[tantalor]

It's not difficult to understand.

Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright.

The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it.

[radlad]

Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location? According to Wikimedia's legal analysis, it depends.[0] Furthermore, authorship and copyright are distinct.

[0] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/Authorship_and_Cop...

[davely]

Oof, this gets into all sorts of weird legal grey areas.

- All of our phones do a bunch of computational photography where AI tooling improves a photo in various ways. In that case, is any photo taken by a modern phone not copyrightable?

- If it is copyrightable, what if someone uses an Img2Img tool or inpainting with something like Stable Diffusion (or Photoshop) in order to slightly modify an image. Is that no longer copyrightable?

(FYI, my questions aren't directed at or attacking you -- just interesting hypotheticals.)

[TheOtherHobbes]

There's a startup doing something close to this. I can't remember the name and I'm not going to look it up, but the pitch is that you feed it a copyright stock image and it uses AI to create a usable-but-clearly-different near equivalent - a situation where absence of copyright is a feature, not a bug.

Technically it's a derivative work. Practically you'd never tell, and proof of derivation is impossible.

The law as it currently stands is completely unable to deal with these issues.

It's not even clear what the issues are, because copyright is primarily about protecting income rights from significant original invention. The mechanical act of making a copy is somewhat incidental.

When invention is mechanised (or if you want to be less charitable, replaced by algorithmic grey goo) the definition of "significant original invention" either needs to be tightened up or replaced.

[therealpygon]

In short, in situation 1 there is no issue. In situation 2, if the original image can be copyrighted, AI tooling to augment the image doesn’t prevent copyright. The copyright offices guidance on the subject is a worthwhile read, since they detail out the difference between using AI as a tool to modify human authorship, vs the AI taking minimal input alone and generating a resulting image.

[thatcat]

What if the ai augments the shutter timing because you were shaking? The ai monkey pressed the shutter so no copyright I guess? Pretty sure several apps do this on night photo mode.

[d1sxeyes]

Then I would assume it’d be treated as a tool in the creative process, similarly to a ruler helping you draw a straight line, but the author is still the human.

But they say when you assume you make an ass out of you and me, and we all know the law is an ass, so who knows.

[nightski]

"Minimal input" like pushing a button on a camera? Seems to me that is more minimal than some of the elaborate prompting it takes to get AI to output a desired image.

[bredren]

It goes away beyond this. You can create your own custom Lora. The tags that go into that, combined with prompting is sophisticated authorship.

It can be reasonably be considered technical than handling a professional camera.

[bmicraft]

I guess if the prompt is complex enough to be protected then the image would be too?

[brewtide]

Gotta be 1,000 words.

[SiempreViernes]

You better be willing to question whether photographs can be copyrightable at all, because they are all result of several mechanical systems not created by the camera operator.

Just limiting yourself to only "digital computation" being magical enough to invalidate copyright is an arbitrary restriction. Unless you clarify why you think the computation performed by the lens system doesn't have that property, further discussion seems pointless because it will just collapse to a circular "digital computation is magical enough", which is your implied premise.

[CYR1X]

The other aspect here is you can't copyright an observable truth. For instance, sports companies tried to sue other sports companies for scraping their scores feeds but courts ruled you can't copyright the fact Patriots beat the Falcons 35-30, because that's simply what happened. There isn't any proprietary scoring keeping mechanism. Anyone who observed the game also can determine those numbers. It is an observable truth. So maybe that applies to the raw photo. You are simply capturing what happened from that POV at that moment in time. Sure if you do something with that photo, then it may become more than an observable truth.

[freejazz]

Why would anyone need to question whether photographs can be copyrighted at all? It's been settled jurisprudence for quite a long time.

[Suppafly]

>You better be willing to question whether photographs can be copyrightable at all, because they are all result of several mechanical systems not created by the camera operator.

That is a good point that a lot of people don't want to address. A lot of the 'creative' part of the process is actually being done by the software in the camera.

[SiempreViernes]

No, that's the opposite of my point: what the camera does is mechanical work, it is explicitly not creative.

[nerdponx]

By that logic, paintings aren't copyrightable either because of all the chemistry involved in drying pigment.

[cess11]

The limits of copyright are intrinsically arbitrary, since the right has its foundations in fantasy, i.e. supposed spiritual labour. An extension of the idea that your physical labour gives you property rights to the fruits of it, into the religious realm of the soul.

