4 ms·

What is interesting is a human analogy. Say you were an artist who went to every art show and museum and studied all the art there. If you produced a work of

What is interesting is a human analogy. Say you were an artist who went to every art show and museum and studied all the art there. If you produced a work of art solely from memory that contained large portions of other people's copyrighted art, would that still fall under copyright/require licensing?

whycombinetor 4y ago
Precedent in music says sometimes-yes. The "Blurred Lines" lawsuit found that Pharrell and Robin Thicke were liable in the tune of $7m for producing a work of art solely from memory that copied the "signature phrases, hooks, bass lines, keyboard chords, harmonic structures and vocal melodies" of a Marvin Gaye song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharrell_Williams_v._Bridgeport_Music#Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharrell_Williams_v._Bridgepor... https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392375390/-7-million-verdict-blurs-the-lines-on-music-sampling https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392375390/-7-million-verdict-...
- Geonode 4y ago
  Yes, but that's an outlier ruling that was widely criticized.
  - colejohnson66 4y ago
    Widely criticized doesn’t change that it’s case law other judges might consider.
alcolade 4y ago
Another human analogy could be: you take a photo from every art show and museum, and use those for reference as you paint.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  The analogy of using your cortex is more apt. My understanding of neural networks is that there are no remnants of the original inside it. The training data is used to back propagate a bunch of weights. Your brain works like those neural network neurons; they learn when to fire, but they don’t know the intricate detail like a photo. Hence why many claim eyewitness testimony is bogus.
  - snovv_crash 4y ago
    Some networks use databases of images rather than storing all data directly in weights.
  - drran 4y ago
    > My understanding of neural networks is that there are no remnants of the original inside it. Can you prove that? I can prove the opposite.
donkarma 4y ago
yeah except this artist wont go around painting watermarks
- jxcole 4y ago
  Really? https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/ https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbel... (Yes I get it's not technically a watermark, but it certainly qualifies as a trade mark in a similar fashion)
  - donkarma 4y ago
    my point being if he tries to draw a dog his idea of a dog will not contain the Getty Images watermark and even if he did he would just not draw it
  - masswerk 4y ago
    Ceci n'est pas une pipe … er … soupe
- kgwgk 4y ago
  Copying signatures one entera into forgery territory…
- ale42 4y ago
  There's a big difference here. DALL-E (or any other similar tool) is not an artist, it is a commercial product that can produce something that might be considered art. The usage might be ok, but the product itself might not... if I paint using stolen pigments (not saying that DALL-E is alike to this), my painting would be legal, but the fact of having stolen the pigment is very illegal...
  - drran 4y ago
    Product of machine cannot be copyrighted. Only humans have the right to copyright something. Dall-e like kaleidoscope then. Anybody, even monkey, can generate similarly looking images using Dall-e with the same prompt. So there is two options: a) Dall-e images are without copyright. b) Original authors of work used by Dall-e can claim copyright over images generated.
egypturnash 4y ago
There are definitely lines to be crossed. Let me tell you about one of them. There is a comics creator named Kieth Giffen. He's done a lot of solid work over the years for DC and Marvel, there's a playful love of the medium and its history that flows through a lot of his work. At first his style was pretty middling; nothing terrible, nothing to really stand out from the pack. Then one day his work changed dramatically - he got a lot more daring in spotting his blacks, inking with a heavier brush, and doing a lot of panels that were a closeup of a backlit head with rim lighting, and eyes and teeth standing out in white. It was grounded in observation but had a lot of fresh ways to abstract a scene in the service of story. It was like nothing else on the racks and really striking. It was also completely swiped from the work of an Argentinian artist named José Muñoz. Pick up one of Muñoz's shadow-drenched crime stories, put it next to one of Giffen's superhero tales, and you could clearly see the influence. And not just the influence, influence is okay - Giffen had started entirely cloning Muñoz's style, completely dropping all his other influences in the process. Muñoz was not happy when he heard about this, and neither were other artists in the field of comics. Influence is one thing, everyone's influenced by other artists, and if you're familiar with an artist's influences you can tell. But dropping all your other influences to start drawing almost exactly like a new one? That's just not done. Giffen got a lot of shit for this. Giffen quit comics for a couple of years after this, and when he came back he had a new look. He still does the Shadowy Muñoz Face now and then but it's more along the lines of one of the many things he's borrowed from his multiple influences rather than one of the ways he was wholesale ripping off Muñoz. "Style theft" is completely legal in the eyes of the court. There was nothing legally actionable going on here. But in the court of his fellow artists, Giffen was judged, and found guilty. There's a range here. Nobody's going to care if you pick up a collection of Winsdor McCay's pioneering 19xx comic strip "Little Nemo" and do a dream-themed story that borrows his distinctive panel composition, lettering, and inking choices. Nobody's going to care if you do one drawing that precisely lifts Mike Mignola's heavy use of black and thin, clear lines. If you do superheros long enough then you're pretty much obligated to do at least one story that emulates Jack Kirby as closely as you can. If you worked as someone's assistant for a half a decade then you are very much allowed to bust out a perfect rendition of their style at any point in your entire life. But there is definitely a line you can cross where every artist (and a lot of non-artists) who sees a side-by-side view of what you're doing and what you're swiping from will say "dude, not cool, stop swiping their style". These image generators actively encourage adding the names of prominent, living artists to your prompts to get the results you want. Is this crossing the same line Kieth Giffen did?
8note 4y ago
Alternatively, if you memorized some GPL code, can you write a copy of it and put in a proprietary licence?
- ale42 4y ago
  Of course not! That's why people do black-box reimplementations without ever seeing the original source code.

whycombinetor 4y ago

Precedent in music says sometimes-yes. The "Blurred Lines" lawsuit found that Pharrell and Robin Thicke were liable in the tune of $7m for producing a work of art solely from memory that copied the "signature phrases, hooks, bass lines, keyboard chords, harmonic structures and vocal melodies" of a Marvin Gaye song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharrell_Williams_v._Bridgeport_Music#Holding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharrell_Williams_v._Bridgepor... https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392375390/-7-million-verdict-blurs-the-lines-on-music-sampling https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/392375390/-7-million-verdict-...

