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Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

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Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#171

Post by BeefDinnerPurge »

mod50ack wrote: post #73
echelon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who works in the field What's your read on what's going to happen with AI? Will companies be allowed to train on copyrighted works? Seems like we'll fall behind international competition or supercharge monopolies if we don't allow it. Japan and China permit training on copyrighted works. China goes a step further and allows AI outputs to be copyrighted. Really interested in what insiders think or know ab…

Well, to be clear, I am mainly a public domain and copyright theory guy. I do keep up to date with everything here. But I also don't write laws; if I did, they would look different. Companies are allowed to train on copyrighted works - or, to be more precise, there is no prohibition in copyright law on them doing so. On the other hand, there are no particular protections. The real question is to what extent an AI gen…

AI models have an amazing ability to approximately memorize any training data. It's just that that memorization is useless unless it memorizes something real as opposed to random (randomized ImageNet labels as a simple example).

So as much as I want there to be a fair use case here, the artists have a real point. If someone can break the memorization without losing significant validation/test set performance, that might go a long way.

But even then, artists don't want their style copied either, and that's problematic to me in that if a human does it, that's OK, but if an AI does it, it's not? Yes I get the ease of asking an AI to do it vs a 10K+ hours artist, but, well, more or less the same to me on a geological time scale.

In the next year, I'm hoping to Patreon/Kickstart project that offers two major funding tiers. Hitting the lowest tier means it will use AI to create assets, and hitting the higher tier will use humans instead. My response to this brouhaha is to throw the controversy right back at the people creating it in the first place and ask if they're willing to walk their fancy talk on this subject with their wallets.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#172

Post by dang »

Related:

January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38823973 - Dec 2023 (15 comments)

Copyright for original Mickey Mouse persona to run out 1 January 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38799484 - Dec 2023 (10 comments)

Mickey Mouse to Enter Public Domain: "It's Finally Happening'" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38737164 - Dec 2023 (7 comments)

Mickey, Disney, and the public domain: A 95-year love triangle - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38678021 - Dec 2023 (208 comments)

Public Domain Day 2024 Is Coming: Here's What to Know - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586978 - Dec 2023 (6 comments)

The Mickey Mouse Copyright Runs Out in 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36559037 - July 2023 (64 comments)

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#173

Post by zogrodea »

wredcoll wrote: post #164
zogrodea wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of those cases where representative democracy diverges from democracy proper. I doubt most people (who lack a financial incentive, unlike some politicians) will incline towards copyright extensions for companies.

And yet poor people constantly vote for tax cuts for rich people.

Is that true? One's options are limited if all one can do is vote for representatives, instead of directly voting on an issue themselves.

It's helpful to distinguish between the side-effects coming from one's vote and the intention/motivation for that vote. (This is called the doctrine of double effect.)

I would be surprised if many poor people vote with the intention of giving tax cuts for rich people, instead of voting for a candidate who they feel resonates them for other reasons, where it is an incidental fact that this candidate will push tax cuts for rich people.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#174

Post by Detrytus »

underlipton wrote: post #158
edgyquant wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the electoral college have to do with legislation? Sounds like you’re just regurgitating a sound bite to me

President can veto laws. President has the bully pulpit and gets things on and off the agenda. Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in. I'm not endorsing GP's point, but the electoral college is massively important to legislation.

> Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in.

I see this repeated often, and I need to say it's bullshit.

The rules of presidential elections are known to the general public, which affects voters behavior, i.e. Republican voters in California might not even bother voting, since they stand no chance of affecting the results. Similar thing can be said about Democrats in Florida. There are even names for this: "blue states", "red states", "swing states".

Until you actually hold the elections with different rules the claim of "winning the popular vote" is meaningless.

EDIT: to clarify - the current system means that some votes matter more than others: a single Republican vote in a swing state matters more than a single Republican vote in blue state. People behave accordingly, i.e. voter turnout is higher in swing states.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#175

Post by dahart »

brookst wrote: post #161
dahart wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies are allowed to train on copyrighted works I’m curious what you mean by this. If I’m not allowed under copyright law to make a personal copy of the latest Pixar movie or watch it without permission or payment, even if I’m not sharing it with anyone else, what under the law allows a company to make a copy and train on it? I thought I understood copyright law to not only prohibit redistribution of copyrighte…

You’re hitting on the distinction between duplication and training. I own hundreds of paperback books. Copyright law does not limit what I can learn from them. It may be that assembling a corpus for training is illegal, but if so, that would be true even if it was never used for training. The act of training an AI is orthogonal to the collection of the corpus.

I think I’m not necessarily talking about training. It’s the duplication before training, and maybe just the fact that training is consuming the entire work, which I think under copyright law requires permission (which typically means payment).

