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“Piracy is Piracy” – Disney and Universal team up to sue Midjourney

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  • 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.

    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.

  • Would it not then be better to buy a shady key to financially hurt the company?

    How so? Isn't it the same for the financial purposes?

  • 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.

    It's not actually a very fun game to play, reading the lore or watching a video of someone else play is sufficient.

  • "Piracy" isn't piracy.

    It depends. Pirating a specific thing created by someone I think is not good. Ask almost any creator on the Web.

    While using motives, aesthetics, characters, universes ... is usually something that shouldn't be subject to IP law, but in fact is, because the law is not written with any creators in mind, it's intended to create convenient conditions for big businesses.

  • It depends. Pirating a specific thing created by someone I think is not good. Ask almost any creator on the Web.

    While using motives, aesthetics, characters, universes ... is usually something that shouldn't be subject to IP law, but in fact is, because the law is not written with any creators in mind, it's intended to create convenient conditions for big businesses.

    It depends.

    It doesn't 🙂

    Piracy is a sea ship attack. "Unauthorized copying" is the term you seek. Copying doesn't involve attacks, killing, or even robbing, but piracy -- does. And no, it isn't just some terminology casus. Law strictly differentiate killing, raping, robbing and unauthorized copying.

    No, I don't talk stupid shit. It is important.

  • It depends.

    It doesn't 🙂

    Piracy is a sea ship attack. "Unauthorized copying" is the term you seek. Copying doesn't involve attacks, killing, or even robbing, but piracy -- does. And no, it isn't just some terminology casus. Law strictly differentiate killing, raping, robbing and unauthorized copying.

    No, I don't talk stupid shit. It is important.

    It's important propaganda-wise, because it supports a subconscious association between unauthorized copy and and capturing a vessel with its crew. I agree.

    What I meant is - unauthorized copying is sometimes too morally very similar to a robbery. There are people, not living very rich, who depend on it happening more rarely. Of course they are being robbed by intermediaries always and by us sometimes, but they still feel it.

  • It's important propaganda-wise, because it supports a subconscious association between unauthorized copy and and capturing a vessel with its crew. I agree.

    What I meant is - unauthorized copying is sometimes too morally very similar to a robbery. There are people, not living very rich, who depend on it happening more rarely. Of course they are being robbed by intermediaries always and by us sometimes, but they still feel it.

    It’s important propaganda-wise, because

    Exactly

    copying is sometimes too morally very similar to a robbery

    Never. Robbery involves violence plus moving something of value from the victim to the robber. Your moral compass is broken already by the propaganda you mentioned earlier.

    You may think that copying is "bad" in some cases but it never "armed violent values extortion" bad. Never.

  • I say this as a massive AI critic: Disney does not have a legitimate grievance here.

    AI training data is scraping. Scraping is — and must continue to be — fair use. As Cory Doctorow (fellow AI critic) says: Scraping against the wishes of the scraped is good, actually.

    I want generative AI firms to get taken down. But I want them to be taken down for the right reasons.

    Their products are toxic to communication and collaboration.

    They are the embodiment of a pathology that sees humanity — what they might call inefficiency, disagreement, incoherence, emotionality, bias, chaos, disobedience — as a problem, and technology as the answer.

    Dismantle them on the basis of what their poison does to public discourse, shared knowledge, connection to each other, mental well-being, fair competition, privacy, labor dignity, and personal identity.

    Not because they didn’t pay the fucking Mickey Mouse toll.

    Are you saying that the mere action of scraping is fair use, or that absolutely anything you do with the data you scrape is also fair use?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • No problem, how much is "everything" in USD?

  • It’s important propaganda-wise, because

    Exactly

    copying is sometimes too morally very similar to a robbery

    Never. Robbery involves violence plus moving something of value from the victim to the robber. Your moral compass is broken already by the propaganda you mentioned earlier.

    You may think that copying is "bad" in some cases but it never "armed violent values extortion" bad. Never.

    I agree. I had a "pleasure" to experience the difference.

