>For example, suppose I take the upper left pixel from a hundred thousand images, then arrange the collected pixels into a new image (using an unspecified combi

>For example, suppose I take the upper left pixel from a hundred thousand images, then arrange the collected pixels into a new image (using an unspecified combination of manual and/or automatic methods). That's "de minimis" copying. >It's not out of the question that model weights would be <that hypothetical term for "created from works but doesn't copy expression">. Model weights would be a derivative work that might be a fair use because of its transformative nature. The issue with derivative works isn't necessarily the extent of the copying so much as that it seems logical that we'd let the creator of Seinfeld have control over whether or not a Seinfeld movie exists. I feel like many people here struggle with copyright because they try to treat it like a math problem, but it's not a math problem. it's a political and social problem that we try to resolve by applying principles and reason (like much of the law). so if you aren't applying reason and principles, but instead treating it like a computer system and trying to blow it up by stuffing the inputs, etc, you aren't really getting it and you aren't engaging with the actual law, which doesn't work that way and doesn't suffer the problems that computer systems do, in part, due to their lack of ability to reason. > "created from works but doesn't copy expression" This is what I'm getting at. Copyright only applies to expressions. So you can't be a copy of something without having copied its expression. For the same reason you can't be a derivative of another work, without having copied some of that expression. To put it another way, if you have a copyrighted work, and you subtract out the expression - there is nothing left of the copyrighted work. There might be things left, but they were never what was captured by the copyright, because copyright only pertains to expressions fixed in a tangible medium.