> It may be that assembling a corpus for training is illegal, but if so, that would be true even if it was never used for training.

Yeah, exactly! You’re right that copyright law doesn’t limit what you can learn at all, and doesn’t copyright ideas. But it does, I think, limit whether you’re allowed to read the copyrighted work in it’s entirety the first place, if you haven’t paid for it or legally borrowed a copy or whatever. Gaining access to the material is covered under the law, right? This does mean, I suspect, that assembling a corpus of copyrighted training material is not allowed under copyright law, unless it was all paid for or licensed with permission.

If the AI companies have paid for all the material they used to train, then my question might be moot, I’m assuming they didn’t pay for it. This is murky when there’s a lot of copyrighted material that’s available online, maybe with the intent that it would be consumed in small parts and not copied wholesale by machines for the sole purpose of making software that can replicate the content and style of what it learned.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#176

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

datadeft wrote: post #51
praptak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retroactive copyright extensions are changing the deal after it has been made, for the benefit of copyright holders and to the detriment of the public. This is unethical. That's why I get angry when copyright holders try to make ethical arguments against piracy.

> Retroactive copyright extensions It is kind of amazing how IP holders could pull this off. One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

> One of the foundations of law that you cannot make retroactive changes.

This is a common misconception, at least regarding laws in the US. While I may not agree with it, the US Supreme Court has for literally centuries (like since 1798) explicitly allowed all types of retroactive laws. Most importantly, the USSC has long held the prohibition against ex post facto laws only applies to criminal, not civil laws. (As an aside, this also shows what bullshit it is when justices say they are just "calling balls and strikes". Justices, of all political stripes, make up laws all the time. The Constitution, as written, very clearly and plainly says "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." At some point - Calder v. Bull in 1798 to be exact - the Supreme Court decided it only applies to criminal law.)

Good info: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/sec... and https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/219/140/

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#177

Post by wredcoll »

zogrodea wrote: post #173
wredcoll wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet poor people constantly vote for tax cuts for rich people.

Is that true? One's options are limited if all one can do is vote for representatives, instead of directly voting on an issue themselves. It's helpful to distinguish between the side-effects coming from one's vote and the intention/motivation for that vote. (This is called the doctrine of double effect.) I would be surprised if many poor people vote with the intention of giving tax cuts for rich people, instead of vo…

This is true and I was being a bit snarky, but let us not forget the story of "Joe the plumber"

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#178

Post by gambiting »

User23 wrote: post #133
gambiting wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mickey Mouse head is literally the logo of the Disney corporation, it is and it will remain their trademark in perpetuity(or for as long as Disney exists). Trademarks are different than copyright - you can't start a company and use Mickey mouse as your logo for instance, because then the trademark law would kick in. But you can still make your own story/cartoon/film with Mickey Mouse the character and it should b…

However if you advertise it in any way using Disney’s trademark expect to be sued and spend millions defending, even if you wouldn’t eventually be found to be infringing (which you won’t because you’ll run out of money long before that question gets in front of a judge or jury).

>>which you won’t because you’ll run out of money long before that question gets in front of a judge or jury

Isn't that what would happen if you literally spent zero money on the case? If Disney sends you threatening letters, then finally sues, then maybe even gets an induction to block whatever your product is in the meantime......if you refuse to engage with them, never hire any lawyers to reply to anything or communicate.....you will end up in a court room by default where you can present your case, with zero money being spent until that point(I'm not counting any business losses).

I'm just saying that people lose millions before they get to court by building massive legal defences, hiring law firms and spending years arguing, instead of not engaging at all and going to court(which I understand is not preferable for many many many different reasons, but if you really believe the case is solid then forcing Disney to go to court might work)

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#179

Post by dotancohen »

concordDance wrote: post #55
pasiaj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is the will of ”we”. ”They” can’t change the law – only ”we” can.

I'm not sure this is actually true anywhere but Switzerland.

Interestingly, it was true in Gaddafi's Libya as well.

Re: Disney's earliest Mickey Mouse enters public domain as US copyright expires

#180

Post by VBprogrammer »

elnatro wrote: post #166
VBprogrammer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in how this would work in New Zealand. Could I publish a version of The Hobbit on amazon.co.nz? Would this be perfectly legal? If I instead published it on my own New Zealand based blog, maybe even hosted on a data center in NZ, but with no attempt to geo-fence it would that cause issues?

Not only that, could an author from NZ create stories based on Tolkien writings? I suppose so, right?

I mean - it's the whole point isn't it? To allow things to become part of the public consciousness. To borrow from that and extend upon it, to embellished and exaggerate it. Seems fine to me.

Presumably you can't then sell that into countries where the inspiration isn't yet public domain?

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