[Dylan16807]

> - If it is copyrightable, what if someone uses an Img2Img tool or inpainting with something like Stable Diffusion (or Photoshop) in order to slightly modify an image. Is that no longer copyrightable?

The number 5 is not copyrightable, but if I take your short story and replace every space with the number 5 it's still subject to the original copyright.

[bredren]

This is already essentially in iOS. In Photos edit mode, there is a Clean Up tool.

[Maken]

- All of our phones do a bunch of computational photography where AI tooling improves a photo in various ways. In that case, is any photo taken by a modern phone not copyrightable?

On a related note, I believe it's just a question of time that in some high profile case (murder, rape, thief) direct photographic evidence of the perpetrator will have to be discarded, because it was taken with a smartphone and it's imposible to determine to which degree it was altered.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

There was a post someone made, some time ago, where they took a picture of a rabbit, with its head turned away from the photographer, so its eyes were not visible, and their iPhone painted an eye on it, because the profile was the same as if the rabbit had its head facing forward.

It was in the discussion about the fake Samsung moon photos.

[d1sxeyes]

This has sort of already happened. There was a fair bit of fuss around a very similar topic during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. The prosecution were not allowed to zoom in on drone footage because the defence successfully argued that zooming in results in the creation of information through interpolation which was not there in the original recording.

[eloisius]

To some degree it wouldn’t be hard to do non-destructive editing and save the original sensor data, and embed the developed jpeg (or heif) in it. This is already normal for digital cameras when shooting RAW.

[oniony]

Wouldn't they be derivative works of a copyrightable work?

[michaelbuckbee]

Who owns your photo of the moon after Samsung uses "SceneOptimizer" to AI fix it? https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_sp...

[mubou]

Wow, that last "photo" is especially damning.

I hate how impossible it is nowadays to buy a phone with a camera that just takes photos without 'shopping them somehow. Even Pixels apply unnatural filters. It just ruins photos, which you often can't ever go back and retake...

(I know you can shoot in RAW, but I don't have time to develop every photo I take and I really shouldn't have to. Some phones' RAWs are actually post-filtering, too, and not actually "raw".)

[thewebguyd]

They pretty much have to. The sensors on smart phones are so tiny that a true RAW file out of them would be pretty much unusable. They simply don't capture enough light. The only way at this point to improve photo quality out of a phone is a bigger sensor, or software. Thus far, everyone has chosen doing it in software.

Though you should definitely be able to adjust the amount of post processing, some is always going to be necessary if you don't want a grainy mess of a photo.

[mubou]

I'd be awesome if there was a phone meant for photographers (who can't be arsed to carry a DSLR all the time). Like, take the sensor off a compact point-and-shoot and slap it on a smartphone. Because honestly it feels silly that point-and-shoots still exist in 2025; you'd think they'd have gone the way of the mp3 player.

[dmwilcox]

I carry a point and shoot for photographing my kids -- it's amazing. You can take it out without looking at it, turn it on, take a photo and turn it off and return it to your pocket in 10 seconds.

Also the sensor is 10x the size of my phones, the photos are printable (and don't look like mud when printed like many camera phone photos), and the battery last for months.

Maybe just get a point and shoot? I traded in an old DSLR for an OM tough camera and my kids even take photos with it (and get copyright! unlike AI lol)

[wooger]

Because you also want the lens, which is exactly what doesn't fit on a phone form factor

[autoexec]

> Because honestly it feels silly that point-and-shoots still exist in 2025; you'd think they'd have gone the way of the mp3 player.

It's a shame there aren't more dedicated MP3 players really. Every so often I run into people looking for one and often their options are very limited. Just having the ability to listen to music without someone logging and/or tracking what you listen to, when, and how often is becoming harder to attain. It's also nice to have a dedicated player when you listen to music often because it saves your battery for other things.

Today there are still plenty of reasons for simple digital cameras and even film cameras. I certainly hope they continue to remain available, even if many people are happy using whatever their phones give them.

[Dylan16807]

Anything software on the phone can do, software on the desktop could do. So I still want the raw image as an option.

[bacchusracine]

Burger King.

[CYR1X]

Oh shit. Who owns your photo if your phone does any amount of software-based manipulation to it? Like making faces look better?? Is this how google claims it can use all of your pixel photos in its AI training?

[mschuster91]

Let me add something even more funny: in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1].

