Comment by why_at

Comment by why_at 2 days ago

8 replies

I'm honestly trying to wrap my head around the law here because copyright is often very confusing.

If I ask an artist to draw me a picture of Indiana Jones and they do it would that be copyright infringement? Even if it's just for my personal use?

bawolff 2 days ago

Probably that would be a derrivative work. Which means the original owner would have some copyright in it.

It may or may not be fair use, which is a complicated question (ianal).

Avicebron 2 days ago

IANAL, but if OpenAI makes any money/commercial gains from producing a Ghibli-esque image when you ask, say you pay a subscription to OpenAI. What percentage of that subscription is owed to Ghibli for running Ghibli art through OpenAI's gristmill and providing the ability to create that image with that "vibe/style" etc. How long into perpetuity is OpenAI allowed to re-use that original art whenever their model produces said similar image. That seems to be the question.

  • why_at 2 days ago

    Yeah that's fair, I'm trying to create an analogy to other services which are similar to help me understand.

    If e.g. Patreon hosts an artist who will draw a picture of Indiana Jones for me on commission, then my money is going to both Patreon and the artist. Should Patreon also police their artists to prevent reproducing any copyrighted characters?

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    • bawolff 2 days ago

      https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Derivative_works has some commentary on how this works you might find interesting

      • why_at a day ago

        Thanks for the link.

        I get that copyright is a bit of a minefield, and there's some clear cases that should not be allowed, e.g. taking photos of a painting and selling them

        That said, I still get the impression that the laws are way too broad and there would be little harm if we reduced their scope. I think we should be allowed to post pictures of Pokemon toys to Wikipedia for example.

        I'm willing to listen to other points of view if people want to share though

        • bawolff a day ago

          Keep in mind that wikimedia takes a rather strict view. In real life the edge cases of copyright tend to be a bit risk-based - what is the chance someone sues you? What is the chance the judge agrees with them?

          Not to mention that wikimedia commons, which tries to be a globally reusable repository ignores fair use (which is context dependent), which covers a lot of the cases where copyright law is just being reduculous.

xboxnolifes a day ago

I would think yes. Consider the alternate variation where the artist proactively draws Indiana Jones, in all his likeness, and attempts to market and sell it. The same exchange is ultimately happening, but this clearly is copyright infringement.