's thoughts.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#108

Post by shkkmo » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #75

ballenf wrote: post #66

Can someone explain again how an ML system scanning and training on a copyrighted work is different from a highly skilled artist doing the same? There are artists that can study a painting for a few minutes and then recreate it from memory. There are artists who study a particular body of work so long that they can create more works indistinguishable in style. If an artist recreates a copyrighted work or creates a de…

Let me change the argument around: Why is it assumed that because an artwork is freely available on the internet, you are allowed to train a machine to reproduce it, being in its totality or just details that are used in the creation of new works? IE why isn't it that an artist could say, hey I'm letting you see this painting, but you are not allowed to sit down with a canvas and learn how to reproduce it? Because yo…

> why isn't it that an artist could say, hey I'm letting you see this painting, but you are not allowed to sit down with a canvas and learn how to reproduce it? Because you can do that in galleries - no photos, no reproductions.

But you can't stop people from sitting and studying your painting and then painting stuff similar to it.

One of the core assertions that is being decided in this case is if there is any actual reproduction here. Does a model contain a reproduction of every image it was trained on? Can the model actually create a reproduction of any images it was trained on?

If it turns out that there is no reproduction here, then it comes down to how much legal control we give copyright owners to regulate access.

A gallery can reasonably ban cameras and canvases, but it becomes a lot less reasonable if they try to ban artists.

Let's imagine that this isn't just specifically tuned ML but proper General AI that can learn new skills. Is your argument that this AI would be legally prohibited from viewing any images it doesn't have a specific license for?

I think that drawing hard lines around what kind of processing can be done on publicly available images is going to become problematic. It's better to regulate around what can be done with the results of the processing than that processing itself. That's how our existing laws work. Making a reproduction, even just from memory, of a copyrighted work is restricted. Memorizing a copyrighted work is not.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#109

Post by rvz » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

abakker wrote: post #101

rvz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright is something we made up to extend the logic of commodities to the full value chain for books, which made sense 200 years ago. But it makes no sense to apply the logic of commodities to digitally produced and distributed media. Great! So given your articles are in the public domain on your website I can make millions out of it without given you a cent or direct credit and sources without paying you and can…

This argument kind of elides over how you will make the millions, when the author has not. The hypothetical of lost revenue needs to be validated by the evidence of actual revenue being made in this way. Right now, I see lots of interest in paying for the _tool_, but almost none in paying human wages for the _output_ of generative models. (I am not proposing that my above distinction is a legal test. Just pointing ou…

As long as it is public domain it does not matter how the millions is made; ebook, book or newsletter.

There is no recognition of 'lost revenue' for the commercialization of public domain works.

Re: Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI

#110

Post by kranke155 » Tue, Oct 31, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #108

kranke155 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me change the argument around: Why is it assumed that because an artwork is freely available on the internet, you are allowed to train a machine to reproduce it, being in its totality or just details that are used in the creation of new works? IE why isn't it that an artist could say, hey I'm letting you see this painting, but you are not allowed to sit down with a canvas and learn how to reproduce it? Because yo…

> why isn't it that an artist could say, hey I'm letting you see this painting, but you are not allowed to sit down with a canvas and learn how to reproduce it? Because you can do that in galleries - no photos, no reproductions. But you can't stop people from sitting and studying your painting and then painting stuff similar to it. One of the core assertions that is being decided in this case is if there is any actua…

I find the whole comparison "it´s just like a person learning" to be a tiring trope. It's demonstrably not.

Like I said to another poster - you've probably seen a Picasso. Can you make me a copy?

Because a Diffusion model can. But you can't. Why not?

Your denial that there is a demonstrable difference between human and machine attention is part of the core obfuscation these companies are using to win this battle, so I reject it entirely. That difference creates the whole issue. If you don't recognise it, then answer me - Why can't you paint me a Picasso? You're saying the Machine is just like a human, yet a simple question of reproduction tells you it's not like a human in any way. It's a machine, and it produces machine reproductions. It learns faster and more accurately than any human, and its purpose is to produce derivative works. If the machine didn't need human data to do this, this discussion would be academic. But it does.

So the whole future of the Arts will be decided by investigating what the machine actually does, not the simplistic idea of it´s just like a human.

You have to evaluate the machine's abilities and impact onto the world. And that's the tough part. But just saying "hihih it's just a person" while it produces superhuman output is not a solution, it's just a lie that was invented by the people profiting from these models.

>Is your argument that this AI would be legally prohibited from viewing any images it doesn't have a specific license for?

Yes. You pay for access.