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An artist fights Midjourney

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#81

Post by cycomanic »

boolemancer wrote: post #69
snickerbockers wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to. > In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke t…

> > If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! > > in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to. So your argument is that the tool running remotely as a service somehow makes it different from one running on your local computer? So if som…

> > > If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does!

> >

> > in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to.

> So your argument is that the tool running remotely as a service somehow makes it different from one running on your local computer?

> So if someone copies the contents of a novel into Google Docs, Google is liable for their copyright infringement, but if they paste it into Word running on their computer, all of the liability is on them?

But that's not what happening here. If Google docs hat a button, "put Harry Potter books here" that when pressed it puts the whole text of the Harry Potter books into the document. Now who do you think should be liable for copyright infringement, Google who put the whole text of Harry Potter books somewhere into the Google docs source code, or the user who pressed the button? Your argument seems to be the user, but I find that highly illogical.

The central issue is that the copyrighted images are already inside midjourney, the user is just getting them out via queries (pressing a button). The user is _not_ adding the copyrighted material to midjourney.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#82

Post by charcircuit »

asadotzler wrote: post #71
charcircuit wrote: post #6

A web browser lets you easily commit copyright infringement by right clicking on a copyrighted image you do not have the rights to and selecting download. It is also shockingly easy to do.

downloading a copyrighted image is not a crime. downloading and then attempting to distribute that image probably is.

It is not a crime, but in the US you can be sued for $750 to $30000 per unique image downloaded.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#83

Post by ghusto »

coolhand2120 wrote: post #12

If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise. It should still be on the person that broke the law, not the makers of the tool. If you go down the “can’t use my art as training data” how far do you push it? I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data? Would…

> In all seriousness, midjourney is like any other tool. You can break the law with it, big surprise.

I believe the point was rather that the output makes it obvious the "tool" was trained on copyrighted work.

As an aside to your justification though, if a main purpose of a tool is to circumvent copyright, that tool is usually illegal.

> I watched Batman, does that mean if I draw caped super heroes I am stealing training data?

It means if you draw a near copy and tried to sell it, you are committing copyright "theft" (I don't like the term, but that's what it's called).

> Nobody is interested in copies or impressions of popular art, otherwise the guy selling animes on velvet at the local art fair would be making more money

People are absolutely interested. I couldn't get RedBubble to even print a non-copyrighted work (which they mistakenly thought was copyrighted) that I had altered. Just because some people are getting away with it, doesn't mean it's legal or wouldn't immediately come to a stop if they came under scrutiny.

> This just sounds like a Luddite shaking his fist at this perceived enemy.

Luddites had some very good points, so he's in good company.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#84

Post by candiodari »

soamv wrote: post #59
thrill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly legal to paint a copy of another image.

Well, it may be legal to create such a painting, but (depending on details) it may be a derivative work, in which case the original work's copyright still applies. In other words, in your example, the painter is not necessarily free to distribute their painting while ignoring the original image's copyright.

Of course, this is not about the works. This is about the painter, and it's mostly not about exact duplication of the work but about works based on their previous work. You know, like other painters do.

Ostensibly, they want to prevent OpenAI, and any algorithm from making works based on their work.

But, frankly, what they really want is not really that. What they really want is to prevent it from making any works at all.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#85

Post by candiodari »

stubish wrote: post #65
thrill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly legal to paint a copy of another image.

It is not perfectly legal to have a machine paint a copy of another image. And in either case, you can't sell the work without ending up in court. https://petapixel.com/2022/12/08/photographer-loses-plagaris... is one of the more recent applicable cases here, where the original artist failed to uphold their claim, which surprised most people.

The real problem is these algorithms making works of similar quality to the artists. Thousands for $20/month (in OpenAI's case)

Now there are egregious examples where this is abused to target a specific artist, and I'm sure you'll find all the AI companies are entirely on board with preventing that.

But they want to produce artworks.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#86

Post by candiodari »

stubish wrote: post #74
felipeerias wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main selling point of Midjourney is that you own the images that it produces for you. If that is not the case, if Midjourney's output can not be copyrighted, that might destroy its business model.

Midjourney cannot grant you the copyright to an image it generates, because it may generate the same or very similar image for another user. The best it can do is grant you a non-exclusive permissive license. And maybe it would get in trouble if it granted a permissive license to a copyrighted or trademark infringing image, or maybe the copyright or trademark claim simply trumps the license.

