Comment by chimpanzee

Comment by chimpanzee 3 days ago

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> It's just doing what many human artists would do, if they're not explicitly being paid to create new IP.

It isn’t an independent human. It is a service paid for by customers. The moment it provides the image to a paying user, the image has thus been used commercially.

In fact, the user may not even necessarily have to be paying in order to infringe copyright.

And besides, even amateur artists are ashamed to produce copies unless they are demonstrating mastery of technique or expressing adoration. And if it happens spontaneously, they are then frustrated and try to defend themselves by claiming to never have even experienced the original material. (As happens with simplistic, but popular musical riffs.) But AI explicitly is trained on every material it can get its hands on and so cannot make such a defense.

IgorPartola 3 days ago

If I pay you to tell me the plot of Indiana Jones, privately, because I don’t have time to watch it, and you agree, did you violate copyright laws?

If you do it for free, is it different?

If I ask a friend to draw me as Indiana Jones? Or pay an artist? In either case I just want that picture to put in my rec room, not to sell.

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  • Electricniko 3 days ago

    OpenAI is currently valued at $300 billion, and their product is largely based on copying the copyrighted works of others, who weren't paid by OpenAI. It's a bit (exponentially) different from a "me and you" example.

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  • chimpanzee 3 days ago

    Summarization is generally not copyright infringement.

    Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement.

    I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it is true nonetheless.

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    • IAmBroom 3 days ago

      "Private copying and transference, even once for a friend, is copyright infringement."

      Not without money or equivalent trade involved.

      I can draw Mickey Mouse all day on my notebook, and hand it to you; no legal issues.

      If I charge you a pack of bubble gum - Disney's lawyers will kick my door down and serve me notice.

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      • chimpanzee 3 days ago

        > Not without money or equivalent trade involved.

        This isn’t generally true. The copyright holder need only claim that the value of their copyrighted work or the profits received by its distribution has been reduced or lost. I’m not sure they even need to make such a claim, as courts have already determined that commerciality isn’t a requirement for infringement. It’s a matter of unauthorized use, distribution or reproduction, not trade.

        They of course will likely never know and might not bother to litigate given the private and uncommercial nature, but they still have the right to do so.

        They would weigh the financial and reputational cost of litigating against children sharing images and decide not to. Of course if one had 10000 friends and provided this service to them in a visible manner, then they’d probably come knocking.

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      • cycomanic 3 days ago

        IANAL, but my understanding is that it's more complicated than this. Generally commercial benefits (i.e. taking money) is one of the aspects being taken into consideration to decide if something is fair use, but it's not the only one and not making a monetary/commercial benefit does not guarantee that work is considered fair use (which is the exception we're talking about here).

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      • prerok 3 days ago

        Not true. There were many cease and desist orders for fanfiction, which was intended as open source.

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  • cycomanic 3 days ago

    The answer is yes? The person doing the drawing is violating copyright. I don't know why that is even a controversial question.

    You are asking the equivalent question of, if I put a pirated copy of windows on my PC that I only use privately at home am I violating copyright, or if I sell copies of music for people to only listen to in their own home.

    But this is even more damning, this is a commercial service that is reproducing the copyrighted work.

    Edit: Just to clarify to people who reflexively downvote. I'm making a statement of what is it not a value judgement. And yes there is fair use, but that's an exemption from the rule that it is a copyright violation.

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    • IgorPartola 3 days ago

      This would be more like if you reimplemented Windows from scratch if you have violated copyright law.

      Let’s put it another way: if you decide you want to recreate Indiana Jones shot for shot, and you hire actors and a director etc. which individuals are actually responsible for the copyright collation? Do caterers count too? Or is it the person who actually is producing the movie?

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