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Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#51

Post by RobotToaster »

kmeisthax wrote: post #50
doctorzook wrote: post #16

This seems... troubling to me. Essentially, the judge found that this qualifies as fair use because (a) publishing this with commentary is "transformative" even through "Defendants used the exact, unaltered [photo] in the blog post"; (b) "the blog post is not focused on the [photo]"; and (c) "there is no indication that [the use] impacted or has potential to impact the market or value of the Photo". As an amateur pho…

I think the judge was just reaching for an excuse to kill the lawsuit. The reason why Fair Use exists is because we have a copyright law, a First Amendment, and common-law courts that are empowered to legislate from the bench[0]. That last bit is important: everything the courts rule can potentially become new law that binds the hands of future courts. This means the court needs to be careful when issuing their rulin…

>You may have heard that certain other countries "don't have Fair Use". This is facially true because they aren't common-law countries

The UK is a common law country and technically doesn't have fair use. We have "fair dealing" exceptions, but these are stricter in than American fair use. This is in part because the laws originated from EU legislation which is normally written to suit Napoleonic law countries...

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#52

Post by anonred »

j-bos wrote: post #44
doctorzook wrote: post #16

This seems... troubling to me. Essentially, the judge found that this qualifies as fair use because (a) publishing this with commentary is "transformative" even through "Defendants used the exact, unaltered [photo] in the blog post"; (b) "the blog post is not focused on the [photo]"; and (c) "there is no indication that [the use] impacted or has potential to impact the market or value of the Photo". As an amateur pho…

Let's not forget this was a photo of a painting.

It is not. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/melvin-sokolsky-parker-train

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#53

Post by jterrys »

tadfisher wrote: post #27
jterrys wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye olde double edged sword On one hand aggressively punitive copyright claims stifle creativity and innovation in transformative art. On the other hand, generative AI reopens that transformative creativity.

Reminder that the original copyright term was 14 years, with a single 14-year extension. If this were still the norm, it would feel crazy that blockbuster movie studios are still recycling comic book characters from the 1950s.

Agreed.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#54

Post by kirrent »

ghaff wrote: post #24
bawolff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most generative AI corpora were arguably trained on copyrighted material, making the output potentially infringing. Training is not neccesarily sufficient for it to be a derrivative work, just like if you learned to draw based on famous drawings doesn't mean every single drawing you ever made is infringing. Obviously there are cases where it could be infringing, its going to depend how close the output is to the or…

I'm largely out of this space now but my understanding is that some copyright cases around model training are winding through courts but I haven't seen anything definitive come out. The IP lawyers I know are skeptical but we'll see.

Bartz v Anthropic is some good authority on fair use (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.43...). Still, it can't be said to be definitive because the plaintiff's arguments on market harm (with respect to fair use, not piracy) were limited and there were, as far as I can remember, no compelling examples provided of model output reproducing large swathes of training text.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#55

Post by slyall »

tadfisher wrote: post #27
jterrys wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye olde double edged sword On one hand aggressively punitive copyright claims stifle creativity and innovation in transformative art. On the other hand, generative AI reopens that transformative creativity.

Reminder that the original copyright term was 14 years, with a single 14-year extension. If this were still the norm, it would feel crazy that blockbuster movie studios are still recycling comic book characters from the 1950s.

If copyright was shorter blockbuster movies could still recycle comic book characters from the 50s. It just means that any filmmaker could do it rather than just who can afford to pay Marvel/DC

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#56

Post by pbhjpbhj »

RobotToaster wrote: post #51
kmeisthax wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the judge was just reaching for an excuse to kill the lawsuit. The reason why Fair Use exists is because we have a copyright law, a First Amendment, and common-law courts that are empowered to legislate from the bench[0]. That last bit is important: everything the courts rule can potentially become new law that binds the hands of future courts. This means the court needs to be careful when issuing their rulin…

>You may have heard that certain other countries "don't have Fair Use". This is facially true because they aren't common-law countries The UK is a common law country and technically doesn't have fair use. We have "fair dealing" exceptions, but these are stricter in than American fair use. This is in part because the laws originated from EU legislation which is normally written to suit Napoleonic law countries...

I don't think Fair Dealing is strict because it derives from EU law - what makes you say that?

UK copyright legislation largely started with the Statute of Anne in 1810 (or thereabouts). I'm not sure we can blame the EU! Much of what we have now derives from ratification of the Berne Convention in the early part of the 20th Century. Although TRIPS also impacts things. The most recent changes to the CDPA 1988 derive from WIPO treaty, IIRC, rather than from EU law itself.

It has certainly felt like there has been undue influence of UK copyright from USA-based interests over the last few decades.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#57

Post by leephillips »

The language of the article is strongly biased in favor of people stealing artwork: “photographers should stop suing bloggers for copyright infringement!”

The plaintiff gets scolded for not trying to settle. But, by the article’s own account, the defendant ignored emails from the plaintiff!

Photographers should not stop suing if that’s what it takes. People should stop stealing.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#58

Post by leephillips »

kmeisthax wrote: post #50
doctorzook wrote: post #16

This seems... troubling to me. Essentially, the judge found that this qualifies as fair use because (a) publishing this with commentary is "transformative" even through "Defendants used the exact, unaltered [photo] in the blog post"; (b) "the blog post is not focused on the [photo]"; and (c) "there is no indication that [the use] impacted or has potential to impact the market or value of the Photo". As an amateur pho…

I think the judge was just reaching for an excuse to kill the lawsuit. The reason why Fair Use exists is because we have a copyright law, a First Amendment, and common-law courts that are empowered to legislate from the bench[0]. That last bit is important: everything the courts rule can potentially become new law that binds the hands of future courts. This means the court needs to be careful when issuing their rulin…

“life-ruining sums of money from legally careless bloggers” is deterrence. Don’t do the crime if you can’t .....

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#59

Post by nerdsniper »

Wow:

> Remarkably, the opinion doesn’t mention the statute of limitations at all, even though the original post had been published no less than 14 years earlier (I’m crediting the 2011 blog transfer as a possible republication). This silence reflects that the statute of limitations doesn’t functionally exist in online copyright law any more. Each new view/download nominally constitutes a new infringement, in which case the SOL resets to the most recent visit to the post.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#60

Post by LoganDark »

bawolff wrote: post #17
kmoser wrote: post #3

Lots to comment on but this stood out: > “A lawsuit like this heightens the demand for Generative AI replacements.” Most generative AI corpora were arguably trained on copyrighted material, making the output potentially infringing.

> Most generative AI corpora were arguably trained on copyrighted material, making the output potentially infringing. Training is not neccesarily sufficient for it to be a derrivative work, just like if you learned to draw based on famous drawings doesn't mean every single drawing you ever made is infringing. Obviously there are cases where it could be infringing, its going to depend how close the output is to the or…

> Training is not neccesarily sufficient for it to be a derrivative work, just like if you learned to draw based on famous drawings doesn't mean every single drawing you ever made is infringing.

We don't know that model training is the same thing as inspiration. Training is a mathematical process with theoretically deterministic outputs. It's converging the weights towards being able to exactly reproduce the training data, rather than parts of the training data subjectively influencing a creative output. We will just have to see how this plays in court.

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