[1] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000108536963/schraeges-urh...

[shagie]

This is country specific (as is copyright itself). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_t...

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/120

> The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.

This gets further complicated by sculptural works that are not part of the architecture of the building which have their own copyright. For example, the sculpture of lions in front of the New York Public Library are works of sculpture and not part of the architecture of the building and so photographs of them are derivative works... though that's not an issue now as they've fallen into public domain (they were the example given when I started photography as a sculpture that was often photographed along with architecture)... but are trademarked.

Then you get things like the Eiffel Tower which is public domain, but the lights (installed in 1985) are not... so a photograph of it, by night, is under copyright.

It's complicated.

[mschuster91]

Yup, that's insane, all of it. Anything that is visible with the human eye or a reasonable camera (i.e. no 1200mm superzoom into someone's residence where a painting hangs) from the open street or any area accessible to the general public such as parking lots, airports and the likes should be freely redistributable.

[Suppafly]

> in Germany, some buildings and art installations are copyrighted which means they aren't allowed to be photographed for non-private usage despite being literally out in the open for everyone to see [1].

I think most people agree that that is ridiculous. I'm not sure how they manage to enforce that, even with Europe's generally strong ideas around copyright and moral ownership and such.

[mschuster91]

> I'm not sure how they manage to enforce that, even with Europe's generally strong ideas around copyright and moral ownership and such.

Copyright holders use Google's reverse image search to find anyone who posts such photos to Twitter, Facebook or whatever, and then file civil damage claims.

[myroon5]

similar discussion: https://law.stackexchange.com/q/17769/legal-sell-scale-model...

[onemoresoop]

From that ruling to this case it extends that the local or tourist who took the photo would be the copyright holder which makes little sense.

[elicksaur]

If I lend you my camera to take pictures you choose, do I hold the copyright because I own the camera?

(No)

[Dylan16807]

"you choose" is a pretty important factor in this.

[californical]

Do “you choose” to angle the phone slightly up 5 degrees to capture a bit of the sky? Or do “you choose” the moment to take the photo when the timing is right? There is always some creative decision involved by the person who presses the shutter

[sejje]

What if I ask a stranger to take my photo, and it turns out he's Ansel Adams?

He's going to make some decisions about the framing etc, as one of the best photographers of all time.

[johnisgood]

So if I ask someone to take a photo, but I tell them "tilt the camera", I am the copyright holder, but if they do so without me "prompting" them, then I no longer am?

Am I understanding you correctly?

[Aloisius]

It makes perfect sense. The photograph is the photographer's creative expression. This is how copyright has always worked.

[davely]

To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression.

I wonder about something like this[0]. So much awesome engineering went into it. And the guy is clearly an artist and considers himself an artist[1]. As it is his own tool, are the random splatters it generates not copyrightable?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XyE41_ANrc

[1] https://engineezy.com/pages/about

[stonemetal12]

>To be fair, a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression.

Depending on if the prompt met other guidelines for copyright, it would be pretty uncontroversial to say you own the copyright on the prompt.

Copyright on the picture, is about as assignable as if you invited ten painters over to your house and read the prompt as spoken word poetry, then received one painting at random. The fact that your prompt won't reliably produce the same picture suggests that you are not in control of the artistic choices made, and therefore have no claim to the copyright.

[blacksqr]

>a prompt fed into a generative tool _could_ be considered an artist's creative expression.

Then it's the prompt that is copyrighted, not the end result.

US copyright law specifically states that only works fixed into existence by a human author can be copyrighted, and specifically excludes processes or procedures by which a work might ultimately come to be fixed.

[johnisgood]

In terms of AI, then it should be clear that the prompts (that AI used to generate my work) are my creative expressions. Sure, the AI may alter it in some unknown ways, but does this make it any less so my creative expression?

[Suppafly]

>Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location?

Wouldn't that be a 'work for hire' situation?

[kazinator]

Generally, whoever has more money for better lawyers, and/or is more intimidating or threatening.

[echelon]

Take out the second person and imagine if you set the camera to a timer.

Perhaps we record the path of the sun every day for a year to create an analemma. That's something artistic that should absolutely qualify for copyright.

Who owns the copyright then? Nobody? Because if so, that feels like bullshit. Like we're making up the rules completely arbitrarily with no logic at all.

