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Amazon caught using indepdent artist's work without license

26 points by distantsounds 7y ago

KFC_Manager 7y ago
Seems so difficult to maintain ownership of a digital image asset. As soon as you distribute on a website that isn’t built for creatives and does nit have a heavy watermark it’s free for anyone to grab. Even as a big company how do you audit someone’s work for plagiarism if you hire a designer?
- jdsully 7y ago
  Tin Eye or other reverse image searches would be table stakes. Just because something is out there on the internet doesn't mean its free for commecial use. Further hiring a contractor doesn't shield you from liability for copyright infringement although it's a good argument it wasn't willful.
- jeffshek 7y ago
  Some neural nets could be useful here, just indexing would take a while. VGG19 measure of perceptual loss has been useful for me.
fenwick67 7y ago
The most telling tweet here IMO: > lmao gofundme: help me sue Jeff Bezos
rasz 7y ago
This is exactly what we need, ‘Blurred Lines’ Lawsuit for similar "feel" and "sound" of pixel art images ...
PHGamer 7y ago
they're not the same image it looks like (I dont see the exact overlap of amazon clouds the way her image is setup). You could make an argument for palette choice but i feel as if you shouldn't really be able to copyright pallete (though i do know you can trademark colors like UPS brown, which im not really happy about). Also this artist does pixel art which is pretty standard style, so there is a good chance someone could make something similar on their own without having look at her work.
- mc32 7y ago
  It’s not the same image, but the color choices (palette) seem remarkably similar. If someone take a famous photograph of El Capitan and I go over and try to figure out the exact time of day and spot it was taken from and hope for the same weather and lo I’m lucky... I don’t believe I’d be infringing.... but who knows... cuz if I draw a mouse and it looks eerily like Mickey...
- jolmg 7y ago
  The shape of the cloud, though not pixel-perfect identical, is almost identical. I wonder where that page is at. I can't find it.

26 points by distantsounds 7y ago

Seems so difficult to maintain ownership of a digital image asset. As soon as you distribute on a website that isn’t built for creatives and does nit have a heavy watermark it’s free for anyone to grab. Even as a big company how do you audit someone’s work for plagiarism if you hire a designer?

jdsully 7y ago
Tin Eye or other reverse image searches would be table stakes. Just because something is out there on the internet doesn't mean its free for commecial use. Further hiring a contractor doesn't shield you from liability for copyright infringement although it's a good argument it wasn't willful.
jeffshek 7y ago
Some neural nets could be useful here, just indexing would take a while. VGG19 measure of perceptual loss has been useful for me.

fenwick67 7y ago

The most telling tweet here IMO: > lmao gofundme: help me sue Jeff Bezos

rasz 7y ago

This is exactly what we need, ‘Blurred Lines’ Lawsuit for similar "feel" and "sound" of pixel art images ...

PHGamer 7y ago

they're not the same image it looks like (I dont see the exact overlap of amazon clouds the way her image is setup). You could make an argument for palette choice but i feel as if you shouldn't really be able to copyright pallete (though i do know you can trademark colors like UPS brown, which im not really happy about). Also this artist does pixel art which is pretty standard style, so there is a good chance someone could make something similar on their own without having look at her work.

mc32 7y ago
It’s not the same image, but the color choices (palette) seem remarkably similar. If someone take a famous photograph of El Capitan and I go over and try to figure out the exact time of day and spot it was taken from and hope for the same weather and lo I’m lucky... I don’t believe I’d be infringing.... but who knows... cuz if I draw a mouse and it looks eerily like Mickey...
jolmg 7y ago
The shape of the cloud, though not pixel-perfect identical, is almost identical. I wonder where that page is at. I can't find it.