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It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who t

It's not difficult to understand. Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it.

_AzMoo 2y ago
And yet my company owns the copyright on all of the content I produce?
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405240
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Based on the contract you signed, yes. Though there still are stipulations for you as a designer. You can't design Mickey Mouse and then Disney says "you're not allowed to say you designed Mickey Mouse". Accreditation of the individuals is the very mimunum of protections you have as an artist who surrenders their copyright.
cma 2y ago
Is this scenario correct: If you stick a 360 camera on the outside of someone's car and hit record, and they drive around unaware (but with an earlier agreement that it is ok to mess with their property), you get the copyright. If you stick a 360 camera outside of someone's backpack and hit record and they walk around unaware they get the copyright to the footage as the cameraman. Assume an earlier agreement that placing/activating video cameras like this at some future time would be ok but no agreement on who would be the author and no copyright transfer agreements.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  > you get the copyright Do you, in the first scenario? I'm still not sure that you would.
  - ricree 2y ago
    I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.
- pas 2y ago
  it depends on the courts. the law is simply complex and still vague.
radlad 2y ago
Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location? According to Wikimedia's legal analysis, it depends.[0] Furthermore, authorship and copyright are distinct. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Copyright_Ownership https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Cop...
- onemoresoop 2y ago
  From that ruling to this case it extends that the local or tourist who took the photo would be the copyright holder which makes little sense.
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    It makes perfect sense. The photograph is the photographer's creative expression. This is how copyright has always worked.
    - davely 2y ago
      To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression. I wonder about something like this[0]. So much awesome engineering went into it. And the guy is clearly an artist and considers himself an artist[1]. As it is his own tool, are the random splatters it generates not copyrightable? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyE41_ANrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyE41_ANrc [1] https://engineezy.com/pages/about https://engineezy.com/pages/about
      - stonemetal12 2y ago
        >To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression. Depending on if the prompt met other guidelines for copyright, it would be pretty uncontroversial to say you own the copyright on the prompt. Copyright on the picture, is about as assignable as if you invited ten painters over to your house and read the prompt as spoken word poetry, then received one painting at random. The fact that your prompt won't reliably produce the same picture suggests that you are not in control of the artistic choices made, and therefore have no claim to the copyright.
bagels 2y ago
If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?
- autoexec 2y ago
  > If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? that depends on the terms of the deal. Some artists want to keep the copyright but will sell the work, while others are happy to sign their rights away for money. > If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications? Copyrights are for humans, so if you pay an AI, because the AI isn't a human, it never had a copyright to sell you. You paid for an image without a copyright.
  - fnikacevic 2y ago
    Copyrights are owned by businesses all the time.
    - autoexec 2y ago
      We pretend businesses are people all the time.
      - dragonwriter 2y ago
        Corporations are legal persons, that's the entire point of the form.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Copyrights are owned by corporations as a result of either: (1) actual human authorship and original ownership, sold to a corporation, or (2) actual human authorship as a work for hire on behalf of the corporation, which is a special case specifically laid out in copyright law which allows someone other than the person performing the actual act of authorship to be the original copyright owner.
- aenvoker 2y ago
saelthavron 2y ago
> The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it. Why should an "AI" be considered a who rather than just another tool? To me, current "AI" are image manipulation program and camera replacements instead of people replacement.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 2y ago
  People do not say that Adobe owns copyright when someone uses their tool to create an image. However, I could see some weasel words being added to EULAs especially regarding all of the new "AI" tools being shoe horned into the apps. They've already added weasel words to their cloud storage for training purposes. After all, a lawyer is going to lawyer.
- slavik81 2y ago
  It's not that the AI is considered a person. It's that your inputs were the same in both cases, and it's your creative input that justifies the copyright. If your creative input was insufficient to justify granting you copyrights in one case, they would also be insufficient in the other case, as the inputs were identical in both cases.
  - soerxpso 2y ago
    In the case mentioned above where someone just spins around in their chair and takes a random photo on their phone (which they would then own the rights to), did that person really do any 'creative input'? All they did was press a button on a tool, with no further thought. That actually seems like less creative input than when I type a prompt into a tool and hit 'generate'. Why are cameras, image editors, etc, tools in a way that stable diffusion is not?
    - 2y ago
NitpickLawyer 2y ago
> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. Wait, so if I have a script that generates some source-code autonomously (based on whatever trigger I setup say in a ci/cd pipeline) then that code is not copyrightable? What about macros? This seems silly to me.
- tpm 2y ago
  In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable, it's in public domain, as we were briefed by a lawyer recently. This is a huge issue if you are writing software for a customer and agree to transfer all rights to him (happens sometimes), because you don't own rights to AI-written code and so can't transfer that. There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok.
  - buzer 2y ago
    > In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable > There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok. How far does that extend? Like would IntelliSense cause your code to not be copyrightable? It's not that different from AI autocomplete on principal level. It shows you some options, but you make the final decision what to use. And what about binaries? These days there are not many people who could tell the exact binary that is produced by certain source code.
    - tpm 2y ago
      IANAL, but the distinction is whether you are using the tool as a tool, in which case the code is still your creation, vs. the tool is the creator - and in this case I have to refer to a German definition as it was given to me - Geistiger Schöpfer (lit. spiritual creator), here [0] they define it as "An agent who is responsible for creating a work". Clearly this is something that would have to be decided by courts in some cases. [0] https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135 https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135
  - 2y ago
wqaatwt 2y ago
> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright Surely then same would apply to any photos edited with any of the fancy filters in Photoshop? Or any other software for that matter… > just because I asked for it. It often does (even in the example you have suggested previously). It’s just that you can’t legally hire a monkey to press the trigger unlike a human (even through its effectively the same thing)
colordrops 2y ago
There was no person that took the photo with a canon digital SLR. It was a bunch of machinery and microchips and a sensor.
acchow 2y ago
> Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. If I set up an entire scene with props and artwork for a photoshoot with a model, but I would like to actually be the model so I ask a friend to go behind the tripod and tap the shutter, the friend holds the copyright?
- pests 2y ago
  It depends. Did they have any creative input before hitting the shutter? Did they tell you to move? Or adjust lighting? Did they choose the angle or framing? These answers influence the answer to your question.
  - DecentShoes 2y ago
    If they did then the monkey wouldn't have been awarded copyright on that photo.
    - pests 2y ago
      The monkey wasn't awarded copyright on that photo. Neither was the man. Monkey's can't own copyright on anything.
      - Tadpole9181 2y ago
        You're missing the point of that comment.
        pests 2y ago
        On a re-read yeah perhaps I did.
- dylan604 2y ago
  well, you use a remote shutter release or a timer, and remove all ambiguity by removing the friend. there's a scene in one of those Matthew McConaughey romcoms where he plays a photog. The crew has a scene completely setup up and ready to go so that he just walks in, hits the shutter release one time, and then walks away with little care as job is done. He's now credited for that photo, yet did the least effort possible. (that scene isn't too far off while only slightly hyperbolic)
gdubs 2y ago
My initial response to this was to think of all the artists who don't actually create their own work. Lots of contemporary artists have assistants that do the actual painting, sculpting, installation, etc. Even way back a lot of masters were credited for work that was done by apprentices. But, then on the other hand I suppose that in the eyes of the law, a monkey can't legally sign a contract agreeing to pass ownership over to the person 'employing' them as an assistant. It's a strange grey area though – Warhol's whole thing was how the factory made the art. People have been making generative art for decades before AI came along, and as far as I know – and I went to school for Art and studied Art History pretty extensively – people just said, "oh that's a cool way to call ownership and authenticity into question." But generally nobody doubted that like, Damien Hirst is the copyright holder of his works even if an assistant makes it – and even if they have no formal piece of paper that lays it all out.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  The real issue is that the monkey (or Stable Diffusion) cannot be sued in civil court for copyright infringement, so they can't be granted copyrights in the first place: it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility. Note that a human-made curation of AI or animal art is protected by copyright (e.g. you can copyright an AI art coffee table book). The original case involved an AI-generated graphic novel: the author could claim copyright for the whole book but not the individual panels.
  - Lerc 2y ago
    >it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility. That seems to be a very flawed argument. I am perfectly fine with parents having a legal responsibility to take care of their children without the children owing any legal obligation to their parents. Imagine being required by law to act in the interests of your financial adviser. It would almost be codifying the reality.
    - 1718627440 2y ago
      They do a have a legal obligation though. Otherwise chores would be unpaid child labor.
DecentShoes 2y ago
Why is the person who "took the photo" the thing that pressed the button and not the person who did 99% of the work?
- manwe150 2y ago