At some level in many electronic systems there is some kind of autonomous human out of the loop subsystem. It'd be easy to target almost any of these and say a machine is responsible for making the content. No human is making quaternion calculations by hand, for instance.

If a human put in work, regardless of any automations, a human deserves the copyright. Either that, or nobody deserves copyright.

[dcow]

I believe the correct answer is “nobody deserves the copyright”. It’s a big fat myth that creatives would starve if copyright disappeared tomorrow. Think of all the countless hours society has wasted arguing about who owns creative expression. If we assign it to the public, we can move on and find better ways to keep creatives housed and fed.

[iamacyborg]

Creatives absolutely would suffer if they lost copyright protection.

[dcow]

No they really wouldn't. Companies and fans would commission art. We pay our damn food service staff on “would you like to pay a little extra today” tips method. Don’t tell me, especially with zero justification, that creatives depend on the need to control who copies our society’s ultimately culture. There are absolutely other ways and we’re too scared to try them.

[iamacyborg]

> Companies and fans would commission art.

Why would they when they’d have every right to take it for free?

Creative endeavours would be absolutely stillborn if only people wealthy enough to practice their craft could pursue the thing

[I-M-S]

The person you're replying to explicitly stated that a different way to compensate creatives for their talents should be put in place in case copyright is eliminated.

[Goronmon]

"Just do something different that works better." is hardly an explicit statement.

[Ray20]

Will there be any downsides?

[shagie]

Every bit of open source is founded on the license enforced by copyright and the ability for the creator to authorize the creation and distribution of derivative works.

Without it, anything that is published could be taken (once the copyright has expired), repackaged in some user inaccessible way and resold.

It is copyright that enforces the license of GPL. Without copyright, no license on creative work has any teeth.

[chii]

> Who owns the copyright when you ask someone to take a photo of you using your phone in a tourist location?

because you asked and they complied, there's a work contract between said photo-button presser and you. The implicit agreement is that you own the copyright to the photo, and the consideration paid is a word of thanks from you.

Now on the other hand...if you dropped your phone, and a stranger with no prior interaction picked it up, and pressed the button, then you can argue that they own the copyright.

[fnord123]

> Now on the other hand...if you dropped your phone, and a stranger with no prior interaction picked it up, and pressed the button, then you can argue that they own the copyright.

If they've performed an Unauthorized Access to a Computer System then they may want to drop any copyright claim.

[johnisgood]

Precisely.

[dragonwriter]

> because you asked and they complied, there's a work contract between said photo-button presser and you.

That's not how contract law works.

> The implicit agreement is that you own the copyright to the photo, and the consideration paid is a word of thanks from you.

Even if there was an otherwise valid contract, with this as an implicit term, you can't transfer copyright ownership from the actual author by implicit agreement: "A transfer of copyright ownership, other than by operation of law, is not valid unless an instrument of conveyance, or a note or memorandum of the transfer, is in writing and signed by the owner of the rights conveyed or such owner’s duly authorized agent." (17 USC Sec. 204)

[thaumasiotes]

> because you asked and they complied, there's a work contract between said photo-button presser and you

No, this can't happen, because there is no consideration.

> and the consideration paid is a word of thanks from you

Nope. You can call it consideration, but that won't make it consideration.

[chii]

consideration doesnt have to be money.

[thaumasiotes]

No, but it does have to exist. A private word of thanks isn't enough to even rise to that level.

[saelthavron]

> The AI thing is no different. If I ask my human friend, "please paint a picture using your vast knowledge and experience", then my friend gets the copyright. Replace friend with AI; there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright. It doesn't default to me just because I asked for it.

Why should an "AI" be considered a who rather than just another tool? To me, current "AI" are image manipulation program and camera replacements instead of people replacement.

[dylan604]

People do not say that Adobe owns copyright when someone uses their tool to create an image. However, I could see some weasel words being added to EULAs especially regarding all of the new "AI" tools being shoe horned into the apps. They've already added weasel words to their cloud storage for training purposes. After all, a lawyer is going to lawyer.

[slavik81]

It's not that the AI is considered a person. It's that your inputs were the same in both cases, and it's your creative input that justifies the copyright.

If your creative input was insufficient to justify granting you copyrights in one case, they would also be insufficient in the other case, as the inputs were identical in both cases.