    That also involved learning that human society consists of apes, real danger is always very close and no police will help you against it, thus right to carry arms is paramount. Preferably allowing you to kill a tank.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • A copy is not theft.

    Intellectual property is thought monopoly. See Disco Elysium for a particularly sad case of it.

    Exactly

    Profiting off the copied content makes it theft

  • Are you saying that the mere action of scraping is fair use, or that absolutely anything you do with the data you scrape is also fair use?

    I'd say that scraping as a verb implies an element of intent. It's about compiling information about a body of work, not simply making a copy, and therefore if you can accurately call it "scraping" then it's always fair use. (Accuse me of "No True Scotsman" if you would like.)

    But since it involves making a copy (even if only a temporary one) of licensed material, there's the potential that you're doing one thing with that copy which is fair use, and another thing with the copy that isn't fair use.

    Take archive.org for example:

    It doesn't only contain information about the work, but also a copy (or copies, plural) of the work itself. You could argue (and many have) that archive.org only claims to be about preserving an accurate history of a piece of content, but functionally mostly serves as a way to distribute unlicensed copies of that content.

    I don't personally think that's a justified accusation, because I think they do everything in their power to be as fair as possible, and there's a massive public benefit to having a service like this. But it does illustrate how you could easily have a scenario where the stated purpose is fair use but the actual implementation is not, and the infringing material was "scraped" in the first place.

    But in the case of gen AI, I think it's pretty clear that the residual data from the source content is much closer to a linguistic analysis than to an internet archive. So it's firmly in the fair use category, in my opinion.

    Edit: And to be clear, when I say it's fair use, I only mean in the strict sense of following copyright law. I don't mean that it is (or should be) clear of all other legal considerations.

  • I'd say that scraping as a verb implies an element of intent. It's about compiling information about a body of work, not simply making a copy, and therefore if you can accurately call it "scraping" then it's always fair use. (Accuse me of "No True Scotsman" if you would like.)

    But since it involves making a copy (even if only a temporary one) of licensed material, there's the potential that you're doing one thing with that copy which is fair use, and another thing with the copy that isn't fair use.

    Take archive.org for example:

    It doesn't only contain information about the work, but also a copy (or copies, plural) of the work itself. You could argue (and many have) that archive.org only claims to be about preserving an accurate history of a piece of content, but functionally mostly serves as a way to distribute unlicensed copies of that content.

    I don't personally think that's a justified accusation, because I think they do everything in their power to be as fair as possible, and there's a massive public benefit to having a service like this. But it does illustrate how you could easily have a scenario where the stated purpose is fair use but the actual implementation is not, and the infringing material was "scraped" in the first place.

    But in the case of gen AI, I think it's pretty clear that the residual data from the source content is much closer to a linguistic analysis than to an internet archive. So it's firmly in the fair use category, in my opinion.

    Edit: And to be clear, when I say it's fair use, I only mean in the strict sense of following copyright law. I don't mean that it is (or should be) clear of all other legal considerations.

    "if you can accurately call it "scraping" then it's always fair use."

    I think you make some compelling points overall, but fair use has always been more complex than this. The intent is taken into account when evaluating whether something is fair use, but so is the actual impact — "fair use" is a designation applied to the overall situation, not to any singular factors (so a stated purpose can't be fair use)

  • 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.

    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.

  • The Really Dark Truth About Bots

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    I definately feel this way. Outside of the federation my use of the net now is just paper work, technical work, meida streaming, and video games. Which is a lot of but the fediverse goes tits up and nothing like it comes to pass my only social media involvment will be as necessary (my condo has a facebook page and job searching sites are technically [and creepily] social media but I just put in applications and don't look at the feed I don't want.)
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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    Relocate those Native American to reservations because those computers need a place to live. Or something like that.
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    eyekaytee@aussie.zoneE
    They will say something like solar went from 600gw to 1000 thats a 66% increase this year and coal only increased 40% except coal is 3600gw to 6400. Hrmmmm, maybe these numbers are outdated? Based on this coal and gas are down: In Q1 2025, solar generation rose 48% compared to the same period in 2024. Solar power reached 254 TWh, making up 10% of total electricity. This was the largest increase among all clean energy sources. Coal-fired electricity dropped by 4%, falling to 1,421 TWh. Gas-fired power also went down by 4%, reaching 67 TWh https://carboncredits.com/china-sets-clean-energy-record-in-early-2025-with-951-tw/ are no where close to what is required to meet their climate goals Which ones in particular are you talking about? Trump signs executive order directing US withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement — again https://apnews.com/article/trump-paris-agreement-climate-change-788907bb89fe307a964be757313cdfb0 China vowed on Tuesday to continue participating in two cornerstone multinational arrangements -- the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord -- after newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump ordered withdrawals from them. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250121-china-says-committed-to-who-paris-climate-deal-after-us-pulls-out What's that saying? You hate it when the person you hate is doing good? I can't remember what it is I can't fault them for what they're doing at the moment, even if they are run by an evil dictatorship and do pollute the most I’m not sure how european defense spending is relevant It suggests there is money available in the bank to fund solar/wind/battery, but instead they are preparing for? something? what? who knows. France can make a fighter jet at home but not solar panels apparently. Prehaps they would be made in a country with environmental and labour laws if governments legislated properly to prevent companies outsourcing manufacturing. However this doesnt absolve china. China isnt being forced at Gunpoint to produce these goods with low labour regulation and low environmental regulation. You're right, it doesn't absolve china, and I avoid purchasing things from them wherever possible, my solar panels and EV were made in South Korea, my home battery was made in Germany, there are only a few things in my house made in China, most of them I got second hand but unfortunately there is no escaping the giant of manufacturing. With that said it's one thing for me to sit here and tut tut at China, but I realise I am not most people, the most clearest example is the extreme anti-ai, anti-billionaire bias on this platform, in real life most people don't give a fuck, they love Amazon/Microsoft/Google/Apple etc, they can't go a day without them. So I consider myself a realist, if you want people to buy your stuff then you will need to make the conditions possible for them to WANT to buy your stuff, not out of some moral lecture and Europe isn't doing that, if we look at energy prices: Can someone actually point out to me where this comes from? ... At the end of the day energy is a small % of EU household spending I was looking at corporate/business energy use: Major European companies are already moving to cut costs and retain their competitive edge. For example, Thyssenkrupp, Germany’s largest steelmaker, said on Monday it would slash 11,000 jobs in its steel division by 2030, in a major corporate reshuffle. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/High-Energy-Costs-Continue-to-Plague-European-Industry.html Prices have since fallen but are still high compared to other countries. A poll by Germany's DIHK Chambers of Industry and Commerce of around 3,300 companies showed that 37% were considering cutting production or moving abroad, up from 31% last year and 16% in 2022. For energy-intensive industrial firms some 45% of companies were mulling slashing output or relocation, the survey showed. "The trust of the German economy in energy policy is severely damaged," Achim Dercks, DIHK deputy chief executive said, adding that the government had not succeeded in providing companies with a perspective for reliable and affordable energy supply. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/more-german-companies-mull-relocation-due-high-energy-prices-survey-2024-08-01/ I've seen nothing to suggest energy prices in the EU are SO cheap that it's worth moving manufacturing TO Europe, and this is what annoys me the most. I've pointed this out before but they have an excellent report on the issues: https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en?filename=The+future+of+European+competitiveness+_+A+competitiveness+strategy+for+Europe.pdf Then they put out this Competitive Compass: https://commission.europa.eu/topics/eu-competitiveness/competitiveness-compass_en But tbh every week in the EU it seems like they are chasing after some other goal. This would be great, it would have been greater 10 years ago. Agreed
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    which one would sell more I mean they would charge a lot of money for the stripped down one because it doesn't allow them to monetize it on the back end, and the vast majority would continue using the resource-slurping ad-riddled one.
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    Tech execs when the shortage hits: I just had a brilliant idea! Let's just give untrained junior vibe-coding engineers the power of senior engineers, and even more AI tools. Problem solved forever, bonus please!
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    What could possibly go wrong? Edit: reads like the substrate still needs to be introduced first