3 ms·

It seems like a somewhat dystopian thing to fix. Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to wor

by bnralt 3y ago

It seems like a somewhat dystopian thing to fix. Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters (even if it was just a fan drawing you did). This reminds me of the early days of the internet where people wanted to remove free fanfiction for violations of copyright laws. Trying to apply copyright laws to personal use cases where the creator isn't trying to sell the material is pretty terrible, in my view. Imagine a scenario 50 years from now - "Robot, can you cut out this picture I drew for a school diorama." "Certainly." "And this one as well." "Error: Your picture seems like it might contain some copyrighted materials, and as such I am unable to interact with it."

keiferski 3y ago
I doubt that the media companies would be happy about this; but maybe a compromise is a “copyright infringement filter” that can be enabled or disabled, with a flashing notification that you’re responsible legally if you turn off the filter and have issues.
- atq2119 3y ago
  Sure, there are legitimate but opposing interests here. The solution doesn't have to be technical though. The key part is making sure that the copyright owners still have some recourse, but one that isn't punitive for unknowing infringement. For example, make it legally impossible to impose punitive penalties for unknowing infringement without commercial interest, but make it possible for the rights owner to demand the relevant material be removed etc. Also keep in mind that the Mario examples from the article are perhaps not the best guide here. Mario is sufficiently pervasive in our culture that you can't reasonably claim unknowing infringement. It's the somewhat more obscure cases that I'd be worried about.
atq2119 3y ago
It is dystopian, and it already exists, e.g. printers refusing to print anything that looks sufficiently like money. Like many things, I suspect this will end up getting worse before there's a chance for it to get better.
- madamelic 3y ago
  > It is dystopian, and it already exists, e.g. printers refusing to print anything that looks sufficiently like money. There is no fair or private use of hyper-realistic fake money. There are fair uses of copyrighted materials unless you want to start suing children for copyright infringement when they draw a character.
  - ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
    > There is no fair or private use of hyper-realistic fake money. What about every movie ever made where two people trade a briefcase full of cash?
    - madamelic 3y ago
      This is actually a really fascinating topic! I am not sure how far Photoshop takes their filters but those bills aren't actually replicas nor can they be mistaken on reasonable examination (a cashier glancing at them) Typically their texts read "For movie use only" over the seals in the middle or other things that make it clearly distinguishable as fake money that isn't legal tender. I think some of them flip the heads backwards or do other things so it immediately fails the sniff test. Adam Savage actually has multiple videos on how it is made, super fascinating stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI (Thank you for asking this, I was dying to gush about how cool movie money is)
      - Throw839 3y ago
        > but those bills aren't actually replicas In some movies those are actual real money. Just the top layer. Dealing with legislation, lawyers and legal compliance is soo expensive, they would rather use a few thousand real dollars for couple of hours.
amazingman 3y ago
Your scenario already exists, but for currency. Photoshop will refuse to work if it thinks you might be counterfeiting currency.
- kranke155 3y ago
  that's literally the only scenario where it exists.
  - Auracle 3y ago
    You can’t use their generative AI tools on images it deems NSFW, even if the part you’re generating isn’t.
    - MeImCounting 3y ago
      That seems kind of messed up honestly. Where does this go in the future? If your locally running photoshop determines you are working with anything it might consider NSFW it shuts down and calls home to report you? Where is the liability for them? Or is this another case of corporate puritan ethics with a stranglehold on culture?
    - kranke155 3y ago
      People dodge the NSFW filters very easily trust me. There are entire subreddits devoted to it.
numpad0 3y ago
> the early days of the internet where people wanted to remove free fanfiction for violations of copyright laws This is reinforcing my suspicion that there's gross misunderstanding between creator adjacents and non-creators: Takedowns on free fanfictions never stopped. It's just many IP holders started incorporating fanfics/parodies as part of their advertisement strategies and started enforcing often unspoken guidelines. There is now a ecosystem or a mental co-dependence between IP holders and creators, and both sides are fine with it. So there be fan contents. But free fan contents were never "legalized" in the content world, as some seem to assume.
pxoe 3y ago
image editors don't offer something that's based on questionably sourced copyrighted material as a part of their product. ai apps and services do. it's just ai companies using dirty data and hoping they get away with it - and they do, for the time being, it is a bit trickier to show that 'yep, well that's there', and people don't seem to realize that just using a copyrighted image, at all (downloading, accessing in itself, let alone using for something else), or creating an image that would just "look like" a trademarked character - not "make a 1 to 1 copy" but just "look like" - would be enough for it to possibly be an infringement. there can be a sufficient fix - taking out potentially infringing images from a dataset, and making an effort to make an actually clean dataset. it's really just a matter of "do you actually have rights to use that content? at all, and in that way". and ai companies continually say 'no...but what if we use it anyway". and it's kind of a sloppy analogy, because with text to image generators (where you just interact with a model that's offered to you), well - people aren't "uploading copyrighted material into an editor". the copyrighted material is already there in the model, it was used in making of it. and if there was no such copyrighted material that'd fit the prompt, it wouldn't be able to generate something. the infringement lies with the service that uses copyrighted material for a model, and then offers it. fan fiction and fan works continuously being in a murky area with copyright/trademark is not just a thing of "early days" of internet, it's been there all along and is still very much present. companies could crack down if they wanted, but there is too much of stuff out there, it might be hard to nail down exact people, and it might be plainly not too nice to the fandom. but it is not "impossible", and it is very much not a conversation that ever 'went away' or become "kinda solved" - it isn't. again, with image editors, text editors, etc. - user is making all the actions with content, and the user would be doing the infringement, in editing and further if they were to choose to publish. with generative ai - copyright infringement is built into the models. copyrighted works were accessed and used to turn into a model. user is just asking, "is it there". and it is. in some of those demonstrated examples, user is not even asking for a model to infringe on anything but it just does.
Atrine 3y ago
> Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters (even if it was just a fan drawing you did). YouTube does this. I have many friends that perform classical piano in their spare time. They record themselves playing a piece that's 200+ years old then put it on YouTube where it gets flagged saying some big record label owns the copyright for it because it's similar to a recording they put out.
spondylosaurus 3y ago
> Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters Photoshop does this already, but only if it detects that you're trying to print/create counterfeit money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

