- Disney and NBCUniversal have teamed up to sue Midjourney.
- The companies allege that the platform used its copyright protected material to train its model and that users can generate content that infringes on Disney and Universal’s copyrighted material.
- The scathing lawsuit requests that Midjourney be made to pay up for the damage it has caused the two companies.
A copy is not theft.
Intellectual property is thought monopoly. See Disco Elysium for a particularly sad case of it.
Do you mean play disco Elysium or is there some drama associated with it?
Drama. A business partner of the creators used an illegal loophole to obtain a majority stake of the company and then fired the actual creators because they where considered to volatile.
The universe of Disco Elysium is Kurvitz paracosm which he has been creating since his teens. Its a part of their identity that they are now barred from expressing.
Its a bit like if you told Tolkien halfway trough writing lotr that he is fired as the author and can never write anything about middle earth again.
intellectual property is grotesque.
under no circumstances a creator should be barred from his creation.
if shit like that happens I’d rather there not be any intellectual property at all
It’s quite illustrative of DE’s universe’s relevance to our world though.
(I’m more partial to SW KotORII: TSL, even if DE feels more like my life, even I wonder if Harry’s ex is too not just a blindingly bright and quite f-ckable picture, but also a murderer ; too autistic to look for authors’ contacts to ask them about it.)
Barred from expressing with monetizing it, you certainly mean? Otherwise most of fan fiction would have to be censored, having IP owners not willing competition.
And even then it’s in question, there are plenty of crowdfunded and later paid for indie games set in Harry Potter universe. Those I’m thinking about are NSFW though.
Fanfiction and non monetised use is not at all exempt from these laws but rather tolerated by the copyright holder. Something tells me this one wont tolerate if the og creator posts anything and they may know enough background canon to know its them.
A real irony to the plot of the game is that the business partner wanted to reign in the freedom of the creators. Not impossible they deemed it to political.
I am not sure about those games you mentioning but its possible they are tolerated because a combination of plausible deniability (wizard uk boarding school isnt that orginal) and not wanting it to gain any more publicity. Disney did the same thing ignoring Micky mouse porn.
Fanfiction and non monetised use is not at all exempt from these laws but rather tolerated by the copyright holder.
Should fix that in law, based on the commonality of such use.
IP companies use every such opening, we should too.
combination of plausible deniability (wizard uk boarding school isnt that orginal)
Except they even use character names from HP.
Publicity - maybe, would be funny.
I would personally argue that fixing the law means getting rid of the notion of intellectual property all together.
In my own reasoning someone copying me is the highest form of flattery and i would still have an edge understanding the properties of own idea better then the copycat does.
Its a huge limiter on human progress and absolutely non sensical in situations where multiple people just happen to have a similar idea. As it stands now an employee could invent the cure to cancer, the employer claiming it and then putting it in a vault to never use and bar anyone from creating it.
Naturally such idea of abolishing copyright receives lots of criticism from many people because we would have to solve other problems that copyright now aims to fix but i don’t think that justifies the damage it does.
While in capitalism we’ll always have ip, copyright, what have you.
Gotta “protect” capital
I would personally argue that fixing the law means getting rid of the notion of intellectual property all together.
Perhaps now - yes. 20 years ago one could argue, but today in practice it, as it was intended, simply already doesn’t exist. Those holding the IP are those having enough power to insert themselves in a right place. The initial purpose is just not achievable.
In my own reasoning someone copying me is the highest form of flattery and i would still have an edge understanding the properties of own idea better then the copycat does.
Yes, if the artist thinks that. And no, if the artist expects to make some money from every copy.
Its a huge limiter on human progress and absolutely non sensical in situations where multiple people just happen to have a similar idea.
That’s true for patents and technologies, but not true for art and software, where it’s improbable to just come up with the same thing.
Naturally such idea of abolishing copyright receives lots of criticism from many people because we would have to solve other problems that copyright now aims to fix but i don’t think that justifies the damage it does.
