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I donât recall from my school days where that one lines up among the JEDP Documentary Hypothesis authors.
Good stuff! I should try to check back next Friday.
@Mark_Sturtevant, here are some other cartoon drafts I posted in recent days:
All clear to share these publicly now?
Yes, if the cartoon has both my trademark and the copyright notice.
I am gradually getting cartoons into a final COPYRIGHT and TRADEMARK stamped form. That is, to be ready for distribution, they should have:
(1) THE ENTROPIC PROFESSORâ˘
at the top, and
(2) ⊠2024. P. Allen Witmer Miller. All rights reserved.â
at the bottom.
Some of the earliest ones may still have ENTROPIED professor. So those arenât ready.
Eventually I want to get my copyright into the cartoon as a layer but nowadays people can use software to remove that. But I want to preserve both my trademarked name and the copyright.
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A question: what is the current legal state-of-play regarding the copyrightability of AI-generated works?
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(1) Googleâs Gemini Advanced terms-of-use are very explicit thatâbecause the subscriber submitted the request/description for the image/textâthe subscriber retains all rights to the image.
(2) It is my understanding that copyright law takes the same position: Each âproductâ (whether an image or a text) is the intellectual property of the human creator. The fact that that creator used software tools is irrelevant.
Now, Iâm not a copyright lawyer but all of that makes sense to me based on my experience with intellectual property.
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I NEED PS MEMBERS TO HELP ME CHOOSE WHICH OF THE TWO IMAGES.
.
@Dan_Eastwood & @misterme987, this took over a hundred tries because the AI engine kept producing either canât-do-it or irrational/illogical images.
I canât decide between these two images:
MY LIKELY RESULT WILL BE SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
.
THE ENTROPIC PROFESSORâ˘
FORGOTTEN HISTORY: Hercules and Pelops
Stage the First Olympic Games
"Iâm not so sure about this Javelina Throw event.
I canât quite spell it out exactly but we may need
to tweak this one before the next Olympiad."
Š 2024. P. Allen Witmer Miller. All rights reserved.
HMMM. I GO BACK AND FORTH. MAYBE THE FIRST IMAGE WOULD BE BETTER.
NOTE: @Dan_Eastwood inspired the javelina-throwing idea and I thought it was a great concept for a cartoon.
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1st one.
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I think, based upon what Iâve read here and there, that itâs a bit more complicated than that.
Hereâs what Iâve been able to dig up after a quick search:
This threshold was put to the test in September of 2022, when the U.S. Copyright Office made history by granting the first known registration of a work produced with the help of text-to-image generator Midjourney â a graphic novel called Zarya of the Dawn. Written by Kristina Kashtanova, the 18-page narrative had all the trappings of a typical comic book â characters, dialogue and plenty of images, all of which were generated using Midjourney.
Just a few months later, the office reconsidered its decision and wound up partially canceling the workâs copyright registration, claiming in a letter to Kashtanovaâs attorney that it had ânon-human authorshipâ that had not been taken into account. The bookâs text, as well as the âselection, coordination, and arrangementâ of its âwritten and visual elements,â remained protected. The images themselves did not, though, because they were ânot the product of human authorship,â but rather of text prompts that generated unpredictable outputs based on its training data. The office also deemed whatever editing Kashtanova did to the images as âtoo minor and imperceptible to supply the necessary creativity for copyright protection.â â AI-Generated Content and Copyright Law: What We Know,
Iâm not an IP lawyer either, but the Zarya of the Dawn case seems reasonably close to being on-point.
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Excellent source. I had a conversion with a lawyer friend a while back and he conceded that the AI-generated images are a complicated issue because while the Copyright Office has taken certain positions, the federal courts have yet to test that conclusion as to whether it complies with the intent of Congressional legislation concerning copyrights. (He also said that he is not necessarily up to date on that but it was his first thought. So take all of this with a grain of salt.) Iâm no lawyer but I wonder if that explains the basis on which Google has stated their position.
He also said that combining a public domain image (such as an AI-generated image if it is considered NOT an original human creation subject to copyright) is combined with text written by a human author, the composite result becomes an original work subject to copyright.
That said, if that composite work (such as one of my cartoons) is published and someone extracts and reproduces ONLY the AI-generated image within it, they could probably do so according to that Copyright Office interpretation.
HOWEVER, speaking as someone who was involved years ago in copyright litigation (to protect a copyrighted original musical creation which appeared as the theme music of a very popular TV network miniseries), copyright protection isnât worth much unless one has a LOT of money to protect the copyright. In my case we were up against a major movie studio and one of the big three TV networks and they were not about to allow a precedent where they lost a copyright case. We finally won in a jury trial but the Federal Appellate Court ordered a retrial based on a tiny technicality in how the judge had given final instructions to the jury. After $300,000 in legal expensesâwhich was a lot of money back in the 1980âsâand having no more to spend, we settled out-of-court such that most of the money when to the lawyers. I felt downright fortunate that I walked away with a net payout LOSS of only $1200 for my trouble. (The entire ordeal lasted about two years, as I recall. So I breathed a sigh of relief when it was ovr.)
Worse yet, the composer who stole the music got an Emmy for the film score based on that copyrighted theme.
By the way, the route by which the original copyrighted sheet music found its way to the famous composer was quite fascinatingâand to pursue our case we had to NOT ONLY demonstrate that the music was stolen but HOW the music was stolen. We traced the path through a transcriptionistâs girlfriend who later dated the famous composer. She had kept a photocopy of the original sheet music and some years later shared it with her new boyfriend. He built a film score around it.
I learned from that experience that protecting a copyrighted work can be like being a homeowner whose home was robbed and the TV is stolen and ends up in the bad guyâs house in another city. In order to press charges and get the TV back, one has to not only prove that one has proof of ownership linked to the serial number on the back of the TV but have a video record of the theft and the criminalâs entire drive back to their home. (Yeah, a very rough analogy but you get the idea.) And because this is such a difficult legal standard to meet, the contract with the lawyer was for him to get 45% of any final judgment or settlement PLUS we had to pay all of the associated expenses.
I remember one of the lawyers saying, âOwning a copyright is kind of like owning a fishing license. It doesnât do all that much for you but it gives you the right to TRY and do something.â Of course, the âtryingâ all depends upon having lots of money to pay lawyers and the enormous associated costs, which can include detectives and specialized researchers. The government, obviously, is not going to do much to help you protect your copyright.
@Puck_Mendelssohn, can probably tell a lot of stories like mine.
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