[soerxpso]

In the case mentioned above where someone just spins around in their chair and takes a random photo on their phone (which they would then own the rights to), did that person really do any 'creative input'? All they did was press a button on a tool, with no further thought. That actually seems like less creative input than when I type a prompt into a tool and hit 'generate'. Why are cameras, image editors, etc, tools in a way that stable diffusion is not?

[Aloisius]

If you can show that no human creative expression was involved in composition, timing, etc, then no, it's not copyrightable.

There's a very good argument for security camera footage not being copyrightable for that very reason. There just hasn't been any case law yet to test it.

[acchow]

> Replace the monkey with a 2nd human, and it's obvious that "the guy" does not earn the copyright, it goes to the person who took the photo. If there was no person, then there is no copyright.

If I set up an entire scene with props and artwork for a photoshoot with a model, but I would like to actually be the model so I ask a friend to go behind the tripod and tap the shutter, the friend holds the copyright?

[majormajor]

You would make a contract with a copyright assignment.

The monkey situation is kinda screwy of course because ... a contract with a monkey?

"No copyright" as a result in the monkey case seems like a technically legally correct but sad outcome.

For AI tools it's likely currently technically correct as well, but the law probably needs some updating.

[dylan604]

well, you use a remote shutter release or a timer, and remove all ambiguity by removing the friend.

there's a scene in one of those Matthew McConaughey romcoms where he plays a photog. The crew has a scene completely setup up and ready to go so that he just walks in, hits the shutter release one time, and then walks away with little care as job is done. He's now credited for that photo, yet did the least effort possible. (that scene isn't too far off while only slightly hyperbolic)

[Tadpole9181]

Then a machine took the photo and it can't be copyrighted, apparently. These rules are totally arbitrary.

[I-M-S]

All rules are totally arbitrary and commanded by those holding the power to their benefit.

[sejje]

The machine took the photo either way, in fact. Whether you press the instant shutter button, or delayed one. And the film is what responds to the scene.

It seems almost directly analogous to asking the AI for an image that you imagine.

[pests]

It depends.

Did they have any creative input before hitting the shutter? Did they tell you to move? Or adjust lighting? Did they choose the angle or framing?

These answers influence the answer to your question.

[DecentShoes]

If they did then the monkey wouldn't have been awarded copyright on that photo.

[pests]

The monkey wasn't awarded copyright on that photo. Neither was the man. Monkey's can't own copyright on anything.

[Tadpole9181]

You're missing the point of that comment.

[pests]

On a re-read yeah perhaps I did.

[ehnto]

It's clear "the guy" did the majority of the creative work, so whilst it's "not difficult to understand" the law, it is a nuanced situation. Pretending it is not because of the letter of the law is just sidestepping the conversation we are trying to have.

[tantalor]

This is a very good point.

For example, consider a photograph of a painting. The photographer owns the copyright to the photo, but the artist retains copyright over the painting contained within the photo, which is derivative of the original artwork.

It is less obvious that simply setting up a scene and camera where anybody (including a monkey) can use it meets that threshold for an original work. After all, the scene was outdoors and completely natural.

[NitpickLawyer]

> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright.

Wait, so if I have a script that generates some source-code autonomously (based on whatever trigger I setup say in a ci/cd pipeline) then that code is not copyrightable? What about macros? This seems silly to me.

[bb88]

I think this ruling is wrong.

It's not hard to imagine a compiler using AI to optimize byte code, and so now the binary it creates is no longer copyrightable?

Compilers and transpilers, even though someone else may have wrote them, the courts have held the the copyright of the output binary is whoever wrote the source code.

In that sense AI is nothing more than a English language to image compiler.

[Aloisius]

Compiled byte code is a derivative work of the original source code. Copyright extends to derivative works.

[bb88]

But if I copyright the prompt to the input of the AI, does that not also become a derivative work?

I do believe in the US (I could be wrong) that copyright does exist without registering it with the US government.

[sahila]

Wouldn't AI generated art be derivative work done by Google (or whoever) when creating their Gemini models? So then Google owns all gemini created ai artwork?

[Aloisius]

1. Model weights may not be copyrightable.

2. Copyright protects copying. Expressive elements from the original creative work (source code) exist in the byte code, thus it remains under the original copyright.

3. For a derivative work to be considered a newly copyrightable work (as opposed to a copy subject to the original's copyright), it must contain new substantive human creative expression (whether the original creator also has a copyright claim as well depends on degree of transformation).