Midjourney's story is different. Midjourney sees it's AI as a tool, that you pay to use to make images. According to them, it's the user making the image, and the user has copyright (other than giving Midjourney a license to store, show, train, ... that image)

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#87

Post by Glyptodon »

motoxpro wrote: post #27
Glyptodon wrote: post #9

Should you pay royalties if someone says to you "remember that scene from Blade Runner" or "imagine if Jean Luc Picard beamed into the middle of a Batman movie" and visualize something similar to something highly similar to a movie or TV show you've seen?

Of course not because you PAID to see it in the first place. Or you watched it with someone who paid. Or you saw it on a website that was free and THEY paid for it. If you never saw it, you would have no idea what it looked like. You had to see it at some point, the way in which you see it is the issue, not the memory of it. If you're arguing that the AI is just like a random human browsing the web and they happened…

I'm pretty sure plenty of people have seen Batman without paying. Cartoons were just broadcast over the air - advertisers paid I guess. But also if your friend had a video or DVD, or you checked out a comic from the library, or many of dozens of similar situations. Similarly, comic cons are full of people drawing endless numbers of superheros they have no rights to. Hiring an AI is not buying back copyrighted works, it's buying trained experience and having it produce output for you, IE work for hire, like you might get out of a comic book artist. And it's on the hiring party. If there's no sin in a human artist being able to draw batman because they've seen or trained enough, why is it a sin for AI?

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#88

Post by Glyptodon »

passwordoops wrote: post #21
Glyptodon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. This sort of thing will lead to stuff like recording your own memories requiring a licensing fee if not careful. I also think there's a reasonable argument that the prompter is the one creating infringement.

Wow. You really do need to walk me down the path you took from a correlation black box machine breaking obvious copyright laws and recording memories

If someone says "imagine batman on a boat" am I not prompting what's essentially my own internal generative AI that's been trained on seeing copyrighted content at some point? If someone says "remember that scene in..." isn't that a form of recovering a copyrighted sequence from your own "trained" memories? Once there's a better ability to extract data from someone's neural activity, remembering or imagining will just be another form of prompting.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#89

Post by Glyptodon »

stubish wrote: post #52
Glyptodon wrote: post #9

Should you pay royalties if someone says to you "remember that scene from Blade Runner" or "imagine if Jean Luc Picard beamed into the middle of a Batman movie" and visualize something similar to something highly similar to a movie or TV show you've seen?

Copyright law does not apply to imaginary reproductions, such as your imagination. Your question becomes more interesting if get someone to draw that scene from Blade Runner. At that point, it comes down to if a judge considers the derivative work transformative enough (for hand drawn sketch, it would be, except maybe if drawn by a savant). And in the Batman case, you might violate trademark law depending on what you…

We should assume that at some point we'll be able extract imaginary and remembered images and sequences from neural activity - I think very poor/crude versions exist already.

Re: An artist fights Midjourney

#90

Post by coolhand2120 »

cycomanic wrote: post #81
boolemancer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! > > in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to. So your argument is that the tool running remotely as a service somehow makes it different from one running on your local computer? So if som…

> > > If he’s mad at that wait till he sees what the cp command does! > > > > in order for that analogy to even remotely be applicable, midjourney would have to be a program you run on your own computer and not a service running on midjourney's computers that does what you ask it to. > So your argument is that the tool running remotely as a service somehow makes it different from one running on your local computer? >…

If you were to search any Harry Potter book using google search I'm sure you will find the unlicensed content, served up to you by google, very quickly, with less prompt than midjourney needs. You can hand wave about how it's so different but I see the search example returning a hashed copy vs. midjourney making something you could argue in court is infringement. The thing is, both are already illegal. You don't need additional government meddling in code to make illegal something that is already illegal.

In all cases, the person committing the crime is the person to prosecute. What would happen if I used Photoshop to carefully recreate the image by hand? Or even a paint brush and canvas? It would still be illegal! What are you arguing to make illegal? The paint brush? For _some people_ making clones of copyrighted work is very easy, this tool makes is easy for more people. But for you, _it's the tool?_

And in any of these cases you're trying to protect the same IP holders that cut off access to content you purchased, so any idea of fairness in copyright is a joke at this point anyway. I work in that industry so I knew it was possible, but I never thought they would do it with a huge swath of content like what happened to play station owners. IP holders deserve no sympathy or protection under the law after that move.

You might say "but these are not the people we're trying to protect". Too bad, that's what any IP law restricting generative AI would protect. And consider the draconian means required to do so.

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