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That scene that says "Copyright ©Meta" is actually a CC-BY scene from Amazon Lumberyard.[1] I'm not sure rendering it entitles you to slap your own copyright n

That scene that says "Copyright ©Meta" is actually a CC-BY scene from Amazon Lumberyard.[1] I'm not sure rendering it entitles you to slap your own copyright notice on it while disrespecting the CC-BY. Further, the interface shown is just plain ImGui. That'd be as if I made an image viewer using off-the-shelf parts, displayed some other artist's work in it, then pretended I own the copyright to what my software now displays. Obviously I don't. The very purpose of this software and image viewers alike is to display other people's work. What Meta owns is software, not the output it may produce. These corporations are way too eager to slap their copyright notices on everything. It's definitely not a harmless mistake when those same corporations own literal armies of lawyers who protect their employer's "interests" while not necessarily understanding processes happening in other parts of the company. In general anyhow. In this case it's luckily just Goliath vs. Goliath and not some poor indie developer getting shafted and robbed of credit. [1] https://developer.nvidia.com/orca/amazon-lumberyard-bistro https://developer.nvidia.com/orca/amazon-lumberyard-bistro

zokier 3y ago
A rendering of a scene definitely is a work of its own has its own copyright, which is held by Meta. The scene is also attributed in the github repo license[1]. So the only problem here is that the Khronos post is missing the attribution.
- didntcheck 3y ago
  I wouldn't be so certain. Under US law that may be false due to it lacking originality. For example, a photograph of a public domain painting is itself considered public domain [1]. This is not the same in all countries though, e.g. not the UK [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...
  - skissane 3y ago
    I don't want to venture into the legal question, because I think it depends on the details of exactly what they changed compared to the original, and how much human creativity went into those changes, and I don't think we have those details. But, most engineers/PMs/etc don't have a good understanding of copyright law – it wouldn't surprise me if the authors of that blog post just slapped "Copyright Meta" on it by default because they are used to doing that, and aren't thinking at all about technical legal questions of copyrightability. Furthermore, it isn't really their job to think about those questions – that's what companies employ lawyers for – and I imagine the lawyers likely think that asserting copyright over the uncopyrightable has minimal negative consequences, whereas failing to make that assertion can work against them if it ever becomes the basis of a lawsuit, so better just tell the employees to slap a copyright notice on everything. I once contributed (on my employer's time) to a FAANG open source project (I'll avoid saying which project or FAANG because I don't want to publicly embarrass anybody). I added a brand new file which I'd written from scratch; I copied the copyright/license notice from one of the existing files to the new one, but I changed it from "Copyright [FAANG]" to "Copyright [MyEmployer]". The FAANG employee who ran the open source project objected to that – "why did you change the copyright, everything in this project is copyright by [FAANG]"– the project didn't have a CLA, by the way. I told them they were wrong about the law, and if they didn't believe me, ask their own lawyers – and maybe they did talk to them, because they dropped the objection and ended up merging it, complete with my employer's copyright notice. So even FAANG engineers can fail to grasp the basics of copyright law.
  - rcme 3y ago
    A photo of a public domain painting is only in the public domain if the photograph wasn't distinct enough from the photographed work. Rendering requires a number of "artistic" choices so I doubt that precedent would apply here. Here is a better explanation from your Wikipedia link: > Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. [...] which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality.
    - dahart 3y ago
sangnoir 3y ago
If I take a picture of a Mickey Mouse(TM) figurine - I own the copyright to the photo. Disney will retain copyright to their model, but that doesn't mean they own the result of my work, even if its derivative.
- schappim 3y ago
  Interestingly enough, the copyright on the 1928 movie “Steamboat Willie” – the short film that introduced the world to Mickey Mouse – will expire in 2024. That means the Steamboat-Willie-version of Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain. TM != Copyright, but still interesting.
  - ndesaulniers 3y ago
    "Not if we have anything to say about that!" ~ Disney Lawyers and Lobbyists anxious to extend copywriter protections again
    - skissane 3y ago
      The general consensus is that the current Congress is much less amenable to that lobbying than Congress was back in 1998, the last time US copyright terms were extended – and that Disney realises that, so they aren't seriously pursuing it this time around. One reason is that supporters of the public domain are much better organised than in the 1990s, and their cause has become a lot more popular and mainstream. For example, Wikipedia is a household name with a lot of money (the Wikimedia Foundation has over US$200 million of cash and investments), and they would lobby and campaign hard against any such a proposal if it was being seriously pursued. In the 1990s, you had the film, television, publishing and music industries all supporting copyright term extension, and no serious corporate opposition to it – I doubt most big tech companies would support copyright term extension, because they get no benefit from it (all of their own copyrighted works are much more recent), whereas public domain works are actually a resource they can use for their own purposes (zero copyright risk AI input) Also: Disney was already unpopular with social conservatives in the 1990s, but they've arguably grown even more anti-Disney in the years since, plus the post-Trump GOP finds itself far beholden to its base than the 1990s GOP did – nobody in the contemporary GOP wants to vote for anything viewed as doing Disney's bidding, because they probably won't be forgiven. In the 1990s, they could be confident they would be.