  I think my understand is that because the work itself is already covered by different laws (eg trespassing), you had the opportunity to make a verbal contract with the person who took the photo. And the same in reverse: because they used your camera, they implicitly agreed for you to have the right to that copy of their work. If they didn’t get the copyright automatically, then they wouldn’t be able to assign it to you as a condition of being present, leading to other potential legal complications where works could be created but where nobody holds the right to assign them to someone else, since nobody was 100% responsible for the creativity that generated it
  - heywoods 2y ago
    Assuming I read this right, and that’s a big assumption, do I have this.. right? The guy in my hypothetical below knows the copyright law and is making a legal request. guy is walking by family and is asked to take their photo guy takes photo same guy asks for a copy of the family photo awkwardness intensifies ————- I really liked what you wrote and appreciate your knowledge you brought to the thread, but what I really loved about reading your comment was the deeper and deeper you took us into the weeds of law the stranger and further divorced from reality it feels. Maybe that’s just me?
    - manwe150 2y ago
      I think that depends what you mean by legal request. The guy is not making a request of the legal system, so no, it is not specifically a legal request in that sense. However, if someone did make a legal request later, the testimony of this exchange might be introduced as evidence that they had a entered into a contractual agreement verbally to give the guy a right to have a copy of the photo for his private use. (Remember that the family also have a legal right to their own likeness, though it is a privacy law, not copyright, so there are multiple dimensions here as to who has the initial rights in the interaction). Replace "family" with "celebrity" and I think you'd have a plausible scenario that might end up in court on occasion.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
SJC_Hacker 2y ago
Ah, I see, so all those Hollywood camera operators own the copyright for all the footage they took for studios. Multi-trillion dollar class action lawsuit here we come...
- andrewxdiamond 2y ago
  Well no, because they are employees / contractors of the film studio, who presumably claim all copyright of what they captured. However, the camera operators likely do own the pictures they take with their own cameras on-set, provided the contract they are working under allows for such ownership
- frankus 2y ago
  In that case there's going to be a pre-existing work-for-hire agreement where the camera operator assigns copyright to the studio.
- creer 2y ago
  Perhaps the people who do photography and filming for a business have thought of it. So, yes, but there are of course multiple ways to work with a team (or in a team of two - not to be the one pressing the shutter and still being the one owning the copyright.)
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Hollywood camera operators are in a union with a contract. They are working for hire, and have no claim beyond their contract.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  no, because Hollywood in 100 years has already evolved through every possible lying weasel lawsuit you or others here could imagine.. and yet humans continue to dream, write, paint and act. Single-line gotcha's are not new, hold no weight, produce very little that is constructive IMHO
itronitron 2y ago
What happens if you ask "the guy" to paint a picture of mickey mouse?
NewJazz 2y ago
You can't just replace monkeys with humans when the legal system doesn't treat them as the same class of organism.
ehnto 2y ago
It's clear "the guy" did the majority of the creative work, so whilst it's "not difficult to understand" the law, it is a nuanced situation. Pretending it is not because of the letter of the law is just sidestepping the conversation we are trying to have.
- tantalor 2y ago
  This is a very good point. For example, consider a photograph of a painting. The photographer owns the copyright to the photo, but the artist retains copyright over the painting contained within the photo, which is derivative of the original artwork. It is less obvious that simply setting up a scene and camera where anybody (including a monkey) can use it meets that threshold for an original work. After all, the scene was outdoors and completely natural.
SoftTalker 2y ago
My employer asserts copyright over everything I produce. Yet I'm the one writing the code.
- andirk 2y ago
  Yup. Because we agreed to that up front to "transfer ownership" or some jargon. Otherwise yes it is yours.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    My understanding is that work done for an employer as part of your normal job duties is considered work for hire and your employer owns it. Employers might also have you sign a contract to avoid legal questions about whether part of your work was in the scope of those duties.
johnisgood 2y ago
But what if I made "that guy" to take the photo, just like I "made" (prompted) AI?
concordDance 2y ago
In cases like this it's best to ask why we have copyright law in the first place. Do we feel the supply of such photos is naturally lower then we'd like to such an extent that we'd grant a legally enforced monopoly on its distribution?
Sharlin 2y ago
Yes it is in fact difficult and nuanced. The act of pressing the shutter button does not create copyright. The creative work done to make the photograph possible does.
donatj 2y ago
Who owns the copyright to the footage of a motion triggered security camera? The person breaking in? Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain? It seems pretty reasonable that copyright should lay with the entity that had the actual intention on creating a work. Not whatever force happened to trigger it.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain? i think a lot of us would be ok with that, so that's not the showstopper argument you might this it is.
Gloomily3819 2y ago
If I paint a digital painting, and then ask my friend to click the "save as" button, does he own the copyright? Or even better, what if the painting is auto-saved by the software?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

