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Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#71

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

dotancohen wrote: post #70
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Russians drafted a hell of a lot of young women into the Red Army, as well. They had women on the frontlines, getting shot up, as bad as the guys.

I had absolutely no idea! Any old Russian woman (I mostly know Russians, not many from other Soviet states) will tell of the shortage of men. I never heard of the women on the front lines, I'll ask about that. I'm afraid we don't have much time to learn these things any more.

This is not something that I have studied (thus the “I think”), but Stalin did “meat wave” attacks, long before Putin. It worked, but at terrible cost. I think he grabbed everyone he could, but mostly men, I would imagine. Maybe women volunteered, but weren't drafted. I do know they had them in the frontlines. You actually see them, in old footage.

I do know that he had women combat pilots. I think there was a movie, made about that.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#72

Post by dotancohen »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #71
dotancohen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had absolutely no idea! Any old Russian woman (I mostly know Russians, not many from other Soviet states) will tell of the shortage of men. I never heard of the women on the front lines, I'll ask about that. I'm afraid we don't have much time to learn these things any more.

This is not something that I have studied (thus the “I think”), but Stalin did “meat wave” attacks, long before Putin. It worked, but at terrible cost. I think he grabbed everyone he could, but mostly men, I would imagine. Maybe women volunteered, but weren't drafted. I do know they had them in the frontlines. You actually see them, in old footage. I do know that he had women combat pilots. I think there was a movie,…

I will definitely look into this, thank you very much.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#74

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

petepete wrote: post #46
Hikikomori wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks more Soviet.

The grey tunic looks German WW1 (Bavarian Artillery?) but the insignia on the hat looks like the Panzer division.

The logo looks like the bottom part of the Heer Panzer insignia (without the Nazi eagle, above).

I note that the guy in the foreground is wearing a gray suit, but the hat is green.

Definitely prop stuff.

One of the things that I find amusing about Internet "found historical photos," is that women are usually made up with modern styles. I would not be surprised if they were originally done as fashion shoots, like this one.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#75

Post by kmeisthax »

leephillips wrote: post #65
crote wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what happened to the whole "no cruel and unusual punishments" thing?

These are civil penalties. I wonder if the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments applies to the (high) statutory punitive damages. Any legal scholars want to help us out?

As far as I'm aware, the 8th Amendment does not apply here. I mean, just because the punishment is high doesn't mean it's cruel, and it's certainly not unusual, if it applies to everyone. There are certainly some defendants who would not be deterred without the ability of copyright law to generate absurdly high damage awards. And, of course, nothing legally stops a court from assigning punitive damages in a copyright case. In fact, that probably would have worked out better for the Internet age than the law the MAFIAA[1] bought.

That being said, a lot of constitutional provisions don't apply the moment you step foot in a civil court. For example, you actually can be compelled to self-incriminate, 4th Amendment be damned[0], so long as it's not a criminal proceeding. Likewise, there's caselaw stating that the 8th Amendment flat-out does not apply until the US is named as a party on the lawsuit.

On the other hand, SCOTUS has also thrown out punitive damage awards on 14th Amendment due-process clause grounds. In this case[2], we even have a math formula: punitive damages cannot exceed 10x the compensatory damages. Of course, because copyright already has very high statutory damages, we rarely even need to impute punitive damages to get billion dollar awards.

This is all dancing around another question, though: why do the damages have to fit the crime and not the person? Europe assigns scaling damages based on the defendant's ability to pay, and that would neatly solve the problem of well-pocketed copyright scofflaws that Congress attempted to fix with a sledgehammer. The problem is, American law doesn't actually do this. As far as I'm aware, it's not outright unconstitutional to scale fines to income, but given that it's unusual, I could imagine SCOTUS also finding it to be cruel. I mean, you are singling out the rich for being rich, and America was built to protect the interests of the rich.

[0] When I asked Gemma 4 what it thought of an earlier version of this post, it pedantically pointed out that the only legal compulsion civil courts can apply is an adverse inference - i.e. juries and judges in civil court are allowed to assume you're hiding evidence of guilt, whereas in criminal court they're not. I don't think this distinction matters.