[freejazz]

Typically you need the permission of a copyright owner to create derivatives of their work.

[freejazz]

You think this ruling on photography is wrong because of a strained comparison to AI use in a compiler? Take a step back and rethink your approach. The copyright office here is dealing with fundamental principles, not worrying about what the impacts will be to the use of compilers.

[tpm]

In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable, it's in public domain, as we were briefed by a lawyer recently. This is a huge issue if you are writing software for a customer and agree to transfer all rights to him (happens sometimes), because you don't own rights to AI-written code and so can't transfer that.

There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok.

[Karliss]

That doesn't seem right. While I agree that not being able to copyright AI generated commercial code is problematic and reason for avoiding it, the need to transfer all rights to customer doesn't seem like one of them.

Following your logic you couldn't use any third party library open source or not since you don't own copyrights to them either. Can't even use an existing compiler since parts of standard library will be embedded in it's output.

I assume what's actually intended in such cases is transferring all the rights necessary so that customer can afterwards do whatever they want with software without your permission, including making modifications, hiring someone else to further maintain it or even reselling it. It can still be a valid requirement not to depend on any commercial libraries which require temporary licensing or otherwise restrict customers ability to do what they want with combined software. Same applies for open source libraries with restrictive license (especially stuff like GPL).

When no one owns copyrights - everyone does. Both you and you custom have full rights to copy and distribute those parts of software as do everyone else, you just don't own exclusive rights (copyrights) to control whether and how anyone else can also copy those parts of software. Do you own copyright for number "10", does it mean you can't use it in your software.

The potentially problematic part is when you are trying to sell a commercial product and someone "pirates" it. If it's not copyrightable there is no piracy. In practice even largely AI generated software will contain some copyrightable parts, but the enforcement will probably still get a lot messier and no legal team wants that. In theory some could only copy the non-copyrightable parts and substitute the parts which weren't AI generated.

[tpm]

> When no one owns copyrights - everyone does. Both you and you custom have full rights to copy and distribute those parts of software as do everyone else, you just don't own exclusive rights (copyrights) to control whether and how anyone else can also copy those parts of software. Do you own copyright for number "10", does it mean you can't use it in your software.

Yes. It can be an issue depending of the wording of your agreement with the customer. For example, if 'you' agreed to develop a piece of software 'exclusively' for the customer, and then use AI to create substantial parts of the software, then neither it was 'you' who developed that, nor was it 'exclusively' for the customer as you can't grant exclusivity.

[DougBTX]

> For example, if 'you' agreed to develop a piece of software 'exclusively' for the customer, and then use AI to create substantial parts of the software, then neither it was 'you' who developed that, nor was it 'exclusively' for the customer

On the other hand, if ‘you’ had taken no action at all, then there would be no software at all. The actions by ‘you’ are necessary for the software to exist, so the argument must be about whether those actions count as development or not. Is the definition of development written down anywhere?

[tpm]

> Is the definition of development written down anywhere?

I think it is, but I'm not a German lawyer, so I'll just link what I did in another comment - it revolves around the question who is the Geistiger Schöpfer (lit. spiritual creator) https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135

[freejazz]

>The actions by ‘you’ are necessary for the software to exist, so the argument must be about whether those actions count as development or not.

Definition? Yes, but it's required over a hundred years of jurisprudence to apply it to different scenarios, in the US at least. It's amusing that you think the definition would clear things up.

[buzer]

> In Germany at least, code written by AI is not copyrightable

> There are nuances, so if you create a macro and then that macro writes something but it is completely determined by you then it should be ok.

How far does that extend? Like would IntelliSense cause your code to not be copyrightable? It's not that different from AI autocomplete on principal level. It shows you some options, but you make the final decision what to use.

And what about binaries? These days there are not many people who could tell the exact binary that is produced by certain source code.

[tpm]

IANAL, but the distinction is whether you are using the tool as a tool, in which case the code is still your creation, vs. the tool is the creator - and in this case I have to refer to a German definition as it was given to me - Geistiger Schöpfer (lit. spiritual creator), here [0] they define it as "An agent who is responsible for creating a work". Clearly this is something that would have to be decided by courts in some cases.

[0] https://sta.dnb.de/doc/RDA-E-W135

[donatj]

Who owns the copyright to the footage of a motion triggered security camera? The person breaking in?

Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain?

It seems pretty reasonable that copyright should lay with the entity that had the actual intention on creating a work. Not whatever force happened to trigger it.