Geonode 4y ago
Yes, but that's an outlier ruling that was widely criticized.
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  Widely criticized doesn’t change that it’s case law other judges might consider.

alcolade 4y ago

Another human analogy could be: you take a photo from every art show and museum, and use those for reference as you paint.

colejohnson66 4y ago
The analogy of using your cortex is more apt. My understanding of neural networks is that there are no remnants of the original inside it. The training data is used to back propagate a bunch of weights. Your brain works like those neural network neurons; they learn when to fire, but they don’t know the intricate detail like a photo. Hence why many claim eyewitness testimony is bogus.
- snovv_crash 4y ago
  Some networks use databases of images rather than storing all data directly in weights.
- drran 4y ago
  > My understanding of neural networks is that there are no remnants of the original inside it. Can you prove that? I can prove the opposite.

donkarma 4y ago

yeah except this artist wont go around painting watermarks

jxcole 4y ago
Really? https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbells-soup-cans-1962/ https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/andy-warhol-campbel... (Yes I get it's not technically a watermark, but it certainly qualifies as a trade mark in a similar fashion)
- donkarma 4y ago
  my point being if he tries to draw a dog his idea of a dog will not contain the Getty Images watermark and even if he did he would just not draw it
- masswerk 4y ago
  Ceci n'est pas une pipe … er … soupe
kgwgk 4y ago
Copying signatures one entera into forgery territory…
ale42 4y ago
There's a big difference here. DALL-E (or any other similar tool) is not an artist, it is a commercial product that can produce something that might be considered art. The usage might be ok, but the product itself might not... if I paint using stolen pigments (not saying that DALL-E is alike to this), my painting would be legal, but the fact of having stolen the pigment is very illegal...
- drran 4y ago
  Product of machine cannot be copyrighted. Only humans have the right to copyright something. Dall-e like kaleidoscope then. Anybody, even monkey, can generate similarly looking images using Dall-e with the same prompt. So there is two options: a) Dall-e images are without copyright. b) Original authors of work used by Dall-e can claim copyright over images generated.

egypturnash 4y ago

There are definitely lines to be crossed. Let me tell you about one of them. There is a comics creator named Kieth Giffen. He's done a lot of solid work over the years for DC and Marvel, there's a playful love of the medium and its history that flows through a lot of his work. At first his style was pretty middling; nothing terrible, nothing to really stand out from the pack. Then one day his work changed dramatically - he got a lot more daring in spotting his blacks, inking with a heavier brush, and doing a lot of panels that were a closeup of a backlit head with rim lighting, and eyes and teeth standing out in white. It was grounded in observation but had a lot of fresh ways to abstract a scene in the service of story. It was like nothing else on the racks and really striking. It was also completely swiped from the work of an Argentinian artist named José Muñoz. Pick up one of Muñoz's shadow-drenched crime stories, put it next to one of Giffen's superhero tales, and you could clearly see the influence. And not just the influence, influence is okay - Giffen had started entirely cloning Muñoz's style, completely dropping all his other influences in the process. Muñoz was not happy when he heard about this, and neither were other artists in the field of comics. Influence is one thing, everyone's influenced by other artists, and if you're familiar with an artist's influences you can tell. But dropping all your other influences to start drawing almost exactly like a new one? That's just not done. Giffen got a lot of shit for this. Giffen quit comics for a couple of years after this, and when he came back he had a new look. He still does the Shadowy Muñoz Face now and then but it's more along the lines of one of the many things he's borrowed from his multiple influences rather than one of the ways he was wholesale ripping off Muñoz. "Style theft" is completely legal in the eyes of the court. There was nothing legally actionable going on here. But in the court of his fellow artists, Giffen was judged, and found guilty. There's a range here. Nobody's going to care if you pick up a collection of Winsdor McCay's pioneering 19xx comic strip "Little Nemo" and do a dream-themed story that borrows his distinctive panel composition, lettering, and inking choices. Nobody's going to care if you do one drawing that precisely lifts Mike Mignola's heavy use of black and thin, clear lines. If you do superheros long enough then you're pretty much obligated to do at least one story that emulates Jack Kirby as closely as you can. If you worked as someone's assistant for a half a decade then you are very much allowed to bust out a perfect rendition of their style at any point in your entire life. But there is definitely a line you can cross where every artist (and a lot of non-artists) who sees a side-by-side view of what you're doing and what you're swiping from will say "dude, not cool, stop swiping their style". These image generators actively encourage adding the names of prominent, living artists to your prompts to get the results you want. Is this crossing the same line Kieth Giffen did?

8note 4y ago

Alternatively, if you memorized some GPL code, can you write a copy of it and put in a proprietary licence?

ale42 4y ago
Of course not! That's why people do black-box reimplementations without ever seeing the original source code.