zokier 3y ago

A rendering of a scene definitely is a work of its own has its own copyright, which is held by Meta. The scene is also attributed in the github repo license[1]. So the only problem here is that the Khronos post is missing the attribution.

didntcheck 3y ago
I wouldn't be so certain. Under US law that may be false due to it lacking originality. For example, a photograph of a public domain painting is itself considered public domain [1]. This is not the same in all countries though, e.g. not the UK [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute#Background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_...
- skissane 3y ago
  I don't want to venture into the legal question, because I think it depends on the details of exactly what they changed compared to the original, and how much human creativity went into those changes, and I don't think we have those details. But, most engineers/PMs/etc don't have a good understanding of copyright law – it wouldn't surprise me if the authors of that blog post just slapped "Copyright Meta" on it by default because they are used to doing that, and aren't thinking at all about technical legal questions of copyrightability. Furthermore, it isn't really their job to think about those questions – that's what companies employ lawyers for – and I imagine the lawyers likely think that asserting copyright over the uncopyrightable has minimal negative consequences, whereas failing to make that assertion can work against them if it ever becomes the basis of a lawsuit, so better just tell the employees to slap a copyright notice on everything. I once contributed (on my employer's time) to a FAANG open source project (I'll avoid saying which project or FAANG because I don't want to publicly embarrass anybody). I added a brand new file which I'd written from scratch; I copied the copyright/license notice from one of the existing files to the new one, but I changed it from "Copyright [FAANG]" to "Copyright [MyEmployer]". The FAANG employee who ran the open source project objected to that – "why did you change the copyright, everything in this project is copyright by [FAANG]"– the project didn't have a CLA, by the way. I told them they were wrong about the law, and if they didn't believe me, ask their own lawyers – and maybe they did talk to them, because they dropped the objection and ended up merging it, complete with my employer's copyright notice. So even FAANG engineers can fail to grasp the basics of copyright law.
- rcme 3y ago
  A photo of a public domain painting is only in the public domain if the photograph wasn't distinct enough from the photographed work. Rendering requires a number of "artistic" choices so I doubt that precedent would apply here. Here is a better explanation from your Wikipedia link: > Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. [...] which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright in the United States because the copies lack originality.
  - dahart 3y ago

sangnoir 3y ago

If I take a picture of a Mickey Mouse(TM) figurine - I own the copyright to the photo. Disney will retain copyright to their model, but that doesn't mean they own the result of my work, even if its derivative.

schappim 3y ago
Interestingly enough, the copyright on the 1928 movie “Steamboat Willie” – the short film that introduced the world to Mickey Mouse – will expire in 2024. That means the Steamboat-Willie-version of Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain. TM != Copyright, but still interesting.
- ndesaulniers 3y ago
  "Not if we have anything to say about that!" ~ Disney Lawyers and Lobbyists anxious to extend copywriter protections again
  - skissane 3y ago
    The general consensus is that the current Congress is much less amenable to that lobbying than Congress was back in 1998, the last time US copyright terms were extended – and that Disney realises that, so they aren't seriously pursuing it this time around. One reason is that supporters of the public domain are much better organised than in the 1990s, and their cause has become a lot more popular and mainstream. For example, Wikipedia is a household name with a lot of money (the Wikimedia Foundation has over US$200 million of cash and investments), and they would lobby and campaign hard against any such a proposal if it was being seriously pursued. In the 1990s, you had the film, television, publishing and music industries all supporting copyright term extension, and no serious corporate opposition to it – I doubt most big tech companies would support copyright term extension, because they get no benefit from it (all of their own copyrighted works are much more recent), whereas public domain works are actually a resource they can use for their own purposes (zero copyright risk AI input) Also: Disney was already unpopular with social conservatives in the 1990s, but they've arguably grown even more anti-Disney in the years since, plus the post-Trump GOP finds itself far beholden to its base than the 1990s GOP did – nobody in the contemporary GOP wants to vote for anything viewed as doing Disney's bidding, because they probably won't be forgiven. In the 1990s, they could be confident they would be.