by bnralt 3y ago

keiferski 3y ago

I doubt that the media companies would be happy about this; but maybe a compromise is a “copyright infringement filter” that can be enabled or disabled, with a flashing notification that you’re responsible legally if you turn off the filter and have issues.

atq2119 3y ago
Sure, there are legitimate but opposing interests here. The solution doesn't have to be technical though. The key part is making sure that the copyright owners still have some recourse, but one that isn't punitive for unknowing infringement. For example, make it legally impossible to impose punitive penalties for unknowing infringement without commercial interest, but make it possible for the rights owner to demand the relevant material be removed etc. Also keep in mind that the Mario examples from the article are perhaps not the best guide here. Mario is sufficiently pervasive in our culture that you can't reasonably claim unknowing infringement. It's the somewhat more obscure cases that I'd be worried about.

atq2119 3y ago

It is dystopian, and it already exists, e.g. printers refusing to print anything that looks sufficiently like money. Like many things, I suspect this will end up getting worse before there's a chance for it to get better.

madamelic 3y ago
> It is dystopian, and it already exists, e.g. printers refusing to print anything that looks sufficiently like money. There is no fair or private use of hyper-realistic fake money. There are fair uses of copyrighted materials unless you want to start suing children for copyright infringement when they draw a character.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  > There is no fair or private use of hyper-realistic fake money. What about every movie ever made where two people trade a briefcase full of cash?
  - madamelic 3y ago
    This is actually a really fascinating topic! I am not sure how far Photoshop takes their filters but those bills aren't actually replicas nor can they be mistaken on reasonable examination (a cashier glancing at them) Typically their texts read "For movie use only" over the seals in the middle or other things that make it clearly distinguishable as fake money that isn't legal tender. I think some of them flip the heads backwards or do other things so it immediately fails the sniff test. Adam Savage actually has multiple videos on how it is made, super fascinating stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drLzVcgnBfI (Thank you for asking this, I was dying to gush about how cool movie money is)
    - Throw839 3y ago
      > but those bills aren't actually replicas In some movies those are actual real money. Just the top layer. Dealing with legislation, lawyers and legal compliance is soo expensive, they would rather use a few thousand real dollars for couple of hours.

