An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip • Hacker News Board

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

#771

Post by tpmoney » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:06 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #658

jl6 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's assuming the revenue generated would be the same every year forever, when in practice it declines over time. For the crown jewel IP that the studios are most interested in protecting, the opposite of this assumption is true. Star Wars, for example, is making more money than ever. Streaming revenues will probably invalidate that assumption for an even wider pool of back catalog properties.

If Star Wars were in the public domain now it would be making even more money. Money that would go into the general economy and not just into a single studio.

I wonder if there is value in splitting copyright into two parts and keeping a longer duration on the copies of the original work, but shortening the duration on the concepts in that work. That is, allow an author / studio to retain a long duration ownership of the original movie or story, so no one else can just start distributing copies of their VHS tapes after a few years. But at the same time, after 10 or 20 years other people can start making new Star Wars universe movies and books without licensing it from the original artist/author. If the original was good enough, then the rights to be the sole distributor of that original material should be plenty worthwhile, and in the mean time, just in time for the generational “nostalgia bump” a whole new set of related properties can come out, reinvigorating interest in the original.

Maybe even some sort of gradual opening of the IP, where after say 10 years, broad categories are opened (think things like “the Jedi” or “the Empire” or “Endor”), but specific characters and their representations aren’t (so no Darth Vader or Luke Skywalkers), then after 20 years you open the characters themselves but only derivative works. And then finally after 30 years or so you open the originals as well for things like translations or “de-specialized” editions or what have you. Then finally 50 years puts the raw originals in the public domain as well.

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

#772

Post by seadan83 » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

RataNova wrote: post #482

djoldman wrote: post #332

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…

While I think the laws are broken, I also get why companies fight so hard to defend their IP: it is valuable, and they've built empires around it. But at some point, we have to ask: are we preserving culture or just hoarding it?

Missing is why laws fight so hard too, missing the opposite of what we have (in the west), namely blatant and rampant piracy. The other extreme is really bad, creators of any type pirated by organized crime. There was no video game nor movie market in eastern Europe for example, can't compete against large scale piracy.

Which is to say, preservation without awareness of the threat will look like hoarding. A secondary question is to what extent is that threat real? Without seeing what true rampant piracy looks like, I think it would be easy to be ignorant of the threat.

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

#773

Post by hinkley » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

Matumio wrote: post #548

jpc0 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seem to talk about fairness. Copyright law isn't supposed to be fair, it's supposed to benefit society. On one side you have the interest of the public to make use of already created work. On the other side is the financial incentive to create such work in the first place. So the question to ask is whether the artist would have created the work and published it, even knowing that it isn't an insurance to their fa…

I don’t know how much time you’ve spent on task scheduling or public strategy, but minmaxing of The Public Good versus the private benefit of art is, in fact, a question of fairness. It’s a compromise to give both parties as much of what they want or need as possible.

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

#774

Post by seadan83 » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:10 PM UTC

Interesting how the longer conversations here go into the familiar territory of whether copyright should exist. Meanwhile, the salient aspect is that these AI image generators were trained on copyrighted material. The typical hacker news discussion feels very different when talking about code generation. Yet, when it is images - then we question whether copyright should exist?

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

#775

Post by whycome » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:15 PM UTC

GPerson wrote: post #633

whycome wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of human creation is like this. All language. Process. Even the US anthem was “stolen”

Since you make no argument to justify your unfounded claim, I’ll simply respond by informing you that these (obviously) are not remotely similar. To claim they are indicates some kind of deep disrespect for your fellow human beings. You could not tell the difference between taking a screen shot of the Mona Lisa and spending a lifetime to perfect the art of painting and then putting years of effort into painting it.

> then putting years of effort into painting it.

Which efforts do we decide deserve compensation? We collectively create so many useful things. People come up with new words to describe a concept and when it's apt, it's widely adopted. That brilliant idea is the culmination of all the other work they've been putting in. But others get to use the word and benefit from it. Indigenous farmers put hundreds of years of effort into domesticating crops like tomatoes and corn and peppers. But those are just taken and spread. We have millions of teachers going above and beyond expectations. We have mothers and caregivers. We have comedians crafting jokes for comedy and they have no ability to protect those jokes. We have brilliant chefs creating recipes after years of work, experience, and effort and they too don't have protections.

