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Don’t call AI art “stealing” — misnaming copyright infringement will hurt the small artists. Again.

Comment to people complaining about “stealing” without the experience of which ghosts they summon with that — again.


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The precise term is copyright infringement, not stealing.

At least in jurisdictions where training a machine learning model is actually a copyright infringement. In the EU it’s not clear (see article 3 and article 4 — also search for “mining”).

That’s a blanket copyright exception for data mining research, and seems to be a copyright exception for all content online that does not expressly and in a technically readable way forbid data mining. So at least every work from before the copyright directive seems to be open for data mining (⇒ training AI models). Note: IANAL.

But hey, the media industry was so happy to push upload filters in our faces.

And I am so tired of seeing copyright monopolies equated with actual property — even where there is value in granting that monopoly.

Have we as society learned nothing from the attacks against filesharing — even threatening fans with rape in prison — attacks that turned out to harm the artists?

»It’s the shortsighted fight to create more chains to protect the status quo«

The current situation and the previous one are similar in mistaking rights to forbid (monopoly) with rights to have (property). If the artists fight for stronger monopoly rights, they will grant the corporations that power in the end.

And then your artwork created with adobe creative suite or any other tool that uses the corporate-owned-creative-model (which will be a requirement to work efficiently, go and ask translaters if you have doubts) will be co-owned by Adobe and you’ll have to grant them a share of every penny you make.

It’s the shortsighted fight to create more chains to protect the status quo (chains that can and will be used against you, too) instead of going back to first principles and asking "what is it that we really require?" and then fighting for that.

The core question: What helps artists make a living?

Some background (Google-translated): "Intellectual property" - purpose of copyright and state-guaranteed monopoly rights

Note that Google Translate also uses a trained model, but does not gain a copyright in the translated texts.

And some food for thought: Who owns most created art? The artists or the big corporations?

»The core question: What helps artists make a living?«

Did you or others ever sign a contract that includes "future uses"?

Or something that says “Artist agrees that Producer shall own without limitation throughout the universe, exclusively and in perpetuity, free and clear of any and all claims, liens and encumbrances, all rights, title and interest of every kind whatsoever, whether now known or unknown”? Like this: https://www.templateroller.com/template/267788/concept-artist-agreement-template.html

Then you know the actual power-structure in which new monopolies will operate.

ArneBab 2022-12-23 Fr 00:00 - Impressum - GPLv3 or later (code), cc by-sa (rest)