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

An artist fights Midjourney

garymarcus.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 96 posts

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#21

Post by passwordoops »

Glyptodon wrote: post #15
passwordoops wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The image generator that provided the screenshot without licensing/permission. This isn't complicated, we have laws on the books, and I hope legislators learned their lesson after the "Uber's not a taxi company, and AirBNBs are not like hotels"

I don't know. This sort of thing will lead to stuff like recording your own memories requiring a licensing fee if not careful. I also think there's a reasonable argument that the prompter is the one creating infringement.

Wow. You really do need to walk me down the path you took from a correlation black box machine breaking obvious copyright laws and recording memories

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#22

Post by Glyptodon »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #17
kingkawn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re making money producing images of IP then…

Who was making any money in this instance? I’m not super familiar with midjourney but it looks to me like he used the free version

Even if it's the paid version, the prompter had it make the infringing content for their own use. And it's only going to be anything more than equivalent to someone making their own sketch of Batman if the prompter reproduces and distributes. It's not like it's illegal for you to tell your artist friend to sketch a Batman either - Comic Cons and such are full of that.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#23

Post by sjfjsjdjwvwvc »

passwordoops wrote: post #14
charcircuit wrote: post #6

A web browser lets you easily commit copyright infringement by right clicking on a copyrighted image you do not have the rights to and selecting download. It is also shockingly easy to do.

I can't understand how people tie themselves into knots with non-equivalent whataboutism when it comes to these correlation black boxes. The generative "AI" sports out an image it's owners claim is original. That's the infringement.

I would say it depends on the details. The generated image are clearly derivative and not pixel perfect recreations

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#24

Post by felipeerias »

They know exactly what they are doing:

“If You knowingly infringe someone else’s intellectual property, and that costs us money, we’re going to come find You and collect that money from You. We might also do other stuff, like try to get a court to make You pay our legal fees. Don’t do it.”

https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#25

Post by pylua »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #12

If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke the law, not the makers of the tool. If you go down the “can’t use my art as training data” how far do you push it? I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data? Would…

The picture in the article is a lot more than drawing a caped super hero after watching batman. Not to mention that the access to viewing batman for the inspiration is usually behind some sort of compensation.

I would argue that original creators are being harmed by this. Not in a traditional sense, or even in a legal way with any precedence but in a thousand cuts sort of way that is novel.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#26

Post by stubish »

Quite similar to the New York Times lawsuit. If you can reproduce an original work, then use of the source material was obviously not transformative, and not covered under fair use. These systems can currently function like a lossy compression algorithm.

This is going to be a mess until higher courts in the US or Europe make some rulings. Personally, I think they are going to favor the copyright holders. A few billion handed out to damaged parties, and future commercial systems only trained on licensed content.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#27

Post by motoxpro »

Glyptodon wrote: post #9

Should you pay royalties if someone says to you "remember that scene from Blade Runner" or "imagine if Jean Luc Picard beamed into the middle of a Batman movie" and visualize something similar to something highly similar to a movie or TV show you've seen?

Of course not because you PAID to see it in the first place. Or you watched it with someone who paid. Or you saw it on a website that was free and THEY paid for it. If you never saw it, you would have no idea what it looked like.

You had to see it at some point, the way in which you see it is the issue, not the memory of it.

If you're arguing that the AI is just like a random human browsing the web and they happened upon these things and now they are allowed to sell those things back to me. Man that seems like so uncompelling of an argument to me.

We're not allowed to do this in any other context. I can't learn music and go tour, take requests from the audience, and act like it is mine. No credit or anything. Sure on a small scale, and there are times when it's unclear, but I can't go to Wembly without paying the original owner when someone asks me to play "Thriller by Michael Jackson"

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#28

Post by edgyquant »

felipeerias wrote: post #24

They know exactly what they are doing: “If You knowingly infringe someone else’s intellectual property, and that costs us money, we’re going to come find You and collect that money from You. We might also do other stuff, like try to get a court to make You pay our legal fees. Don’t do it.” https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service

Let’s see how well this works out for them. Sounds like trying to pull the “we’re just a platform card”

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#29

Post by semiquaver »

sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote: post #23
passwordoops wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand how people tie themselves into knots with non-equivalent whataboutism when it comes to these correlation black boxes. The generative "AI" sports out an image it's owners claim is original. That's the infringement.

I would say it depends on the details. The generated image are clearly derivative and not pixel perfect recreations

How many pixels must be the same to qualify as copyright infringement?

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#30

Post by pylua »

felipeerias wrote: post #24

They know exactly what they are doing: “If You knowingly infringe someone else’s intellectual property, and that costs us money, we’re going to come find You and collect that money from You. We might also do other stuff, like try to get a court to make You pay our legal fees. Don’t do it.” https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service

Seems like you could easily add a couple of adjectives / adverbs to make a completely new scene from the movie and it may be considered fair use?
Post reply on HN