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The underlying presumption for copyright is that the work was created by a legal concept called "natural person" which ties into the framework of "legal personh

The underlying presumption for copyright is that the work was created by a legal concept called "natural person" which ties into the framework of "legal personhood". One is a natural person simply by the mere fact of having been born. And that's what makes all the difference. This idea pretty much the basis of large swathes of jurisprudence across the world, really. AI, as such, is legally speaking no different from a simple pencil when it comes to writing a book. It's a tool through which a natural person creates a creative work thus establishing a copyright on the part of the natural person. See, what most people fail to see is that copyright isn't tied to the creative work; it's tied to its creator. Hence why copyright seizes to exist some arbitrary amount of time (20, 40, 70 years) after the creator - a natural person - has died. So, when you say "a neural network acquires copyright by itself when it generates a new creative work", you are forced to consider whether a neural network is a "person". Which is a can of worms in itself. (consider animals as persons - case: monkey selfie) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person

voxic11 7y ago
Obviously neural networks created with current technology are not persons in any sense, legal or otherwise. I think the more interesting questions are whether the operator of the neural network is the legal author of its creations and whether such creations satisfy the creativity requirements for copyright. I think the operator would be the author of the work, similar to how the operator of a camera or word processor is the author of works created by those tools. However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. > “[T]he requisite level of creativity is extremely low.” Even a “slight amount” of creative expression will suffice. ... An author’s expression does not need to “be presented in an innovative or surprising way,” but it “cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever.” https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-...
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  > However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. Exactly. Copyright is very murky in that respect. The basic notion of "creativity" is willfully vaguely defined to ensure that there's a universal maxim. For instance, did you know that databases are copyrightable? Even when their constituent parts consist of uncopyrightable facts? Copyright law considers the database as a "collection" or a whole, and so the entire collection can be seen as a creative work. But copyright only applies to the whole, not the constituent parts. https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html Other example, suppose you digitize an ancient piece of pottery by making a digital photograph. Have you then created a new creative work of art? Some would argue you did. Why? Because you didn't make a 1:1 copy of the pottery by creating a new physical pot with similar materials. You created an image using a particular mechanism, introducing elements such as lighting, color, contrast,... that may give your image an original element. The latter example is actually a legal problem for digitization programs of cultural collections. Institutions hire a photographer to digitize collection, but then discover that the images are pretty much unusable because the photographer is able to enforce their own copyright i.e. demand a licensing fee every time someone wants to use or download an image. Which implies that institutions are also forced to add legal provisions in any contracts pertaining to the transfer of rights. Hence why copyright law is rife with exceptions and exemptions. For instance, did you know that any image made by the U.S. Government automatically ends up in the public domain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t... The problem with copyright is that digital technology is innately the act of creating copies. Each time I send a request over the Internet, I basically create a copy of the 1's and 0's stored at the other side. The basic tenets of copyright don't concern themselves with conceptual models and higher abstractions. They go back to the fact that a string of 1's and 0's was created on a physical carrier and then copied over to another carrier. But that's not how humans work, we don't really apply notions of copyright to the physical representation on a disk, we apply them to the ephemeral, assembled representation on our screens and displays. This tension is what creates a ton of tension in this space.
Arelius 7y ago
Ok, legal personhood is something interesting I hadn't considered in my original response, and good to know about. Then, is a work to have been produced by a tool which is found to be violating copyright also then judged to violate the copyright? Would a reasonable analogy be a pencil that has the works of H.P. Lovecraft etched onto it's surface?

voxic11 7y ago

Obviously neural networks created with current technology are not persons in any sense, legal or otherwise. I think the more interesting questions are whether the operator of the neural network is the legal author of its creations and whether such creations satisfy the creativity requirements for copyright. I think the operator would be the author of the work, similar to how the operator of a camera or word processor is the author of works created by those tools. However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. > “[T]he requisite level of creativity is extremely low.” Even a “slight amount” of creative expression will suffice. ... An author’s expression does not need to “be presented in an innovative or surprising way,” but it “cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever.” https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-...

CaptArmchair 7y ago
> However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. Exactly. Copyright is very murky in that respect. The basic notion of "creativity" is willfully vaguely defined to ensure that there's a universal maxim. For instance, did you know that databases are copyrightable? Even when their constituent parts consist of uncopyrightable facts? Copyright law considers the database as a "collection" or a whole, and so the entire collection can be seen as a creative work. But copyright only applies to the whole, not the constituent parts. https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html https://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html Other example, suppose you digitize an ancient piece of pottery by making a digital photograph. Have you then created a new creative work of art? Some would argue you did. Why? Because you didn't make a 1:1 copy of the pottery by creating a new physical pot with similar materials. You created an image using a particular mechanism, introducing elements such as lighting, color, contrast,... that may give your image an original element. The latter example is actually a legal problem for digitization programs of cultural collections. Institutions hire a photographer to digitize collection, but then discover that the images are pretty much unusable because the photographer is able to enforce their own copyright i.e. demand a licensing fee every time someone wants to use or download an image. Which implies that institutions are also forced to add legal provisions in any contracts pertaining to the transfer of rights. Hence why copyright law is rife with exceptions and exemptions. For instance, did you know that any image made by the U.S. Government automatically ends up in the public domain? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_the_federal_government_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_works_by_t... The problem with copyright is that digital technology is innately the act of creating copies. Each time I send a request over the Internet, I basically create a copy of the 1's and 0's stored at the other side. The basic tenets of copyright don't concern themselves with conceptual models and higher abstractions. They go back to the fact that a string of 1's and 0's was created on a physical carrier and then copied over to another carrier. But that's not how humans work, we don't really apply notions of copyright to the physical representation on a disk, we apply them to the ephemeral, assembled representation on our screens and displays. This tension is what creates a ton of tension in this space.

Arelius 7y ago

Ok, legal personhood is something interesting I hadn't considered in my original response, and good to know about. Then, is a work to have been produced by a tool which is found to be violating copyright also then judged to violate the copyright? Would a reasonable analogy be a pencil that has the works of H.P. Lovecraft etched onto it's surface?