amazingman 3y ago

Your scenario already exists, but for currency. Photoshop will refuse to work if it thinks you might be counterfeiting currency.

kranke155 3y ago
that's literally the only scenario where it exists.
- Auracle 3y ago
  You can’t use their generative AI tools on images it deems NSFW, even if the part you’re generating isn’t.
  - MeImCounting 3y ago
    That seems kind of messed up honestly. Where does this go in the future? If your locally running photoshop determines you are working with anything it might consider NSFW it shuts down and calls home to report you? Where is the liability for them? Or is this another case of corporate puritan ethics with a stranglehold on culture?
  - kranke155 3y ago
    People dodge the NSFW filters very easily trust me. There are entire subreddits devoted to it.

numpad0 3y ago

> the early days of the internet where people wanted to remove free fanfiction for violations of copyright laws This is reinforcing my suspicion that there's gross misunderstanding between creator adjacents and non-creators: Takedowns on free fanfictions never stopped. It's just many IP holders started incorporating fanfics/parodies as part of their advertisement strategies and started enforcing often unspoken guidelines. There is now a ecosystem or a mental co-dependence between IP holders and creators, and both sides are fine with it. So there be fan contents. But free fan contents were never "legalized" in the content world, as some seem to assume.

pxoe 3y ago

image editors don't offer something that's based on questionably sourced copyrighted material as a part of their product. ai apps and services do. it's just ai companies using dirty data and hoping they get away with it - and they do, for the time being, it is a bit trickier to show that 'yep, well that's there', and people don't seem to realize that just using a copyrighted image, at all (downloading, accessing in itself, let alone using for something else), or creating an image that would just "look like" a trademarked character - not "make a 1 to 1 copy" but just "look like" - would be enough for it to possibly be an infringement. there can be a sufficient fix - taking out potentially infringing images from a dataset, and making an effort to make an actually clean dataset. it's really just a matter of "do you actually have rights to use that content? at all, and in that way". and ai companies continually say 'no...but what if we use it anyway". and it's kind of a sloppy analogy, because with text to image generators (where you just interact with a model that's offered to you), well - people aren't "uploading copyrighted material into an editor". the copyrighted material is already there in the model, it was used in making of it. and if there was no such copyrighted material that'd fit the prompt, it wouldn't be able to generate something. the infringement lies with the service that uses copyrighted material for a model, and then offers it. fan fiction and fan works continuously being in a murky area with copyright/trademark is not just a thing of "early days" of internet, it's been there all along and is still very much present. companies could crack down if they wanted, but there is too much of stuff out there, it might be hard to nail down exact people, and it might be plainly not too nice to the fandom. but it is not "impossible", and it is very much not a conversation that ever 'went away' or become "kinda solved" - it isn't. again, with image editors, text editors, etc. - user is making all the actions with content, and the user would be doing the infringement, in editing and further if they were to choose to publish. with generative ai - copyright infringement is built into the models. copyrighted works were accessed and used to turn into a model. user is just asking, "is it there". and it is. in some of those demonstrated examples, user is not even asking for a model to infringe on anything but it just does.

Atrine 3y ago

> Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters (even if it was just a fan drawing you did). YouTube does this. I have many friends that perform classical piano in their spare time. They record themselves playing a piece that's 200+ years old then put it on YouTube where it gets flagged saying some big record label owns the copyright for it because it's similar to a recording they put out.

spondylosaurus 3y ago

> Imagine a scenario where Photoshop would scan images you uploaded for copyright material and then refuse to work if it determined image contained any copyrighted material or characters Photoshop does this already, but only if it detects that you're trying to print/create counterfeit money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation