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

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  • 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.

  • 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.

  • "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)

    Yes, that’s a good addition.

    Overall, my point was not that scraping is a universal moral good, but that legislating tighter boundaries for scraping in an effort to curb AI abuses is a bad approach.

    We have better tools to combat this, and placing new limits on scraping will do collateral damage that we should not accept.

    And at the very least, the portfolio value of Disney’s IP holdings should not be the motivating force behind AI regulation.

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

    Disagree, I think being in the pilot seat is important. The immersion of control amplifies the experience.

  • 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?

    deleted by creator

    • 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.

    The enemies of my enemies are my friends.

  • 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.

    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.

  • 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 think the distinction between data acquisition and data application is important. Consider the parallel of photography; you are legally and ethically entitled to take a photo of anything that you can see from public (ie, you can "scrape" it). But that doesn't mean that you can do anything you want with those photos. Distinguishing them makes the scraping part a lot less muddy.

  • 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. 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.

    • 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.

    Note that Disney and Universal pirate other people's stuff whenever they want.

    Note also that all the Generative AI services are very protective of their big cistern of web-crawled data, say when China borrows it for DeepSeek.

    Content, content everywhere and not a drop of principle.

  • Yes, that’s a good addition.

    Overall, my point was not that scraping is a universal moral good, but that legislating tighter boundaries for scraping in an effort to curb AI abuses is a bad approach.

    We have better tools to combat this, and placing new limits on scraping will do collateral damage that we should not accept.

    And at the very least, the portfolio value of Disney’s IP holdings should not be the motivating force behind AI regulation.

    Tbh, this is not a question about scraping at all.

    Scraping is just a rather neutral tool that can be used for all sorts of purposes, legal and illegal.

    Neither does the technique justify the purpose nor does outlawing the technique fix the actual problem.

    Fair use only applies for a certain set of use cases and has a strict set of restrictions applied to it.

    The permitted use cases are: "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research".

    And the two relevant restrictions are:

    • "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;"
    • "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

    (Quoted from 17 U.S.C. § 107)

    And here the differences between archive.org and AI become obvious. While archive.org can be abused as some kind of file sharing system or to circumvent paywalls or ads, its intended purpose is for research, and it's firmly non-profit and doesn't compete with copyright holders.

    AI, on the other hand, is almost always commercial, and its main purpose is to replace human labour, specifically of the copyright owners. It might not be an actual problem for Disney's bottom line, but it's a massive problem for smaller artists, stock photographers, translators, and many other professions.

    That way, it clearly doesn't apply to the use cases for fair use while violating the restrictions.

    And for that, it doesn't matter if the training data is acquired using scraping (without permission) or some other way (without permission to use it for AI training).

  • 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.

    You did not read your source. Some quotes you apparently missed:

    Scraping to violate the public’s privacy is bad, actually.

    Scraping to alienate creative workers’ labor is bad, actually.

    Please read your source before posting it and claiming it says something it doesn't actually say.

    Now why does Doctrow distinguish between good scraping and bad scraping, and even between good LLM training and bad LLM training in his post?

    Because the good applications are actually covered by fair use while the bad parts aren't.

    Because fair use isn't actually about what is done (scraping, LLM training, ...) but about who does it (researchers, non-profit vs. companies, for-profit) and for what purpose (research, critique, teaching, news reporting vs. making a profit by putting original copyright owners out of work).

    That's the whole point of fair use. It's even in the name. It's about the use, and the use needs to be fair. It's not called "Allowed techniques, don't care if it's fair".

    • 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.

    Stupid lawsuit because anyone can do Ai now.

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

    Many times these keys are obtained illegitimately and they end up being refunded. In other cases the key is bought from another region so the devs do get some money, but far less than they would from a regular purchase.

    I'm not sure exactly how the illegitimate keys are obtained, though. Maybe in trying to not pay the publisher you end up rewarding someone who steals peoples' credit cards or something.

  • 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.

    Midjourney isn't opensource, I can't run it on my PC, contrary to stable diffusion.

  • 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.

  • 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

    • 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.

    Bite each others dicks off

  • 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.

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    A real mystery indeed.
  • The Decline of Usability: Revisited | datagubbe.se

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    I blame the idea of the 00s and 10s that there should be some "Zen" in computer UIs and that "Zen" is doing things wrong with the arrogant tone of "you don't understand it". Associated with Steve Jobs, but TBH Google as well. And also another idea of "you dummy talking about ergonomics can't be smarter than this big respectable corporation popping out stylish unusable bullshit". So - pretense of wisdom and taste, under which crowd fashion is masked, almost aggressive preference for authority over people actually having maybe some wisdom and taste due to being interested in that, blind trust into whatever tech authority you chose for yourself, because, if you remember, in the 00s it was still perceived as if all people working in anything connected to computers were as cool as aerospace engineers or naval engineers, some kind of elite, including those making user applications, objective flaw (or upside) of the old normal UIs - they are boring, that's why UIs in video games and in fashionable chat applications (like ICQ and Skype), not talking about video and audio players, were non-standard like always, I think the solution would be in per-application theming, not in breaking paradigms, again, like with ICQ and old Skype and video games, I prefer it when boredom is thought with different applications having different icons and colors, but the UI paradigm remains the same, I think there was a themed IE called LOTR browser which I used (ok, not really, I used Opera) to complement ICQ, QuickTime player and BitComet, all mentioned had standard paradigm and non-standard look.
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    [image: 62e40d75-1358-46a4-a7a5-1f08c6afe4dc.jpeg] Palantir had a contract with New Orleans starting around ~2012 to create their predictive policing tech that scans surveillance cameras for very vague details and still misidentifies people. It's very similar to Lavender, the tech they use to identify members of Hamas and attack with drones. This results in misidentified targets ~10% of the time, according to the IDF (likely it's a much higher misidentification rate than 10%). Palantir picked Louisiana over somewhere like San Francisco bc they knew it would be a lot easier to violate rights and privacy here and get away with it. Whatever they decide in New Orleans on Thursday during this Council meeting that nobody cares about, will likely be the first of its kind on the books legal basis to track civilians in the U.S. and allow the federal government to take control over that ability whenever they want. This could also set a precedent for use in other states. Guess who's running the entire country right now, and just gave high ranking army contracts to Palantir employees for "no reason" while they are also receiving a multimillion dollar federal contract to create an insane database on every American and giant data centers are being built all across the country.
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    The list of previous searches on his iPhone included “Which month is april in islam,” “Festivals happening near me,” “are suicide attacks haram in islam,” “ginger isis member,” “lone wolf terrorists isis,” and “can tou kill a woman who foesnt[sic] wear hijab.” lol of course he’s a fucking idiot
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    jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldJ
    We all get emotional on certain topics; it is understandable. All is well, peace.
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    swelter_spark@reddthat.comS
    Yeah, I don't prefer that. But with some things I feel like it's barely a downside, and I'd put Boxes into that category. It's useful and well-designed enough in terms of functionality that I'm willing to overlook the Gnominess.