An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip • Hacker News Board

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#191

Post by ppseafield » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:36 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #148

mlsu wrote: post #137

I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate party" idea that intellectual property, the royalty system, the draconian copyright laws that we have today are deeply silly, rooted in a fiction, and used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. Unfortunately, i…

> to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. How is copyright stifling innovation? You could not rip something off more blatantly than Gravity, which had the lawsuit dismissed entirely. Taurus vs Stairway to Heaven, the list goes on and on and on. You can often get away with nearly murder ripping off other people's stuff.

Copyright makes the legality of arXiv and SciHub questionable at best. It locks publicly funded research behind paywalls. It makes being able to search the law (including case law) of the US incredibly expensive. It puts a burden on platforms to be beholden to DMCA takedowns, lest the content owner go to their hosting or DNS provider, has happened to itch.io. It adds licensing fees onto public musical performances (ASCAP).

Additionally plenty of people making videos for YouTube have had their videos demonetized and their channels even removed because of the Content ID copyright detection scheme and their three strikes rule. In some cases to a ridiculous extent - some companies will claim ownership of music that isn't theirs and either get the video taken down or take a share of the revenue.

I watched a video where someone wrote a song and registered it via CDBaby, which YouTube sources for Content ID. Then someone claimed ownership of the song, so YouTube assigned the third party 50% of the ad revenue of the video.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#192

Post by salynchnew » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:38 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #159

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. How is copyright stifling innovation? You could not rip something off more blatantly than Gravity, which had the lawsuit dismissed entirely. Taurus vs Stairway to Heaven, the list goes on and on and on. You can often get away with nearly murder ripping off other people's stuff.

Because it's self indulgent wankery. If I, as writer and an artist, have just the most absolutely brilliant thoughts, and write them down into a book or draw the most beautiful artwork, I can earn money off that well into my afterlife with copyright. Meanwhile the carpenter who is no less bright, can only sell the chair he's built once. In order to make money off of it, he must labor to produce a second or even a thi…

One reason so many people are amenable to the copyright argument is at least partly because of these counterarguments that posit that every writer must be an elitist or fabulously wealthy vs. instead of someone who spent X years toiling away at their craft or skill while working menial/multiple jobs.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#193

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:38 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #143

Velorivox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does infringe copyright...you're just unlikely to get in trouble for it. You might get a cease and desist if the owner of the IP finds out and can spare a moment for you.

This doesn't make any sense to me. No media is getting copied, unless the drawing is exactly the same as an existing drawing. Shouldn't "copy"right apply to specific, tangible artistic works? I guess I don't understand how the fantasy of "IP" works. What if the drawing is of Indiana Jones but he's carrying a bow and arrow instead of a whip? Is it infringement? What if it's a really bad drawing of Indiana Jones, so ba…

[deleted]

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#194

Post by lmm » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:44 PM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #190

You're allowed to draw IP and share your drawings. You're allowed to screenshot and photoshop IP. You're allowed to sell tools that help others draw and photoshop IP*. You're not allowed to sell these drawings and photoshops. I don't see why an AI can't generate IP, even if the AI is being sold. What's not allowed is selling the generated IP. Style is even more permissive: you're allowed to sell something in any styl…

> You're allowed to draw IP and share your drawings.

No you're not, not in general. The copyright holder has the exclusive right to prepare and distribute derivative works.

> You're allowed to screenshot and photoshop IP.

Again, no, not in general.

> You're allowed to sell tools that help others draw and photoshop IP*.

Sort of. You're allowed to sell tools that might be used for those purposes. You're not allowed to sell tools as "for that purpose" or advertise those use cases.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#195

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #172

kokanee wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of open sourcing everything and nullifying patents would benefit corporations like Disney and OpenAI vastly more than it would benefit the people. The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out of it. These legal protections are needed by the people. To the Pirate Party's cre…

>The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out of it. Wait, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between your imaginary world and the world we live in now?

Thor would have red hair in the imaginary world, rather than being a Blonde man which was made to be a somewhat distinguished comic book character.

