[abyrne10]

I'm not sure it's true that something being algorithmically generated means it's public domain. Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default.

[fnord123]

> Plenty of assets for things like video games are procedurally generated, but that doesn't mean they're public domain by default.

It does mean that.

[abyrne10]

Going by this definition of public domain, I don’t see how this could be the case:

> The public domain consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply[0]

Think of it this way. Imagine I wrote some code, and when I ran it it generated a piece of art. Surely I would have IP rights over the artwork? Otherwise you could make the same argument about art made with a somehow automatic paintbrush I built.

I hope I’m not talking at cross-purposes here and using a completely different definition of “public domain” was was intended, apologies if this is the case.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

[fnord123]

There is a difference between the concept of a computer being a "clever pencil", which you are referring to, and the computer generating weapons and gear to generate a drop from a selection of "$ELEMENT $LEVEL $WEAPON $MODIFIER" (e.g. fiery epic hammer of orc skull crushing) which is equivalent to generating all of them (not copyrightable).

Now, the individual visual components of the weapons could have a copyright but the computationally assemblaged work based on the components would not because they've just run a job to "generate all the permutations".

For something like No Man's Sky, which is extremely procedurally generated I reckon it's very grey and they could try to make a case but the actual world they generated for people to play in would not be protected by copright. I don't think it's well tested in court.

In the case of the monkeys the hat, the basemonkey, and sunglasses could have a copyright but the assembled monkeys generated by a computer with no creativity would not. But it's a derivative work of things with copyright so that aspect becomes super grey.

The UK government issued a call for views to figure this area out and try to legislate it. Hopefully something useful comes of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/artificial-intel...

[abyrne10]

That’s really interesting, thank you.

As you say, it seems like there’s a significant grey area that needs to be resolved, and I could see it being quite difficult to figure out where to draw the line in practice.