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Footnote one is where the whole thing goes off the rails. The Copyright Office asserts that the works in question are not merely "data" in the ordinary sense, b
by kelseyfrog 1y ago
Footnote one is where the whole thing goes off the rails. The Copyright Office asserts that the works in question are not merely "data" in the ordinary sense, but somehow "embody creative expression" in a way that constitutes protected authorship.
This is metaphysics, not law or computer science.
They're smuggling in a kind of authorial transubstantiation, as if creative essence somehow imbues the bits themselves, rendering them qualitatively different from any other arrangement of bytes. The implication is that once a work has passed through the sacrament of human intention, it permanently carries a kind of spiritual copyright residue, regardless of its subsequent transformation or use.
But that's not how data works. A copy of a copyrighted work in a training corpus is still just data. It doesn't emit rights. It's not radioactive. There's no Platonic form of "authorship" that permeates the latent space. What matters, legally, and practically, is what the system does with that data, not some mystical essence the data supposedly contains.
This is authorial essentialism dressed up as policy. And it doesn’t hold up under inspection.
- aredox 1y agoYeah, and painting is just oil, and music is just an arrangement of noises. And only the original manuscript touched by an author is protected by rights, and every book printed ("copied") afterwards is not covered by any rights.
- aspenmayer 1y agoWhat Color are your bits? https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
- Greed 1y agoYou speak of intentionality beyond the explicit reality of the data involved as some great irrationality in their statement, but we literally have a corresponding term for that. Spirit of the law. If the law were as black and white and ends-oriented as you're implying it is, we wouldn't need judges for the interpretation of it. The fact that they have prioritized the underlying authors affected over the traditional interpretation of the law here is not the condemnation you think it is.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI think you're missing the deeper point. Whether or not the Copyright Office intends to assert authorial essentialism, it's doing so in effect. And when metaphysical language about "creative essence" becomes encoded in policy and enforced by courts, it's not just metaphor. It's law. Calling it "spirit of the law" doesn't let them off the hook. If you enshrine a metaphysics that treats human-authored works as ontologically distinct kinds of data, imbued with some persistent essence that radiates rights regardless of use, you're not interpreting the law, you're institutionalizing a theology of authorship. And yes, I care less about their intentions than about the system they're building. That system is now enforcing metaphysical categories with legal teeth. That's the problem.
- whattheheckheck 1y agoHumans don't own anything. Ownership is a construct. It's all made up.