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

theaiunderwriter.substack.com

761–770 of 927 posts

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

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human appearance does not have enough dimensions to make likeness a viable thing to protect; I don't see how you could do that without say banning Elvis impersonators. That said: > I'm looking forward to all of Hollywood joining the cause against the rampant abuse of IP by Silicon Valley. If you're framing the sides like that, it's pretty clear which I'm on. :)

Interesting you should bring that up: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/1517ldjmv Loads of lawsuits have been filed by celebrities and their estates over the unauthorized use of their likeness. And in fact, in 2022, Las Vegas banned Elvis impersonators from performing weddings after a threat from the Presley estate's licensing company: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10872855/Elvis-imag... But t…

I can remember two ad campaigns with an Elvis impersonator, and they used multiple people in both of them. I think we can safely assume that if you represent multiple people as a specific public figure, that a reasonable person must assume that none of them are in fact that person.

Now of course that leaves out concerns over how much of advertisement is making money off of unreasonable people, which is a concern Congress occasionally pays attention to.

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

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New rule: you get to keep your belongings for 20 years and that's it. Then they are taken away. Every dollar you made twenty or more years ago, every asset you acquired, gone. That oughtta be enough to incentivize people to work and build their wealth. Anything more than that is unnecessary.

I think you mean "20 years after you die". That seems like a perfectly rational way to deal with people who want to be buried in their gold and jewels in a pyramid.

OK, so you can have your dad's piano for 20 years after he dies, after that it's public property.

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

#763

It's only "intellectual theft" because we consider peoples thoughts their own property. On many levels, that doesn't really make sense to me. Tons of historical documents have shown that inventions, mathematical proofs, and celestial observations were made by humans separated by continents and time. What that shows is that it is certainly possible for two persons to have the same exact or similar thought without ever…

Think about it. Copyright and trademark are only a thing because of the constraint of the speed of light (or as some people believe, the constraint of the simulation running the universe). In an infinite universe, everything that has ever been invented or created by a human has already happened thousands of times in another place and another time.

I want to add, to give credit where credit is due, that this thought was conveyed to me in first grade by another 1st grader sitting with me at the lunch table. That was a day and conversation that I will never forget. 1972.

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

#764

Not sure if anyone is interested in this story, but I remember at the height of the PokemonGo craze I noticed there were no shirts for the different factions in the game, cant rememebr what they were called but something like Teamread or something. I setup an online shop to just to sell a red shirt with the word on it. The next day my whole shop was taken offline for potential copyright infringement. What I found sur…

I asked Sora to turn a random image of my friend and myself into Italian plumbers. Nothing more, just the two words "Italian plumbers". The created picture was not shown to me because it was in violation of OpenAI's content policy. I asked then just to turn the guys on the picture into plumbers, but I asked this in the Italian language. Without me asking for it, Sora put me in an overall and gave me a baseball cap, a…

I feel like the golden and fun age of GenAI is already over.

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

#765
post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge middle ground between "static image with another sliding static image" and "1 year of drawing per 4 second Ghibli masterpiece". From your comment is almost looks like you're suggesting that you have to choose either one or the other, but that is of course not true. I bet that a good animator could make a really impressive 4-second scene if they were given a month, instead of a year. Possibly even if t…

Yes, that the current trend in the western world. Money is all that matters. There's only lowest accepted quality. Anything above that is a waste of money, profits that are lost. Nobody wants masterpieces. There is no market for that. That lowest-accepted quality also declines over time, as generations after generations of people become used to rock-bottom quality. In the end, there's only slop and AI will make the c…

To be fair, we've already been through this cycle at least once with animation. The difference between early Disney or even Looney Tunes and (say) late '60s Hanna-Barbera or '80s He-Man is enormous. Since then there has been generally higher-quality animation rather than lower (though I know it varies a lot by country, genre etc.)

It's not inevitable that it's a race to the cheapest and shittest. That's just one (fairly strong) commercial force amongst many.

