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New legal lessons from the age of AI. I wonder if we will start with the judges ruling that AI originated music can be copyrighted or not and whether AI trained

New legal lessons from the age of AI. I wonder if we will start with the judges ruling that AI originated music can be copyrighted or not and whether AI trained on copyrighted music has to attribute its creations (to what?).

bushbaba 4y ago
if generative ai needs to attribute its music, so will musicians need to attribute their creations to past artists they studied and listened to.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  You need to obtain the rights to samples you use, why should this be any different?
  - phonescreen_man 4y ago
    Generative music is not using samples - just as a musician who learns a song on guitar, say wonderwall and then writes a hey there Delilah is not sampling.
  - jrajav 4y ago
    The fact that you need to obtain the rights to samples you use has never been about any meaningful or harmful form of 'stealing' in the slightest. It was about harming hip hop and those who created it. Sampling and interpolation is a key part of many forms of music, and is a beautiful craft in and of itself. Restricting it from the outside for reasons of profit (usually completely detached from either end of the actual artistry) has never protected anyone's IP in a way that preserves and advances the art form. It 100% holds the art form back, and does nothing else of merit.
  - anoncow 4y ago
    Like we don’t need a (sample priced) license to listen to songs, AI should be able to use regular music subscriptions to listen to music and create new music. This may eventually result in regular music subscriptions being priced closer to sample pricing.
hospitalJail 4y ago
Stuff like this is why I'm so allergic to law. Imagine how much human resource is spent trying to preserve profits. Imagine your job is to be a lawyer that slows human progress for short term corporate profits. Imagine you are a judge who has to waste time on this case. Imagine you are a lawmaker and instead of fixing US medical, you are getting lunch with a lobbyist trying to make some variant of AI illegal. All of those people have an existence that is bad for society. I imagine if you prioritize personal profits, its easy to do the job. Its much harder if your world view involves doing good things for society.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  Is this really progress, or mere expropriation?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Law is pretty vital to being able to have a planet with billions of people on it. If for no other reason than people are really crafty and nearly optimal for wrecking up each other's business if they put their minds to it. Imagine how much human resource is spent trying to preserve profits... Now imagine how much would be spent on preserving anything without a legal system in place. "Nice house you have, hate to see anything happen to it" etc.
  - hospitalJail 4y ago
    That is pretty disingenuous response IMO. I'm clearly not talking about property rights or criminal law. If you must, I agree with you. But that wasnt the intention of my comment.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      But intellectual property rights are property rights (right there in the name; granted, it's a different kind of property, infinitely replicable, but it's still "intangible personal property," protected as such). ... and infringing a valid copyright willfully for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain is a criminal offense in the US (17 U.S.C. 506(A)). It's up to a felony violation. You can, for personal reasons, assert there's a fundamental difference in kind (and you'd be joining an argument dating back past the founding of the U.S., an argument where Thomas Jefferson once said of protection of intellectual property that "other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"), but in the sense that any law has any real meaning or force, it's exactly as much the law as the law against kicking you out of your own house because I like your house better.

bushbaba 4y ago

if generative ai needs to attribute its music, so will musicians need to attribute their creations to past artists they studied and listened to.

EamonnMR 4y ago
You need to obtain the rights to samples you use, why should this be any different?
- phonescreen_man 4y ago
  Generative music is not using samples - just as a musician who learns a song on guitar, say wonderwall and then writes a hey there Delilah is not sampling.
- jrajav 4y ago
  The fact that you need to obtain the rights to samples you use has never been about any meaningful or harmful form of 'stealing' in the slightest. It was about harming hip hop and those who created it. Sampling and interpolation is a key part of many forms of music, and is a beautiful craft in and of itself. Restricting it from the outside for reasons of profit (usually completely detached from either end of the actual artistry) has never protected anyone's IP in a way that preserves and advances the art form. It 100% holds the art form back, and does nothing else of merit.
- anoncow 4y ago
  Like we don’t need a (sample priced) license to listen to songs, AI should be able to use regular music subscriptions to listen to music and create new music. This may eventually result in regular music subscriptions being priced closer to sample pricing.

hospitalJail 4y ago

Stuff like this is why I'm so allergic to law. Imagine how much human resource is spent trying to preserve profits. Imagine your job is to be a lawyer that slows human progress for short term corporate profits. Imagine you are a judge who has to waste time on this case. Imagine you are a lawmaker and instead of fixing US medical, you are getting lunch with a lobbyist trying to make some variant of AI illegal. All of those people have an existence that is bad for society. I imagine if you prioritize personal profits, its easy to do the job. Its much harder if your world view involves doing good things for society.

EamonnMR 4y ago
Is this really progress, or mere expropriation?
shadowgovt 4y ago
Law is pretty vital to being able to have a planet with billions of people on it. If for no other reason than people are really crafty and nearly optimal for wrecking up each other's business if they put their minds to it. Imagine how much human resource is spent trying to preserve profits... Now imagine how much would be spent on preserving anything without a legal system in place. "Nice house you have, hate to see anything happen to it" etc.
- hospitalJail 4y ago
  That is pretty disingenuous response IMO. I'm clearly not talking about property rights or criminal law. If you must, I agree with you. But that wasnt the intention of my comment.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    But intellectual property rights are property rights (right there in the name; granted, it's a different kind of property, infinitely replicable, but it's still "intangible personal property," protected as such). ... and infringing a valid copyright willfully for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain is a criminal offense in the US (17 U.S.C. 506(A)). It's up to a felony violation. You can, for personal reasons, assert there's a fundamental difference in kind (and you'd be joining an argument dating back past the founding of the U.S., an argument where Thomas Jefferson once said of protection of intellectual property that "other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society"), but in the sense that any law has any real meaning or force, it's exactly as much the law as the law against kicking you out of your own house because I like your house better.