_AzMoo 2y ago

And yet my company owns the copyright on all of the content I produce?

dragonwriter 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405240
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Based on the contract you signed, yes. Though there still are stipulations for you as a designer. You can't design Mickey Mouse and then Disney says "you're not allowed to say you designed Mickey Mouse". Accreditation of the individuals is the very mimunum of protections you have as an artist who surrenders their copyright.

cma 2y ago

Is this scenario correct: If you stick a 360 camera on the outside of someone's car and hit record, and they drive around unaware (but with an earlier agreement that it is ok to mess with their property), you get the copyright. If you stick a 360 camera outside of someone's backpack and hit record and they walk around unaware they get the copyright to the footage as the cameraman. Assume an earlier agreement that placing/activating video cameras like this at some future time would be ok but no agreement on who would be the author and no copyright transfer agreements.

satvikpendem 2y ago
> you get the copyright Do you, in the first scenario? I'm still not sure that you would.
- ricree 2y ago
  I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.
pas 2y ago
it depends on the courts. the law is simply complex and still vague.

radlad 2y ago

Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location? According to Wikimedia's legal analysis, it depends.[0] Furthermore, authorship and copyright are distinct. [0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Copyright_Ownership https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Cop...

onemoresoop 2y ago
From that ruling to this case it extends that the local or tourist who took the photo would be the copyright holder which makes little sense.
- Aloisius 2y ago
  It makes perfect sense. The photograph is the photographer's creative expression. This is how copyright has always worked.
  - davely 2y ago
    To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression. I wonder about something like this[0]. So much awesome engineering went into it. And the guy is clearly an artist and considers himself an artist[1]. As it is his own tool, are the random splatters it generates not copyrightable? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyE41_ANrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyE41_ANrc [1] https://engineezy.com/pages/about https://engineezy.com/pages/about
    - stonemetal12 2y ago
      >To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression. Depending on if the prompt met other guidelines for copyright, it would be pretty uncontroversial to say you own the copyright on the prompt. Copyright on the picture, is about as assignable as if you invited ten painters over to your house and read the prompt as spoken word poetry, then received one painting at random. The fact that your prompt won't reliably produce the same picture suggests that you are not in control of the artistic choices made, and therefore have no claim to the copyright.

bagels 2y ago

If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

autoexec 2y ago
> If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright? that depends on the terms of the deal. Some artists want to keep the copyright but will sell the work, while others are happy to sign their rights away for money. > If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications? Copyrights are for humans, so if you pay an AI, because the AI isn't a human, it never had a copyright to sell you. You paid for an image without a copyright.
- fnikacevic 2y ago
  Copyrights are owned by businesses all the time.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    We pretend businesses are people all the time.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Corporations are legal persons, that's the entire point of the form.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Copyrights are owned by corporations as a result of either: (1) actual human authorship and original ownership, sold to a corporation, or (2) actual human authorship as a work for hire on behalf of the corporation, which is a special case specifically laid out in copyright law which allows someone other than the person performing the actual act of authorship to be the original copyright owner.
aenvoker 2y ago

saelthavron 2y ago

> The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it. Why should an "AI" be considered a who rather than just another tool? To me, current "AI" are image manipulation program and camera replacements instead of people replacement.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dylan604 2y ago
People do not say that Adobe owns copyright when someone uses their tool to create an image. However, I could see some weasel words being added to EULAs especially regarding all of the new "AI" tools being shoe horned into the apps. They've already added weasel words to their cloud storage for training purposes. After all, a lawyer is going to lawyer.
slavik81 2y ago
It's not that the AI is considered a person. It's that your inputs were the same in both cases, and it's your creative input that justifies the copyright. If your creative input was insufficient to justify granting you copyrights in one case, they would also be insufficient in the other case, as the inputs were identical in both cases.
- soerxpso 2y ago
  In the case mentioned above where someone just spins around in their chair and takes a random photo on their phone (which they would then own the rights to), did that person really do any 'creative input'? All they did was press a button on a tool, with no further thought. That actually seems like less creative input than when I type a prompt into a tool and hit 'generate'. Why are cameras, image editors, etc, tools in a way that stable diffusion is not?
  - 2y ago

NitpickLawyer 2y ago

> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. Wait, so if I have a script that generates some source-code autonomously (based on whatever trigger I setup say in a ci/cd pipeline) then that code is not copyrightable? What about macros? This seems silly to me.