[Suppafly]

>Is all motion triggered trail cam footage public domain?

i think a lot of us would be ok with that, so that's not the showstopper argument you might this it is.

[DecentShoes]

Why is the person who "took the photo" the thing that pressed the button and not the person who did 99% of the work?

[manwe150]

I think my understand is that because the work itself is already covered by different laws (eg trespassing), you had the opportunity to make a verbal contract with the person who took the photo. And the same in reverse: because they used your camera, they implicitly agreed for you to have the right to that copy of their work. If they didn’t get the copyright automatically, then they wouldn’t be able to assign it to you as a condition of being present, leading to other potential legal complications where works could be created but where nobody holds the right to assign them to someone else, since nobody was 100% responsible for the creativity that generated it

[heywoods]

Assuming I read this right, and that’s a big assumption, do I have this.. right? The guy in my hypothetical below knows the copyright law and is making a legal request.

guy is walking by family and is asked to take their photo

guy takes photo

same guy asks for a copy of the family photo

awkwardness intensifies

————-

I really liked what you wrote and appreciate your knowledge you brought to the thread, but what I really loved about reading your comment was the deeper and deeper you took us into the weeds of law the stranger and further divorced from reality it feels. Maybe that’s just me?

[manwe150]

I think that depends what you mean by legal request. The guy is not making a request of the legal system, so no, it is not specifically a legal request in that sense. However, if someone did make a legal request later, the testimony of this exchange might be introduced as evidence that they had a entered into a contractual agreement verbally to give the guy a right to have a copy of the photo for his private use. (Remember that the family also have a legal right to their own likeness, though it is a privacy law, not copyright, so there are multiple dimensions here as to who has the initial rights in the interaction). Replace "family" with "celebrity" and I think you'd have a plausible scenario that might end up in court on occasion.

[freejazz]

It isn't necessarily one or the other, it depends on numerous factors. Works can be made for hire as one example. Annie Liebowitz still is the author of a photograph even if she has her assistant pull the shutter. You might even be surprised to realize that is an incredibly common occurrence in professional studio photography. Everyone in this thread is searching for one really quick answer to apply to all situations and it does not work that way. The courts look at a number of factors to make these determinations.

[bagels]

If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

[JamesLeonis]

The artist still owns the copyright. Payment by itself does not transfer copyright. To do that the artist needs to explicitly sign away those rights. This happens in employment all the time. Part of the paperwork you sign is about transferring over the copyrights from yourself to the company.

I highly recommend you check your own paperwork to see exactly how much this covers, since some states allow contracts that cover everything you make at any time. California has a specific law that limits these contracts to only works done on company equipment and on company time. Your state might be different.

[pas]

doesn't need to explicitly, it's enough to have the understanding that it's a "work for hire" situation (at least in the US)

of course just giving someone money is not sufficient to establish this, but telling someone that "I want to hire you to make a photo for me (of me)" and they acknowledge, then that is probably enough.

[JamesLeonis]

This is not correct.

The copyright office itself doesn't recognize any transfer of works-for-hire [0] unless there's (#3) a written document of the transfer, (#4) signed by the recipient, (#5) signed by the copyright holder, and finally (#6) the work was made expressly as work-for-hire. Every employment, contractor, and freelancer contract is written with all of these questions accounted for.

Even wedding photographers keep the copyright of the photos they take of your wedding too for this very reason, unless explicitly contracted to transfer those rights.

[0]: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ30.pdf, page 5

[Karliss]

One more example demonstrating the opposite - in EU the copyright law explicitly states that transferable copyrights for software get automatically transferred from employees to the company. Which suggests that for other types of copyrightable works and author/customer relationships it doesn't happen automatically.

[CBarkleyU]

Do you happen to have more reading material on said law?

In Germany, you can't even transfer copyright. So yeah, anything you create that reaches the threshold of having a copyright, you own the copyright. Even as an employee.

At the same time, you might not own the usage rights (Nutzungsrechte/Verwertungsrechte).

[Karliss]

We might have a bit of miscommunication of what exactly is referred as "copyright", "transferring" and the way its translated in various languages. Wikipedia/Google translate suggests to me that generic name for copyright in German is "Urheberrecht" derived from author not copying, is that the problem?