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

#766
The article ends with...

> Does the growth of AI have to bring with it the tacit or even explicit encouragement of intellectual theft?

And like, yes, 100% - what else is AI but a tool for taking other people's work and reassembling it into a product for you without needing to pay someone. Do you want an awesome studio ghibli'd version of yourself? There are thousands of artists online that you could commission for a few bucks to do it that'd probably make something actually interesting - but no, we go to AI because we want to avoid paying a human.

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

#767

Not sure if anyone is interested in this story, but I remember at the height of the PokemonGo craze I noticed there were no shirts for the different factions in the game, cant rememebr what they were called but something like Teamread or something. I setup an online shop to just to sell a red shirt with the word on it. The next day my whole shop was taken offline for potential copyright infringement. What I found sur…

I asked Sora to turn a random image of my friend and myself into Italian plumbers. Nothing more, just the two words "Italian plumbers". The created picture was not shown to me because it was in violation of OpenAI's content policy. I asked then just to turn the guys on the picture into plumbers, but I asked this in the Italian language. Without me asking for it, Sora put me in an overall and gave me a baseball cap, a…

that’s hilarious

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

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. That was the original purpose. It has since been coopted by people and corporations whose incentives are to make as much money as possible by monopolizing valuable intangible "property" for as long as they can. And the chief strategic move these people have made is to convince…

We were close to your viewpoint being the popular one, but sadly many (most?) independent content creators are so overtaken by fear of AI that they've done a 180. The same people who learned by tracing references to sell fanart of a copyrighted franchise (not complaining, I spend thousands on such things) accuse AI of stealing when it glances at their own work. We're entering a new golden age of creative opportunity…

> we were close

Maybe. In my microcosm even before big AI, 100% of my tech acquaintances were against IP laws, 0% of my art acquaintances were, and authors I know had varied opinions based on their other backgrounds.

Artists do seem to have had a mindset shift. Previously they supported IP protection because it was "right" (or they'd at least concede that in practice it's not helping them personally), but with the AI boom most of them are pro-IP laws because of more visceral livelihood fears.

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

#769

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws. That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for t…

For what it's worth, this is a uniquely American view of copyright:

> The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property.

In Europe, particularly France, copyright arose for a very different reason: to protect an author's moral rights as the creator of the work. It was seen as immoral to allow someone's work -- their intellectual offspring -- to be meddled with by others without their permission. Your work represents you and your reputation, and for others to redistribute it is an insult to your dignity.

That is why copyrights in Europe started with much longer durations than they did in the United States, and the US has gradually caught up. It is not entirely a Disney effect, but a fundamental difference in the purpose of copyright.

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

#770
post #535

I don't condone or endorse breaking any laws. That said, trademark laws like life of the author + 95 years are absolutely absurd. The ONLY reason to have any law prohibiting unlicensed copying of intangible property is to incentivize the creation of intangible property. The reasoning being that if you don't allow people to exclude 3rd party copying, then the primary party will assumedly not receive compensation for t…

You are missing a bunch of edge cases, and the law is all about edge cases. An artist who works professionally has family members, family members who are dependent on them. If they pass young, become popular just before they pass and their extremely popular works are now public domain. Their family sees nothing from their work, that is absolutely being commercialized ( publishing and creation generally spawns two sep…

For writing many people only become popular after they are dead.

I heard this explained once as the art in some writing is explaining how people feel in a situation that is still too new for many to want to pay to have it illustrated to them. But once the newness has passed, and people understand or want to understand, then they enjoy reading about it.

As a personal example, I could enjoy movies about unrequited love before and long after I experienced it firsthand, but not during or for years after. People may not yet have settled feelings about an event until afterward, and not be willing to “pick at the scab”.

The other, more statistical explanation is that it just takes a lot of attempts to capture an idea or feeling and a longer window of time represents more opportunities to hit upon a winning formula. So it’s easier to capture a time and place afterward than during.

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