[1] RIAA + MPAA = ???

[2] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/408/

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#76

Post by pbhjpbhj »

p_l wrote: post #43
ghaff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but, yes, with US/UK (i.e. common law regimes) that's something along my understanding as well. Which I generally agree with even if some/many readers here probably do not. Of course, output being copyrightable and copyright infringement on the inputs are two different things.

An important point in copyright infringement is that it generally applies on distribution to other parties. So the process of acquiring inputs may or may not be an infringement, but with at least proposed EU rules it does not matter to created model itself. The exception being that output it produces is judged similar to infringement as human output without any "transformative work" credit to model - so similar to ho…

Actually, copyright generally is infringed when a copy is made; hence the name.

That's why, say, 17 USC 106 lists reproduction as the first exclusive right of a copyright holder. And why Berne Article 9 [^1] is about restricting right of reproduction to the author.

Damages are often, in different jurisdictions, related to actual harm. So, distribution is the focus of lawsuits because actual harm in the making of a copy is usually negligible. Few people are suing to stop copying, they're suing to be recompensed for the [potential] commercial benefit derived from the copying.

In as far as you need to make a copy to use it to process and adjust the weights of an ML model, then yes this activity is an infringement to the right to control reproduction.

One of the measures for transformative use is whether the production of the copy commercially harms the original creator/author. I can't see how you can argue that ML models don't do that. Besides which we don't have an equivalent precedent to 'transformative use' in UK so where our courts can go with all this is not clear.

https://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text/283698

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#77

Post by z3c0 »

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…

> Heaven help me, though, should I misuse a corporation's copyrighted works, even purely personally.

This imbalance is the issue. The photographer attempted to use a fraudulent system designed for the wealthy. Hopefully the loss disillusions those among us hoping for scraps. As an amateur photographer, post all you want, and expect nothing in return. If you shoot digital, keep your raw files to harvest lower-fidelty, online-ready formats. If you shoot film, you have both the scans and the negatives.

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#78

Post by p_l »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #76
p_l wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important point in copyright infringement is that it generally applies on distribution to other parties. So the process of acquiring inputs may or may not be an infringement, but with at least proposed EU rules it does not matter to created model itself. The exception being that output it produces is judged similar to infringement as human output without any "transformative work" credit to model - so similar to ho…

Actually, copyright generally is infringed when a copy is made; hence the name. That's why, say, 17 USC 106 lists reproduction as the first exclusive right of a copyright holder. And why Berne Article 9 [^1] is about restricting right of reproduction to the author. Damages are often, in different jurisdictions, related to actual harm. So, distribution is the focus of lawsuits because actual harm in the making of a co…

There is however the aspect of how much a work is derivative of another work, and that's where the ultimate mixing aspect of AI models shines - as it was documented that removing or adding a specific work in some cases impacted around ~1bit - or less than the random number generator used in some of the processes.

This is also why the output of AI model can infringe - because while having copyrighted work in training set does not result in model being considered derivative, it can produce a work that is obviously a derivative - and as such can be claimed to be a derivative that harms original creator.

Just the fact that the model in general might impact some very vague notions of commercial income is not enough, it must do so through a derivative, and thus infringing, copy

Re: Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim

#79

Post by [deleted] »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #71
dotancohen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had absolutely no idea! Any old Russian woman (I mostly know Russians, not many from other Soviet states) will tell of the shortage of men. I never heard of the women on the front lines, I'll ask about that. I'm afraid we don't have much time to learn these things any more.

This is not something that I have studied (thus the “I think”), but Stalin did “meat wave” attacks, long before Putin. It worked, but at terrible cost. I think he grabbed everyone he could, but mostly men, I would imagine. Maybe women volunteered, but weren't drafted. I do know they had them in the frontlines. You actually see them, in old footage. I do know that he had women combat pilots. I think there was a movie,…

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