> To claim they are indicates some kind of deep disrespect for your fellow human beings.

Nah. My comment comes from a deep respect for fellow humans. And a respect for all the efforts collectively made by a society for its common good.

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

#776

Post by flessner » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:16 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #411

flessner wrote: post #384

Everyone is talking about theft - I get it, but there's a more subtler point being made here. Current generation of AI models can't think of anything truly new. Everything is simply a blend of prior work. I am not saying that this doesn't have economic value, but it means these AI models are closer to lossy compression algorithms than they are to AGI. The following quote by Sam Altman from about 5 years ago is intere…

Disregarding the (common!) assumption that AGI will consist of one monolithic LLM instead of dozens of specialized ones, I think your comment fails to invoke an accurate, consistent picture of creativity/"truly new" cognition. To borrow Chomsky's framework: what makes humans unique and special is our ability to produce an infinite range of outputs that nonetheless conform to a set of linguistic rules. When viewed in…

This may not be apparent to an english speaker as the language has a rather fixed set of words, but in German, where creating new words is common, the lack of linguistic creativity is obvious.

As an example, let's talk about "vibe coding" - It's a new term describing heavy LLM usage in programming, usually associated with Generation Z.

If I am asking an LLM to generate a German translation for "vibe coder" it comes up with the neutral "Vibe-Programmierer". When asking it to be more creative it came up with "Schwingungsschmied" ("vibration smith"?) - What?

I personally came up with the following words:

* Gefühlsprogrammierer ("A programmer, that focuses on intuition and feeling.")

* Freischnauzeprogrammierer ("Free-mouthed programmer - highlighting straightforwardness and the creative expression of vibe coding." - colloquial)

Interesstingly, LLMs can describe both these terms, they just can't create them naturally. I tested this on all major LLMs and the results were similar. Generating a picture of a "vibe coder" also highlights more of a moody atmosphere instead of the Generation Z aspects that are associated with it on social media nowadays.

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

#777

Post by jxramos » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

District5524 wrote: post #579

ionwake wrote: post #534

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…

lol, this interaction may possibly become known as "grooming the AI"

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

#778

Post by egypturnash » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #739

csallen wrote: post #466

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 would prefer a world where we can use the skills we have spent a lifetime honing without having to compete with some asshole taking everything we’ve shared and stuffing it into a machine that spits out soulless clones of our work without any acknowledgment of our existence.

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

#779

Post by pesus » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

nearbuy wrote: post #747

mjburgess wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novelty in one medium arises from novelty in others, shifts to the external environment. We got brass bands with brass instruments, synth music from synths. We know therefore, necessarily, that they can be nothing novel from an LLM -- it has no live access to novel developments in the broader environment. If synths were invented after its training, it could never produce synth music (and so on). The claim here is tri…

Kind of a weird take that excludes the vast majority of human artwork that most people would consider novel. For all the complaints one might have of cubism, few would claim it's not novel. And yet it's not based on any new development in the external world but rather on mashing together different perspectives. Someone could have created the style 100 years earlier if they were so inclined, and had Picasso never exis…

I would argue that Picasso's life experiences, the environments he grew up and lived in, the people he interacted with, and the world events that took place in his life (like the world wars) were the external developments that led to the development of cubism. Sure, an AI could take in and analyze the works that existed prior, but it couldn't have the emotional reaction that occurred en masse after WWI and started the breakdown of more classical forms of art and the development/rise of more abstract forms of art.

Or, as the kids might say, AI couldn't feel the vibe shift occurring in the world at the time.

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

#780

Post by jimmaswell » Fri, Apr 04, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #778

jimmaswell wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 would prefer a world where we can use the skills we have spent a lifetime honing without having to compete with some asshole taking everything we’ve shared and stuffing it into a machine that spits out soulless clones of our work without any acknowledgment of our existence.

This could a be verbatim quote from a seamstress talking about looms.