Now - maybe. There are a few traditional ways, like authors reading aloud pieces of their creations and people buying tickets to such performances, same with music. And models with paying forward for a request, like crowdfunding or an order.
But personally I still think some form of it should exist. Maybe non-transferable to companies and other people other than via inheritance. Intellectual work is work, and people do it to get paid. It’s just not good enough if the returns don’t scale with popularity.
You should totally play the game, but make sure that you pirate it so your money doesn’t go to the thief who stole the rights from the creators.
Oh that’s unfortunate. Well I don’t mind not supporting people like that so I’ll give it a go
But it would be a copyright infringement.
Exactly
Profiting off the copied content makes it theft
Oh so when Big companies do it, it’s OK. But it’s stealing when an OpenSource AI gives that same power back to the people.
That’s part of the strategy. First, go after the small project that can’t defend itself. Use that to set a precedent that is harder for the bigger targets to overturn.
I would expect the bigger players to get themselves involved in the defense for exactly that reason.
There is no logic in mans lust for power. The most self serving will do whatever it takes to achieve wealth, status, and control. The world made so much more sense once I realized that.
requests that Midjourney be made to pay up for the damage it has caused the two companies.
good luck proving and putting an accurate number to that perceived ‘damage’?
Easy, ten gajillion dollars. Payable in stock.
No problem, how much is “everything” in USD?
Removes sunglasses …“Let them fight”
I dunno were I stand on this one. I can see Disneys argument and agree with it on first glance, but at the same time, is the artists doing fan art infringing copyright then?
Artists doing fan art are infringing copyright, yes. If the fan art meets the fair use criteria then they are not Infringing.
Companies usually overlook the infringement from fan artists because it’s free advertising and the public backlash is not worth going after lone artists. They usually will go after fan art of people that profit off it.
Yes I under that, but is Midjourney profiting off these characters? Ie are people paying for these services just so they can create images of these specific characters ? I think that’s the question that needs to be answered here.
I mean you’re not paying piecemeal as you would for an artist to create your commission of Shrek getting railed by Donkey, you pay for the service which in turns creates anything you tell it to.
It’s like I’m still not convinced that training AI with copyrighted material is infringement, because in my mind is not any different than me seeing Arthas when I was kid, thinking he was cool as fuck and then deciding to make my own OC inspired by him. Was I infringing on Blizzard’s copyrighted character for taking inspiration from its design? Was Mike Pondsmith infringing on William Gibson’s copyright when he invented Cyberpunk?
Yes, your fan art infringed on Blizzards copyright. Blizzard lets it slide, because there’s nothing to gain from it apart from a massive PR desaster.
Now if you sold your Arthas images on a large enough scale then Blizzard will clearly come after you. Copyright is not only about the damages occured by people not buying Blizzards stuff, but also the license fees they didn’t get from you.
That’s the real big difference: if Midjourney was a little hobby project of some guy in his basement that never saw the the light of day, there wouldn’t be a problem. But Midjourney is a for-profit tool with the express purpose of allowing people to make images without paying an artist and the way it does that is by using copyrighted works to do so.
The worst person you know just made a great point
Remember when stealing on sea was piracy? Always has been.
Copyright infringement is different.
Yes. Piracy in the sense of stealing from ships in international waters is different from piracy in the sense of copyright infringement. Thanks for that.
I didn’t mean to suggest that. I consider calling copyright infringement “piracy” to be propaganda started by the music industry to push their monetary interests. A derogatory term that conflates it with immoral stealing (and murder). This overstates any harms caused.
The enemies of my enemies are my friends.
But if both sides are your enemies, they’re both your friends. But if they’re your friends, they aren’t the enemies of your enemies anymore, which would make them your enemies once again. But then they are your friends again. But then
But if both sides are your enemies, they’re both your friends.
Yes. And both of my friends will weaken both of my enemies.
The biggest pirates in the world should know.
:D
Stupid lawsuit because anyone can do Ai now.
that’s a shit take.
anyone can do AI now, but everyone can’t profit from it like they can. that’s why the lawsuit.