tpm 2y ago
In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable, it's in public domain, as we were briefed by a lawyer recently. This is a huge issue if you are writing software for a customer and agree to transfer all rights to him (happens sometimes), because you don't own rights to AI-written code and so can't transfer that. There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok.
- buzer 2y ago
  > In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable > There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok. How far does that extend? Like would IntelliSense cause your code to not be copyrightable? It's not that different from AI autocomplete on principal level. It shows you some options, but you make the final decision what to use. And what about binaries? These days there are not many people who could tell the exact binary that is produced by certain source code.
  - tpm 2y ago
    IANAL, but the distinction is whether you are using the tool as a tool, in which case the code is still your creation, vs. the tool is the creator - and in this case I have to refer to a German definition as it was given to me - Geistiger Schöpfer (lit. spiritual creator), here [0] they define it as "An agent who is responsible for creating a work". Clearly this is something that would have to be decided by courts in some cases. [0] https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135 https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135
- 2y ago

wqaatwt 2y ago

> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright Surely then same would apply to any photos edited with any of the fancy filters in Photoshop? Or any other software for that matter… > just because I asked for it. It often does (even in the example you have suggested previously). It’s just that you can’t legally hire a monkey to press the trigger unlike a human (even through its effectively the same thing)

colordrops 2y ago

There was no person that took the photo with a canon digital SLR. It was a bunch of machinery and microchips and a sensor.

acchow 2y ago

> Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright. If I set up an entire scene with props and artwork for a photoshoot with a model, but I would like to actually be the model so I ask a friend to go behind the tripod and tap the shutter, the friend holds the copyright?

pests 2y ago
It depends. Did they have any creative input before hitting the shutter? Did they tell you to move? Or adjust lighting? Did they choose the angle or framing? These answers influence the answer to your question.
- DecentShoes 2y ago
  If they did then the monkey wouldn't have been awarded copyright on that photo.
  - pests 2y ago
    The monkey wasn't awarded copyright on that photo. Neither was the man. Monkey's can't own copyright on anything.
    - Tadpole9181 2y ago
      You're missing the point of that comment.
      - pests 2y ago
        On a re-read yeah perhaps I did.
dylan604 2y ago
well, you use a remote shutter release or a timer, and remove all ambiguity by removing the friend. there's a scene in one of those Matthew McConaughey romcoms where he plays a photog. The crew has a scene completely setup up and ready to go so that he just walks in, hits the shutter release one time, and then walks away with little care as job is done. He's now credited for that photo, yet did the least effort possible. (that scene isn't too far off while only slightly hyperbolic)

gdubs 2y ago

My initial response to this was to think of all the artists who don't actually create their own work. Lots of contemporary artists have assistants that do the actual painting, sculpting, installation, etc. Even way back a lot of masters were credited for work that was done by apprentices. But, then on the other hand I suppose that in the eyes of the law, a monkey can't legally sign a contract agreeing to pass ownership over to the person 'employing' them as an assistant. It's a strange grey area though – Warhol's whole thing was how the factory made the art. People have been making generative art for decades before AI came along, and as far as I know – and I went to school for Art and studied Art History pretty extensively – people just said, "oh that's a cool way to call ownership and authenticity into question." But generally nobody doubted that like, Damien Hirst is the copyright holder of his works even if an assistant makes it – and even if they have no formal piece of paper that lays it all out.

aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
The real issue is that the monkey (or Stable Diffusion) cannot be sued in civil court for copyright infringement, so they can't be granted copyrights in the first place: it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility. Note that a human-made curation of AI or animal art is protected by copyright (e.g. you can copyright an AI art coffee table book). The original case involved an AI-generated graphic novel: the author could claim copyright for the whole book but not the individual panels.
- Lerc 2y ago
  >it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility. That seems to be a very flawed argument. I am perfectly fine with parents having a legal responsibility to take care of their children without the children owing any legal obligation to their parents. Imagine being required by law to act in the interests of your financial adviser. It would almost be codifying the reality.
  - 1718627440 2y ago
    They do a have a legal obligation though. Otherwise chores would be unpaid child labor.

