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> if I copy and paste one page from each of a thousand books it would be. It almost certainly would not be infringement. One page of text out of an entire work

> if I copy and paste one page from each of a thousand books it would be. It almost certainly would not be infringement. One page of text out of an entire work is very small. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole is one of the factors considered when making a fair use defense. This hypothetical book would also have zero effect on the potential market for the source books. AI-generated images generally won't infringe on the training images because they don't substantially contain portions of the sources. If a generated image happened to be substantially similar to a particular source image, it could also affect the potential market for that source image. But it's also likely that there tons of human-made images that are coincidentally also substantially similar and they're not infringing on each other; they're also probably in the AI's training set so good luck trying to make the case that your image in the training is the one being infringed. On top of that, if the plaintiff could win, the actual market value of the source work is relevant to damages and that value is likely almost nothing so congratulations, you tied up the legal system just to get one AI-image taken down. BTW, using all the images to train the AI is not itself infringement; I can't say there was no wrong-doing in the process of acquiring the images but using them to train the AI was not infringing on the copyrights of those images. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/ https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/

belorn 4y ago
A few seconds of a song is also very small, and yet it only take a few notes in some cases for a court to find someone guilty of copyright infringement. > On top of that, if the plaintiff could win, the actual market value of the source work is relevant to damages and that value is likely almost nothing so congratulations, you tied up the legal system just to get one AI-image taken down. The pirate bay trial gave precedence that people can be found guilty of copyright infringement in the general sense, rather than for a specific case of a copyrighted work. The lawyers for the site tried to argue that the legal system should had been forced to first go to court over a specific work with a specific person in mind who did the infringement, but the judges disagreed. According to the court it was enough that infringement was likely to have occurred somewhere and somehow. A site like getty could make the same argument that infringement of their images is likely to have occurred somewhere, by someone, and the court could accept that as fact and continue on that basis.
- extra88 4y ago
  Different domains of copyrightable material have different norms. The music industry, in response to sampling, has established that even small, recognizable snippets have marketable value and can therefore be infringed upon (there's it's also rife with case law with, in my opinion, bad wins by plaintiffs). For photographic images, collage is already an established art form and is generally considered transformative and fair use of the source images. I'm not familiar with any The Pirate Bay case; if you are referring to this one [0], it was in a Swedish court and I'm not familiar with Swedish copyright law. However, the first sentence says the charge was promoting infringement, not that they were engaged in infringement themselves. I don't think that's relevant to what I was replying to but could be very relevant to Getty Images's decision, if AI-generate content is infringing, they don't want to be accused of promoting infringement. There's undoubtedly already infringement taking place on Getty Images but likely at such a small scale that the organization itself is not put at risk. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial
  - belorn 4y ago
    It is the correct case, but the "promoting" might be a bit of an translation issue. They were found guilty of aiding and enabling infringement, but as I describe above, not for any specific infringement of a specific work but rather the act of infringement in a general sense. There has been cases where "enabling" infringement been argued by US prosecutors, but I don't know what the legal status of that argument is. I have heard lawyers argue that nothing in copyright law explicitly forbid enabling, but that was mostly around the time of 2010.
  - sportslife 4y ago
    It's interesting whether there will be a change to the norms. It's my faint memory that for music, when it was just some kids looping breaks on vinyl printed in the hundreds or low thousands, the sampling was fine or at least not obviously an issue; but then copyright-holders saw that those artists and their management had started bringing in real money, and the laws were clarified.

belorn 4y ago

A few seconds of a song is also very small, and yet it only take a few notes in some cases for a court to find someone guilty of copyright infringement. > On top of that, if the plaintiff could win, the actual market value of the source work is relevant to damages and that value is likely almost nothing so congratulations, you tied up the legal system just to get one AI-image taken down. The pirate bay trial gave precedence that people can be found guilty of copyright infringement in the general sense, rather than for a specific case of a copyrighted work. The lawyers for the site tried to argue that the legal system should had been forced to first go to court over a specific work with a specific person in mind who did the infringement, but the judges disagreed. According to the court it was enough that infringement was likely to have occurred somewhere and somehow. A site like getty could make the same argument that infringement of their images is likely to have occurred somewhere, by someone, and the court could accept that as fact and continue on that basis.

extra88 4y ago
Different domains of copyrightable material have different norms. The music industry, in response to sampling, has established that even small, recognizable snippets have marketable value and can therefore be infringed upon (there's it's also rife with case law with, in my opinion, bad wins by plaintiffs). For photographic images, collage is already an established art form and is generally considered transformative and fair use of the source images. I'm not familiar with any The Pirate Bay case; if you are referring to this one [0], it was in a Swedish court and I'm not familiar with Swedish copyright law. However, the first sentence says the charge was promoting infringement, not that they were engaged in infringement themselves. I don't think that's relevant to what I was replying to but could be very relevant to Getty Images's decision, if AI-generate content is infringing, they don't want to be accused of promoting infringement. There's undoubtedly already infringement taking place on Getty Images but likely at such a small scale that the organization itself is not put at risk. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_trial
- belorn 4y ago
  It is the correct case, but the "promoting" might be a bit of an translation issue. They were found guilty of aiding and enabling infringement, but as I describe above, not for any specific infringement of a specific work but rather the act of infringement in a general sense. There has been cases where "enabling" infringement been argued by US prosecutors, but I don't know what the legal status of that argument is. I have heard lawyers argue that nothing in copyright law explicitly forbid enabling, but that was mostly around the time of 2010.
- sportslife 4y ago
  It's interesting whether there will be a change to the norms. It's my faint memory that for music, when it was just some kids looping breaks on vinyl printed in the hundreds or low thousands, the sampling was fine or at least not obviously an issue; but then copyright-holders saw that those artists and their management had started bringing in real money, and the laws were clarified.