[stale2002]

> The entire AI industry is powered by piracy at a massive scale.

Forget about AI. Instead it is almost the entire art industry, wholesale!

The semi-professional online art commissioning market is almost entirely copyright infringing fan art works, being sold without permission of IP owner.

Yes, fan art is infringing. Especially when it is sold. And if you go to a convention center, to the artists section, you will see that over half of the booths are straight up selling other people's IP without permission.

This is the case for conventions, online art commissions, etsy/handmade items, all of it.

Its all illegal, all infringing, and the only reason why anyone cares now is because someone else can do the same thing that others have been doing for decades, but quicker and cheaper.

[CaptainFever]

I'm glad someone brought this up. Artists, especially fan artists, will only hurt themselves if they advocate for classifying transformative works as infringing. Fan art has been so normalised that people have forgotten that it used to be considered legally dubious. Better to advocate for reskilling and social safety nets; automation affects everyone, not just them.

[pclmulqdq]

Fair use has 4 factors. Transformative is one of them. Recently, courts have gotten much more interested in a different factor, the "commercial intent" factor. While fan art is less transformative than AI training, it's not commercial and it's not competing with the original work (if anything, it enhances the market for the original work). Generative AI models are both commercial products and very successful competitors with the original works they used for training.

[stale2002]

> it's not commercial and it's not competing with the original work

Yes it is and yes it does.

"Fan art" is "fan" in name only.

If you read back on my original post, you will see that I am talking about almost the entire online professional art commissions market.

From online, to convention centers, and more.

All of this is commerical and all of this competed with the IP owners.

People just sell other people's IP in all of these places.

[ronsor]

I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of AI... if all fan artists paid the statutory and actual damages for their infringing activities.

[pclmulqdq]

What actual damages are there for fan art? Can you prove that work done by a fan artist would otherwise have been done by the original creator and that fan artists are costing sales of the original works they create fan art for?