The Disney or otherwise copyrighted versions allow for unique spins on these old characters to be re-copyrighted. This Thor from Disney/Marvel is distinguished from Thor from God of War.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#196

Post by ls612 » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #179

jMyles wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not getting "better." It always just copied. That's all it /can/ do That's true of all the best artists ever. > They're just there to whitewash away liability from blatantly stealing someone else's content. That's because that's not a thing. Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give states more control over creativity. Nobody who copies bytes which represent my music is a "thief". To be a thie…

> Ownership of "content" is a legal fiction invented to give states more control over creativity. Ownership is a legal fiction invented because it is perceived to encourage behavior that is seen as desirable; this is no more true of ownership of intellectual property or other intangible personal property than it is of tangible personal property or real estate.

He has a point that in a society with strong legal protections on freedom of expression, copyright is one of the main tools the state has to stop expression that is deleterious to the ruling class.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#197

Post by rpdillon » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #176

fragmede wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's self indulgent wankery. If I, as writer and an artist, have just the most absolutely brilliant thoughts, and write them down into a book or draw the most beautiful artwork, I can earn money off that well into my afterlife with copyright. Meanwhile the carpenter who is no less bright, can only sell the chair he's built once. In order to make money off of it, he must labor to produce a second or even a thi…

The only people making chairs by hand today are exceptionally well-paid artisanal craft carpenters and/or designers/studios. It's not at all unusual for popular/iconic furniture designs to be copyrighted. Reality is people who invent truly original, useful, desirable things are the most important human beings on the planet. Nothing that makes civilisation what it is has happened without original inventiveness and cre…

This position suggests that there was no progress before we had copyright. I think you're vastly overstating the power of the incentives we've set up to drive creative behavior, and even with your caveats I think you're overstating their efficacy. Copyright and patents have done more to consolidate wealth within middleman industries that aggregate these properties than they have to enrich the actual creatives doing the work, as it is with all systems. For every system we put in place to reward behavior that we enjoy, the system always benefits those that choose to game the system more than those that were originally intended to be rewarded.

And the results are observable empirically: very few people are told by anyone that's been out in the world that they should choose to become a writer or an inventor, because writers and inventors simply don't make that much money. The system you claim is so necessary seems to be completely failing in its core mission.

For example, take a look at writers making a decent living on a platform like Substack. Copyright is literally doing nothing for them. People can freely copy their substack and post it everywhere online. The value is that the platform provides a centralized location for people to follow the person's writing, and to build a community around it. In cases where artists and inventors have become rich, I look at the mechanism behind it, and often it's an accident that had nothing to do with intellectual property rights at all.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#198

Post by jason_pomerleau » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:46 PM UTC

mlsu wrote: post #137

I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate party" idea that intellectual property, the royalty system, the draconian copyright laws that we have today are deeply silly, rooted in a fiction, and used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. Unfortunately, i…

> If they could, Disney would scan your brain to charge you a nickel every time you thought of Mickey Mouse.

This reminds me of Tom Scott’s “Welcome to Life: The Singularity, Ruined by Lawyers” [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#199

Post by chrisweekly » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

mcmcmc wrote: post #131

chrisweekly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(below is my shallow res, maybe naive?) That might inject a ton of $ into "IP", doing further damage to the creative commons. How can we support remix culture for humans, while staving off ultimately-destructive AI slop? Maybe copyleft / creative-commons licenses w/ explicit anti-AI prohibitions? Tho that could have bad ramifications too. ALL of this makes me kind of uncomfortable and sad, I want more creativity and…

> doing further damage to the creative commons Not sure I understand this part. Because creators would be getting paid for their works being used for someone else’s commercial gain?

Because it reinforces the idea that creative works should usually involve lawyers.

Re: An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

#200

Post by grotorea » Thu, Apr 03, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #166

MgB2 wrote: post #30

Idk, the models generating what are basically 1:1 copies of the training data from pretty generic descriptions feels like a severe case of overfitting to me. What use is a generational model that just regurgitates the input? I feel like the less advanced generations, maybe even because of their limitations in terms of size, were better at coming up with something that at least feels new. In the end, other than for co…

Idk, a couple of the examples might be generic enough that you wouldn't expect a very specific movie character. But most of the prompts make it extremely clear which movie character you would expect to see, and I would argue that the chat bot is working as expected by providing that.

Even if I'm thinking of an Indiana Jones-like character doesn't mean I want literally Indiana Jones. If I wanted Indiana Jones I could just grab a scene from the movie.