6 ms·

> intent is not a required factor for establishing copyright violation. What you mean to say is that if someone just so happens to write a story that is signif

> intent is not a required factor for establishing copyright violation. What you mean to say is that if someone just so happens to write a story that is significantly similar to another work that their intent doesn't matter... most importantly their intent is unknowable. This doesn't mean that courts will not be interested in the intended use of specific mechanical tools such as VCRs, computers, and statistical models. Let's tease apart this "zip file containing Mickey Mouse photos" because it seems to be from where your errors in reasoning stem. Here is a website that gives you instructions on how to draw Mickey Mouse: https://courses.cs.duke.edu/cps004/fall01/examples/mickey/Step1.html https://courses.cs.duke.edu/cps004/fall01/examples/mickey/St... These instructions are not violation of copyright because they draw a picture of Mickey Mouse. Copyright does not protect the mere existence of an image. Copyright gives a monopoly on distributing copies of that image to the rights holder. Not the idea of the image, not the instructions that could lead to the image, not the 1s and 0s that make up the image. As I've mentioned before, a t-shirt with the 1s and 0s that make up the zip file that contains those photos is not in violation of copyrights on those images. You'll notice that CafePress still has t-shirts with the DeCSS code for sale: https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 Imagine a mathematical formula that when plotted in polar coordinates draws Mickey Mouse. The mathematical formula is a fact and it cannot be copyrighted. There's another step required for copyright infringement: Someone renders the image and distributes copies of the rendered image.

williamcotton 4y ago
I mentioned VCRs specifically because in 1976 Universal Studios sued Sony over the claims that because Sony manufactured a device that could be used for copyright infringement the company was liable for infringement committed by consumers of Betamax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... Take a note of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court ruling: > The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home.[7] [...] [W]hen one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work... and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact... that the entire work is reproduced... does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use. Stable Diffusion is also capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses. It is to be expected that the lower courts will continue to follow the precedence set by the Supreme Court that there is a clear distinction between a mechanical device capable of making copies and the distribution of those copies. To put in the context of Stable Diffusion, this is why legal experts keep saying there are two things to consider: The model, which is almost guaranteed to be protected by fair use, and the outputs of the model, in which the users of the model are liable for any copyright infringement.
karpierz 4y ago
> Copyright gives a monopoly on distributing copies of that image to the rights holder. Or derivative works. > not the instructions that could lead to the image, And yet torrent sites have been found to violate copyright, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content. > not the 1s and 0s that make up the image. Now this is plainly false. I cannot start selling a Mickey Mouse JPEG stripped straight from Disney's site. > You'll notice that CafePress still has t-shirts with the DeCSS code for sale: https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 1) This is covered by a trade secrets law, and not copyright. 2) It still being for sale doesn't mean it doesn't violate copyright; only that the copyright holder hasn't litigated to stop it. Put differently, getting away with something doesn't make it legal. Look, I think Stable Diffusion is pretty neat. But all of this "it's just math"/"it's just data"/"it also creates non-copyrighted images" stuff doesn't cut it as far as the law is concerned. If your point is that being in possession of the model isn't violating copyright, sure. I'm talking about distributing or otherwise providing a service that uses the model to generate images. If they figure out how to get it to stop generating training data, they'll be fine. But with existing approaches, that'll be nigh impossible.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  > > not the 1s and 0s that make up the image. > Now this is plainly false. I cannot start selling a Mickey Mouse JPEG stripped straight from Disney's site. You can absolutely go to the Disney website right now, download any JPEG, convert that image to a series of 1s and 0s, and then print that series of 1s and 0s on a t-shirt that you sell on your website. Once those 1s and 0s are in a new non-digital medium they are no longer a copy of the image. Historically, the digital copy is a special case because practically there is no difference between the "expression" of a byte sequence in a digital medium and the "idea" of a byte sequence in a digital medium. A t-shirt is not a digital medium so the rights holders don’t get to extend their monopolization of speech to a screen print of an unintelligible pattern of 1s and 0s.
  - karpierz 4y ago
    > A t-shirt is not a digital medium so the rights holders don’t get to extend their monopolization of speech to a screen print of an unintelligible pattern of 1s and 0s. Can you point me to a ruling where this form of expression is successfully defended via fair use? Seems unlikely that a judge would agree that a simple transformation between "digital" vs "non-digital" medium avoids copyright infringement (ex: if I produce a digital image, I definitely maintain copyright over digital and non-digital forms of that image; you can't just start printing and selling posters of my image). You could try to argue that the change of medium is transformative, but that's not a generic argument for "digital" vs. "non-digital"; that's particular to the circumstances of the case.