DecentShoes 2y ago

Why is the person who "took the photo" the thing that pressed the button and not the person who did 99% of the work?

manwe150 2y ago
I think my understand is that because the work itself is already covered by different laws (eg trespassing), you had the opportunity to make a verbal contract with the person who took the photo. And the same in reverse: because they used your camera, they implicitly agreed for you to have the right to that copy of their work. If they didn’t get the copyright automatically, then they wouldn’t be able to assign it to you as a condition of being present, leading to other potential legal complications where works could be created but where nobody holds the right to assign them to someone else, since nobody was 100% responsible for the creativity that generated it
- heywoods 2y ago
  Assuming I read this right, and that’s a big assumption, do I have this.. right? The guy in my hypothetical below knows the copyright law and is making a legal request. guy is walking by family and is asked to take their photo guy takes photo same guy asks for a copy of the family photo awkwardness intensifies ————- I really liked what you wrote and appreciate your knowledge you brought to the thread, but what I really loved about reading your comment was the deeper and deeper you took us into the weeds of law the stranger and further divorced from reality it feels. Maybe that’s just me?
  - manwe150 2y ago
    I think that depends what you mean by legal request. The guy is not making a request of the legal system, so no, it is not specifically a legal request in that sense. However, if someone did make a legal request later, the testimony of this exchange might be introduced as evidence that they had a entered into a contractual agreement verbally to give the guy a right to have a copy of the photo for his private use. (Remember that the family also have a legal right to their own likeness, though it is a privacy law, not copyright, so there are multiple dimensions here as to who has the initial rights in the interaction). Replace "family" with "celebrity" and I think you'd have a plausible scenario that might end up in court on occasion.

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SJC_Hacker 2y ago

Ah, I see, so all those Hollywood camera operators own the copyright for all the footage they took for studios. Multi-trillion dollar class action lawsuit here we come...

andrewxdiamond 2y ago
Well no, because they are employees / contractors of the film studio, who presumably claim all copyright of what they captured. However, the camera operators likely do own the pictures they take with their own cameras on-set, provided the contract they are working under allows for such ownership
frankus 2y ago
In that case there's going to be a pre-existing work-for-hire agreement where the camera operator assigns copyright to the studio.
creer 2y ago
Perhaps the people who do photography and filming for a business have thought of it. So, yes, but there are of course multiple ways to work with a team (or in a team of two - not to be the one pressing the shutter and still being the one owning the copyright.)
Spooky23 2y ago
Hollywood camera operators are in a union with a contract. They are working for hire, and have no claim beyond their contract.
mistrial9 2y ago
no, because Hollywood in 100 years has already evolved through every possible lying weasel lawsuit you or others here could imagine.. and yet humans continue to dream, write, paint and act. Single-line gotcha's are not new, hold no weight, produce very little that is constructive IMHO

itronitron 2y ago

What happens if you ask "the guy" to paint a picture of mickey mouse?

NewJazz 2y ago

You can't just replace monkeys with humans when the legal system doesn't treat them as the same class of organism.

ehnto 2y ago

It's clear "the guy" did the majority of the creative work, so whilst it's "not difficult to understand" the law, it is a nuanced situation. Pretending it is not because of the letter of the law is just sidestepping the conversation we are trying to have.

tantalor 2y ago
This is a very good point. For example, consider a photograph of a painting. The photographer owns the copyright to the photo, but the artist retains copyright over the painting contained within the photo, which is derivative of the original artwork. It is less obvious that simply setting up a scene and camera where anybody (including a monkey) can use it meets that threshold for an original work. After all, the scene was outdoors and completely natural.

SoftTalker 2y ago

My employer asserts copyright over everything I produce. Yet I'm the one writing the code.

andirk 2y ago
Yup. Because we agreed to that up front to "transfer ownership" or some jargon. Otherwise yes it is yours.
- cgriswald 2y ago
  My understanding is that work done for an employer as part of your normal job duties is considered work for hire and your employer owns it. Employers might also have you sign a contract to avoid legal questions about whether part of your work was in the scope of those duties.

johnisgood 2y ago

But what if I made "that guy" to take the photo, just like I "made" (prompted) AI?

concordDance 2y ago

In cases like this it's best to ask why we have copyright law in the first place. Do we feel the supply of such photos is naturally lower then we'd like to such an extent that we'd grant a legally enforced monopoly on its distribution?

Sharlin 2y ago

Yes it is in fact difficult and nuanced. The act of pressing the shutter button does not create copyright. The creative work done to make the photograph possible does.

donatj 2y ago

Who owns the copyright to the footage of a motion triggered security camera? The person breaking in? Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain? It seems pretty reasonable that copyright should lay with the entity that had the actual intention on creating a work. Not whatever force happened to trigger it.

Suppafly 2y ago
>Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain? i think a lot of us would be ok with that, so that's not the showstopper argument you might this it is.

Gloomily3819 2y ago

If I paint a digital painting, and then ask my friend to click the "save as" button, does he own the copyright? Or even better, what if the painting is auto-saved by the software?

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