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doctorzook 2 minutes ago [-]
This seems... troubling to me.
Essentially, the judge found that this qualifies as fair use because (a) publishing this with commentary is "transformative" even through "Defendants used the exact, unaltered [photo] in the blog post"; (b) "the blog post is not focused on the [photo]"; and (c) "there is no indication that [the use] impacted or has potential to impact the market or value of the Photo".
As an amateur photographer, this doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings about posting anything I shoot online. By the reasoning here, a company (as in the commercial site here) can use my photos so long as the use is incidental and doesn't earn them too much money -- or at least impact my revenue, which is currently $0.
Heaven help me, though, should I misuse a corporation's copyrighted works, even purely personally.
arjie 1 hours ago [-]
> I was struck by the fact that the blog post had 43 views. With such low stakes, how did this case make it to federal court and reach summary judgment???
Yeah, fascinating that a 43-view blog post would go all the way to the federal court like this. Surely the plaintiff often has people give up and pay because they fear the case? Otherwise the economics of chasing down copyright violations of this scale surely don't make sense.
jdlshore 48 minutes ago [-]
It was a prior case that 44 views, not this one. But this one was similar in its low view counts.
snapetom 5 minutes ago [-]
Years ago, like around 2000, I had a personal blog where I mentioned a local TV celebrity talking about something. The post was about 90% the topic, but in referencing the guy himself, I said something like, "this guy's cool." The local celeb had a trademarked moniker "The Car Czar," and I used it in reference to him.
I swear, on a busy week I had about 5 people reading that blog and they were all coworkers. The next day, I had a 6th visitor from Los Angeles and got excited. Who was this mysterious visitor? I found out when I opened my email and saw a C&D from Universal's lawyers saying I was abusing the trademark.
I blogged the next day, "Wtf, Universal?" and a few days later, got an email from the local celeb apologizing for the overzealous legal team. He was indeed totally cool about it.
On one hand aggressively punitive copyright claims stifle creativity and innovation in transformative art. On the other hand, generative AI reopens that transformative creativity.
rectang 2 hours ago [-]
Even if the specific image being infringed were not in the corpus, it's possible that a court would return a judgment of copyright infringement.
Consider the case where someone deliberately prompts the AI to build a facsimile image and the AI does a creditable job after some tweaking.
CrimsonRain 20 minutes ago [-]
same goes for anything you output :)
ralph84 1 hours ago [-]
Except everyone who has tried to argue that in court has lost.
tancop 2 hours ago [-]
another day another reason why copyright should be for commercial use only (yes that means piracy will be legal). you can throw out entire categories of bad faith cases. art stealing companies still have to pay up and its easier to get what you deserve as an artist when the courts not filled with a backlog of useless low value claims.
thewebguyd 34 minutes ago [-]
That would be great. I'm a photographer outside of my day job, and commercial use is really the only thing I give a crap about. Use my photos by all means for whatever personal use or reasons you have, I (and I'm sure other copyright holders as well) really only care when someone is using the work in direct competition with my/their own business.
Personal/non-commercial use should be fair game for everything for everyone.
jdlshore 47 minutes ago [-]
This blog had a commercial purpose, according to the article.
mock-possum 11 minutes ago [-]
> there is a dearth of evidence on the record that Messiah knowingly failed to credit the Photographer when she posted the Parker Train Photo on her blog ... Messiah merely found the Photo on Google Images by searching “army fashion,” saving the file on her computer without altering the Photo or the filename, and then publishing the Photo on her blog. She testified that at that time, she looked for a watermark, could not find one, and had no knowledge of the Photographer. She also testified that the filename, “Melvin-Sokolsky5.jpg,” was provided by the source website and she did not know it referenced the Photographer.
That’s a bit rich, isn’t it? Why did she not simply search the file name, nevermind reverse image searching the photo itself? Since when is ignorance an excuse - especially in a case like this, when claiming ignorance/negligence could easily cover for deliberate intent?
Essentially, the judge found that this qualifies as fair use because (a) publishing this with commentary is "transformative" even through "Defendants used the exact, unaltered [photo] in the blog post"; (b) "the blog post is not focused on the [photo]"; and (c) "there is no indication that [the use] impacted or has potential to impact the market or value of the Photo".
As an amateur photographer, this doesn't give me warm fuzzy feelings about posting anything I shoot online. By the reasoning here, a company (as in the commercial site here) can use my photos so long as the use is incidental and doesn't earn them too much money -- or at least impact my revenue, which is currently $0.
Heaven help me, though, should I misuse a corporation's copyrighted works, even purely personally.
Yeah, fascinating that a 43-view blog post would go all the way to the federal court like this. Surely the plaintiff often has people give up and pay because they fear the case? Otherwise the economics of chasing down copyright violations of this scale surely don't make sense.
I swear, on a busy week I had about 5 people reading that blog and they were all coworkers. The next day, I had a 6th visitor from Los Angeles and got excited. Who was this mysterious visitor? I found out when I opened my email and saw a C&D from Universal's lawyers saying I was abusing the trademark.
I blogged the next day, "Wtf, Universal?" and a few days later, got an email from the local celeb apologizing for the overzealous legal team. He was indeed totally cool about it.
> “A lawsuit like this heightens the demand for Generative AI replacements.”
Most generative AI corpora were arguably trained on copyrighted material, making the output potentially infringing.
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB10922
On one hand aggressively punitive copyright claims stifle creativity and innovation in transformative art. On the other hand, generative AI reopens that transformative creativity.
Consider the case where someone deliberately prompts the AI to build a facsimile image and the AI does a creditable job after some tweaking.
Personal/non-commercial use should be fair game for everything for everyone.
That’s a bit rich, isn’t it? Why did she not simply search the file name, nevermind reverse image searching the photo itself? Since when is ignorance an excuse - especially in a case like this, when claiming ignorance/negligence could easily cover for deliberate intent?