Timnit Gebru (she/her).This whole "this is how humans learn so whats the difference" thing while stealing so much data to make billions for a few dudes is so insidious.
Chris Radcliff@timnitGebru I still don’t get how that’s supposed to cover obvious infringement. “We trained our writer’s room on this collection of Marvel comics, so now they can write MCU films for anyone who wants them!”
ArneBab@chris_radcliff you can do that: you can train your writers on Marvell fiction and then tell them to write fanfiction. It won’t be copyright infringement, but it pretty sure would be infringing on trademarks, and it would be plagiarism.
@chris_radcliff The deeper problem is that copyright law is a swamp.
I once asked a webcomic author whether he would allow me to use a single strip under free licenses for a free RPG. He asked “will I still retain the rights to the characters?”.
Half a year of part-time searching later I had to tell him: “I don’t know and no one can tell me”.
So since his livelihood depended on others not being able to just run with his cast of characters, we decided to scrap the idea.
@timnitGebru
@chris_radcliff that swamp of copyright is where now generative art is added that doesn’t really copy any specific work and does not need to actually recreate a character as it is but combines stuff from a huge number of undisclosable sources where each usage might or might not be fair use but the company behind it has funds to simply outspend any author who sues.
Now copyright is still a swamp, but big money is with those who consume the works, not with those who control access.
@timnitGebru
Indieterminacy@ArneBab @chris_radcliff @timnitGebru
> Following the release of the 1978 The Rutles album, ATV Music, the then-owner of the publishing rights to the Beatles catalog, sued Innes for copyright infringement. Though Innes hired a musicologist to defend the originality of his songs, he settled with ATV out of court for 50% of the royalties and shared songwriting credit on the 14 songs included on the album. As of early 2006, these six songs from the first Rutles CD
...
https://www.liquisearch.com/the_rutles/lawsuits
@indieterminacy music copyright ≠ writing copyright ≠ drawing copyright ≠ dance moves copyright (as epic games painfully found out).
Each of those has special rules what’s infringement.
In music even having an intro sound similar can cause a lawsuit. Even if you never knew the other song.
I said for good reason that it’s a swamp.
@ArneBab @chris_radcliff @timnitGebru I once worked at an independent music label association, I appreciate you emphasizing distinctions.
> “It’s brutal,” he said, his smile fading for the first time. “I couldn’t afford to get a lawyer that would go up against these big corporations. They’re like the banks – they’re too big to fail.”
> Innes maintained that he didn’t analyse The Beatles’ music before writing The Rutles’ songs, but instead wrote everything from memory
https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-rutles-neil-innes-interview
@indieterminacy I’ve been contributing to foster free culture (libre licenses) for more than two decades now and if the goal is to find a corpus of works that really are free to use and reuse as long as you reciprocate you hit upon a lot of nasty corners of copyright, because you can’t just go with the default "I don’t make money and if they are angry, I’ll just take it down or let them make a profit from it".
Because I make promises to others that they can use it.
@chris_radcliff @timnitGebru