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An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

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Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#81

Post by marginalia_nu »

msla wrote: post #16
marginalia_nu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a spectacularly shitty world where IP protection is only granted to entities with a legal budget that eclipses the GDP of Antigua, and not to smaller independent creators. The ends of having an useful model like stable diffusion doesn't really justify just ignoring the IP rights of tens of thousands of creators who were already having a pretty rough time making ends meet. That's just a shitty thing to do.

It's already the case that independent creators get their works pulled on bogus copyright claims. Copyright law isn't friendly to small creators, and big creators use it as a cudgel with absolutely no consequences.

And because things are bad we should go ahead and make them worse?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#82

Post by hooverd »

scotty79 wrote: post #42
haswell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work I’ve seen this sentiment, bu…

> This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions. > As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and co…

AI "artists" are commissioners in my view. If the learning and creating is done by the model, the model is the rights holder. Can't have your cake and eat it too.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#83

Post by matheusmoreira »

TylerE wrote: post #33
Kiro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Abolish all copyright. Are we hackers or not?

You understand that completely kills OSS as a concept, right?

So what? Free software was literally created in reaction to copyright protections getting extended to software. They make no sense in a world without copyright.

By the way, it would also kill proprietary software as a concept. Source code leak? It's no longer a crime to use it. We'd never have to read licensing nonsense ever again.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#84

Post by dns_snek »

idiotsecant wrote: post #69
dns_snek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do find it disheartening that it's opt-out instead of opt-in This is the crux of the issue for me. It's a different set of rules for AI companies than everyone else. If I started selling pirated copies of Nintendo games they would send an army of lawyers after me and this "opt-out" reasoning would not be a valid defense in court. These AI companies are trying to get away with stealing art and other content with a…

It is a different set of rules, just not in the way you're depicting it. This is not piracy. The whole point is that the AI is using this work in a way that is transformative, just like a person would. It's not copying, it's breaking down work to it's foundational features and recombining those features with others to make new things. Literally exactly what humans do when they make art. If a person was doing what the…

But it's not a person doing it. It's a machine learning model owned and operated by a company. It doesn't have capacity to "think", claiming otherwise is highly dubious since anyone truly "learning" from art wouldn't also replicate watermarks in their "original" work. More importantly, people have limited output capacity and it's why copyright was invented in the first place, i.e. scale.

Current trajectory will only harm original creators, there is zero consideration or benefit for them. On the other side you have companies that stand to make billions off of their work.

Arguing in favor of such a system is, in my mind, appalling. Either ensure that copyright law prohibits unauthorized machine learning from valuable original art or abolish it completely.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#86

Post by marginalia_nu »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #73
marginalia_nu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make a mouse cartoon in the style of Disney and tell me how well that goes down.

Here you go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuphead > The game's creators, brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, took inspiration from the rubber hose style of the golden age of American animation and the surrealist qualities of works of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Fleischer Studios, Warner Bros. Cartoons, MGM Cartoon Studio and Walter Lantz Productions.

There is a conspicuous lack of mice in that cartoon.

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#87

Post by wvenable »

acomjean wrote: post #18

>"The output represents the model’s understanding of what is useful, aesthetic, pleasing, etc. and that, together with data filtering and cleaning that general image generating AI companies do,2 is what the companies consider most valuable, not the training data.3" This didn't make any sense to me. Without the curated training data (images) how are they making the models? No matter what, putting images into your mach…

> Machines aren't people.

There's no reason why that is the significant detail. Why does it matter? If you can look at millions of images over your lifetime and faithfully reproduce famous works of art by hand, aren't you just as wrong?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#88

Post by ben_w »

troyvit wrote: post #44
Karunamon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the exact opposite. AI, including AGI if we ever get there, cannot be allowed to be strangled in its crib by artificially limiting the information it can learn from in the name of IP maximalism. IP law already goes way too far, the line should be drawn here.

If you want new art you probably want some form of IP. What's the incentive for an artist if at the first whiff of success their output is overtaken and resold by technocrats with machines?

If the things that Stable Diffusion produces isn't art, then new art will be made in the same way it was made before copyright existed (patronage).

If it is art, then it will be made both by patronage and by people saying: "Hey StableChatSiri, make me some art."

(People will still do the later even if it doesn't count as art).

Hm. Thinking of patrons, does anyone know how many artists and sculptors there were in 1710 England?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#89

Post by haswell »

scotty79 wrote: post #42
haswell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and commoditizing it. > So many artists styles could have gone viral and actually bring those artists some work I’ve seen this sentiment, bu…

> This reads like you know what’s best for artists and takes their point of view completely for granted. I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions. > As a photographer, I can’t claim to have or require a fraction of the skills used by creators of hand-made art. And even I am not excited about some AI slurping up my best work and co…

> I think I know that little better than lawyers do. Even if only because I had zero financial incentive when I formed my opinions.

This still doesn't give you standing to speak on behalf of artists, and "because I know better than lawyers do" is generally a problematic form of argument. It continues to ignore the key people that matter: the individuals with the creativity and skills to create the content that started this whole IP conundrum in the first place.

> I know it doesn't feel great. But your art has already been commoditized. There are hundreds photographers perfectly capable of replicating your style and many of them do it completely accidentally. The value of your art is a personal element not the content itself. What's valuable is your service and the name you made for yourself.

This is a very one-dimensional view of what makes art, and how the broader community plays a role. I have no illusions about where I stand as an individual photographer among the multitude of photographers in terms of raw technical talent and capability. But I'd argue that you are deeply misinterpreting the implications of that reality, and imposing your own definition of value on a category of human expression that is by definition deeply subjective and far more complex than a simple formula of exposure and conversion rate with some resulting monetary return.

> I wonder how much money you've lost due to that. Besides, attribution is naturally built into those "plagiarist" prompts for AI.

This assumes the only reason I would be upset is because of lost sales. I take photos for the love of it. I don't currently sell them. If someone else starts making money on my work, it takes on a different meaning entirely. And even if I turned this into a business, "lost sales" is still only one of multiple factors.

Regarding prompts, how is attribution built in? Nothing requires an individual to reveal their prompts, currently. There are AI-art sharing communities emerging where prompts are held tight, because the authoring of the prompt is the only thing the "AI artist" brings to the table. Even if prompts were universally provided, that doesn't solve the issue of permission, or imply that this is automatically an acceptable form of attribution to all artists overnight.

When video game companies use stolen artwork, they are ridiculed and derided for blatantly profiting from the work of individuals. Even if it was an honest mistake, this kind of misuse is always a headline.

And yet, when we talk about a system that unlocks a seemingly limitless portal through which the life's work of every artist is made systematically available to the entire world without limit, with no consultation with the original creators, those worries about unattributed benefit just disappear.

I'm curious how you feel about the video game scenario?

Re: An IP attorney’s reading of the Stable Diffusion class action lawsuit

#90

Post by wvenable »

troyvit wrote: post #44
Karunamon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the exact opposite. AI, including AGI if we ever get there, cannot be allowed to be strangled in its crib by artificially limiting the information it can learn from in the name of IP maximalism. IP law already goes way too far, the line should be drawn here.

If you want new art you probably want some form of IP. What's the incentive for an artist if at the first whiff of success their output is overtaken and resold by technocrats with machines?

It becomes harder and harder to create new art when every art style, every melody, every plot point is owned by someone else and you're prevented from using it.
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