williamcotton 4y ago

I mentioned VCRs specifically because in 1976 Universal Studios sued Sony over the claims that because Sony manufactured a device that could be used for copyright infringement the company was liable for infringement committed by consumers of Betamax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... Take a note of the majority opinion in the Supreme Court ruling: > The question is thus whether the Betamax is capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses ... one potential use of the Betamax plainly satisfies this standard, however it is understood: private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home.[7] [...] [W]hen one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work... and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact... that the entire work is reproduced... does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use. Stable Diffusion is also capable of commercially significant non-infringing uses. It is to be expected that the lower courts will continue to follow the precedence set by the Supreme Court that there is a clear distinction between a mechanical device capable of making copies and the distribution of those copies. To put in the context of Stable Diffusion, this is why legal experts keep saying there are two things to consider: The model, which is almost guaranteed to be protected by fair use, and the outputs of the model, in which the users of the model are liable for any copyright infringement.

karpierz 4y ago

> Copyright gives a monopoly on distributing copies of that image to the rights holder. Or derivative works. > not the instructions that could lead to the image, And yet torrent sites have been found to violate copyright, despite not hosting any of the copyrighted content. > not the 1s and 0s that make up the image. Now this is plainly false. I cannot start selling a Mickey Mouse JPEG stripped straight from Disney's site. > You'll notice that CafePress still has t-shirts with the DeCSS code for sale: https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 https://www.cafepress.com/+,954530397 1) This is covered by a trade secrets law, and not copyright. 2) It still being for sale doesn't mean it doesn't violate copyright; only that the copyright holder hasn't litigated to stop it. Put differently, getting away with something doesn't make it legal. Look, I think Stable Diffusion is pretty neat. But all of this "it's just math"/"it's just data"/"it also creates non-copyrighted images" stuff doesn't cut it as far as the law is concerned. If your point is that being in possession of the model isn't violating copyright, sure. I'm talking about distributing or otherwise providing a service that uses the model to generate images. If they figure out how to get it to stop generating training data, they'll be fine. But with existing approaches, that'll be nigh impossible.

williamcotton 4y ago
> > not the 1s and 0s that make up the image. > Now this is plainly false. I cannot start selling a Mickey Mouse JPEG stripped straight from Disney's site. You can absolutely go to the Disney website right now, download any JPEG, convert that image to a series of 1s and 0s, and then print that series of 1s and 0s on a t-shirt that you sell on your website. Once those 1s and 0s are in a new non-digital medium they are no longer a copy of the image. Historically, the digital copy is a special case because practically there is no difference between the "expression" of a byte sequence in a digital medium and the "idea" of a byte sequence in a digital medium. A t-shirt is not a digital medium so the rights holders don’t get to extend their monopolization of speech to a screen print of an unintelligible pattern of 1s and 0s.
- karpierz 4y ago
  > A t-shirt is not a digital medium so the rights holders don’t get to extend their monopolization of speech to a screen print of an unintelligible pattern of 1s and 0s. Can you point me to a ruling where this form of expression is successfully defended via fair use? Seems unlikely that a judge would agree that a simple transformation between "digital" vs "non-digital" medium avoids copyright infringement (ex: if I produce a digital image, I definitely maintain copyright over digital and non-digital forms of that image; you can't just start printing and selling posters of my image). You could try to argue that the change of medium is transformative, but that's not a generic argument for "digital" vs. "non-digital"; that's particular to the circumstances of the case.