Live data from Hacker News

Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

mathstodon.xyz

201–210 of 225 posts

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My test would be: Until the AI companies pay back what they have already stolen, then anything that uses AI at all cannot be copyrighted.

Who set the value? I wouldn’t have sold any of my content to ai companies for training, the payback would be basically infinite

The artists can demand whatever they want. If the megacorps didn't want to pay it then they shouldn't have used it without permission.

Alternatively, they could remove the art from the LLM and divide their past profits among the artists.

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it was a human who took the photo, would the copyright still be owned by the equipment owner / person who set it up? What if this applied in a photography class? The instructor owns the equipment and helped “set up” the photo. Does the instructor own the copyright?

After this ruling, I had an idea for a photo where I set up the entire set, camera, etc, but the photo entailed the model clicking the shutter while we were both in the shot. Just in case, I had the model write a quick note ceding the rights. It's fine, I guess. How does it work in cinema? A director who is the creator of the project must have to get rights from every camera/mic operator.

In cinema it works the same as in software engineering. There is an exception to normal copyright law where works made in the course of employment are treated as if the author is the employer rather than the actual author of the work. Its known in copyright law as a "work for hire" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire

> In the United States, United Kingdom, and several other jurisdictions, if a work is created by an employee as part of their job duties, the employer is considered the legal author or first owner of copyright.

> It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally-recognized author of that work.

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you modify enough of the output as to make it unrecognizable as the machine output -- that's a new work created by a human. i.e. you don't have to change every line. same thing applies to sampling in music. if i change enough of a sample as to make it unrecognizable, then i don't need to worry about registering/licensing the sample.

Yeah, but then you end up more or let rewriting the LLM output, which defeats the purpose of using agents, no?

[deleted]

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you modify enough of the output as to make it unrecognizable as the machine output -- that's a new work created by a human. i.e. you don't have to change every line. same thing applies to sampling in music. if i change enough of a sample as to make it unrecognizable, then i don't need to worry about registering/licensing the sample.

Yeah, but then you end up more or let rewriting the LLM output, which defeats the purpose of using agents, no?

for anything you want to be able to copyright, yes.

otherwise you can still prompt your agent things, but any output falls under public domain.

since this hype wave started some people have been saying don’t use these tools in an environment where you’re dealing with proprietary IP. did anyone listen? no. because shiny.

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what the AI companies already did?

Yes, and they should either be prosecuted or forced to compensate their victims.

I'm sure that will go really well for all the artists.

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#206
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically, in the US dashcam, CCTV, and similar automated recordings are not copyrightable. In the US you can only copyright creative expression. However, the question hasn't been answered in court, yet, AFAIU. That doesn't stop people from treating automated recordings as if they were copyrighted, though. Especially for media companies, licensing is standard operating procedure. Even if a media company's lawyers…

Copyright is automatic upon creation. Registering a work provides additional benefits.

[deleted]

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#207
The thought occurred a few days ago that presumed copyright assignment might be a further casualty of our Brave New World of Ubiquitous AI Content.

Under most Berne Convention nations, copyright exists in all works "of original authorship" without any further registration requirement. That copyright persists for extraordinarily extended periods of time, generally many decades beyond the death of the author (if known).

Such protections apply to any authorship, including the comments posted here to HN, a jotted grocery list, or an audio recording.

But the protection presumes authorship. Today, increasingly, ubiquitous AI tools take over the role of writing in many contexts: texts, emails, HN comments (somewhat frequently given mod comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>), and whole articles and books.

Absent some work-factor suggesting probable original authorship (say, an original, handwritten or typewritten draft), there seems at least a faint possibility that AI might server as an incentive to require some positive act (e.g., registration, with a sworn statement of authorship) for copyright protection to be applied. This might be a positive step back from the copyright absolutism of the past century or so.

Earlier: https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/117069264529174644>

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#208
post #58

it's sort of non-controversial at the extreme end I think - where there is no human contribution, why should there be protection? But it just begs the actual question of how much human contribution there needs to be: - I wrote the prompt (not enough) - I wrote many prompts and iteratively refined them using distinctly human skill (open question, but loosely seems still not enough, potentially in the EU but maybe in t…

I think it should be at least an 80/20 rule.

80% of the code should be hand written by you. 20% can be allocated by AI for corrections or suggestions.

AI generated code should never be copyrighted otherwise. It's objectively common sense.

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#209
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in favor of copyright reform so eventually it becomes something like two years automatic with a one time two year extension possible an I agree with you because of one key word — raw. Once the footage is used in a package, be it a movie, a news report, or a music video, that package can be copyrighted. The problem is there is no way the owner of a dashcam can prohibit commercial use of a video they own if it can…

people freqently spend more than two years trying to get something published.

Two years might be too short.

The overwhelming majority of works have an effective commercial life of less than ten years.

Present-value analysis further reduces the individual benefit of long-lived copyright. That is warrented in only a minuscule fraction of all works.

(There are roughly 1 million books published in English annually, of which ... ten make the top-ten best-seller list. The situation gets worse if we consider this a conservative estimate, or include all other copyrighted works created in a year ... every one of the billion or so items posted to social media accounts on a near-daily basis is protected by copyright. Few if any of those have any real commercial value. The fraction of works fostered vs. works encumbered by copyright is parlous small.)

Re: Copyright does not protect AI-generated content in EU

#210
post #21

As software, creative works, science, etc become more and more contributed via AI does that mean all future works will not be copyrighted or patented? Under our current copyright culture and laws obviously not but that does open the question to how much does a human have to contribute and what evidence is required to show that a human contributed enough so that it can be copyrighted and patented. Some time in the fut…

Pretty much my thought: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49388777>.
Post reply on HN