By "copyrights" I am referring to all rights regulated by various copyright related laws not a specific subset of rights, including both the economic rights (all the useful stuff related to copying, redistributing, selling) and author's moral rights (can't be transferred, partially defined by national laws, stuff related to being author, right to be recognized as author and few other minor things).

Was able to find the European directive which has the point corresponding to what I was thinking about. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... Article 3, point 2 "Where a computer program is created by an employee in the execution of his duties or following the instructions given by his employer, the employer exclusively shall be entitled to exercise all economic rights in the program so created, unless otherwise provided by contract.".

Do you consider usage rights as something which isn't part of copyright? Or do you not consider act as result of which you stop owning "usage rights" but someone else gets them "transferring".

From what I understand, technically non of the European directives are laws, but each member country is supposed to make laws based on the directives.

[anon743448]

As sibling comment said, this is not correct.

In wedding and portrait photography, many clients think that they own copyrights to the photos but they don’t and sometimes get in trouble for violating photographers’ copyrights.

[autoexec]

> If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

that depends on the terms of the deal. Some artists want to keep the copyright but will sell the work, while others are happy to sign their rights away for money.

> If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

Copyrights are for humans, so if you pay an AI, because the AI isn't a human, it never had a copyright to sell you. You paid for an image without a copyright.

[fnikacevic]

Copyrights are owned by businesses all the time.

[dragonwriter]

Copyrights are owned by corporations as a result of either:

(1) actual human authorship and original ownership, sold to a corporation, or

(2) actual human authorship as a work for hire on behalf of the corporation, which is a special case specifically laid out in copyright law which allows someone other than the person performing the actual act of authorship to be the original copyright owner.

[autoexec]

We pretend businesses are people all the time.

[dragonwriter]

Corporations are legal persons, that's the entire point of the form.

[dylan604]

It can never be the AI. The AI is NOT a person. Why are we belaboring this?

[johnnyanmac]

Many vested interests really want to be artists without putting in the work into the craft required to be one.

Of course, other interests simply want to cut out artists entirely while claiming their creations totally aren't a result of stealing Petabytes of existing artistity.

[naasking]

AI agents will exist some day, and almost certainly some will be granted personhood status.

[Timwi]

“Some day”, sure, but as we know the granting of personhood status doesn't formally happen until 2365, when Phillipa Louvois rules in the Brian Maddox case. And despite the success of that ruling, it still doesn't fully apply to all AI agents (e.g. the EMH Mk 1).

[aenvoker]

> If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

Initially, the someone owns the copyright. Then they agree to give it to you.

> If you pay for an AI to paint a picture according to your specifications?

No one. It's public domain. As if it was painted by the wind.

[Lerc]

>If you pay someone to paint a picture, who owns the copyright?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire

[smallnix]

You don't. You don't pay an AI. You pay a company owned by humans that offer an AI service.

[gdubs]

My initial response to this was to think of all the artists who don't actually create their own work. Lots of contemporary artists have assistants that do the actual painting, sculpting, installation, etc. Even way back a lot of masters were credited for work that was done by apprentices.

But, then on the other hand I suppose that in the eyes of the law, a monkey can't legally sign a contract agreeing to pass ownership over to the person 'employing' them as an assistant.

It's a strange grey area though – Warhol's whole thing was how the factory made the art. People have been making generative art for decades before AI came along, and as far as I know – and I went to school for Art and studied Art History pretty extensively – people just said, "oh that's a cool way to call ownership and authenticity into question." But generally nobody doubted that like, Damien Hirst is the copyright holder of his works even if an assistant makes it – and even if they have no formal piece of paper that lays it all out.

[aithrowawaycomm]

The real issue is that the monkey (or Stable Diffusion) cannot be sued in civil court for copyright infringement, so they can't be granted copyrights in the first place: it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility.

Note that a human-made curation of AI or animal art is protected by copyright (e.g. you can copyright an AI art coffee table book). The original case involved an AI-generated graphic novel: the author could claim copyright for the whole book but not the individual panels.

[Lerc]

>it makes no sense to have one-way streets of legal responsibility.

That seems to be a very flawed argument.

I am perfectly fine with parents having a legal responsibility to take care of their children without the children owing any legal obligation to their parents.

Imagine being required by law to act in the interests of your financial adviser. It would almost be codifying the reality.

[1718627440]

They do a have a legal obligation though. Otherwise chores would be unpaid child labor.

[mistrial9]

> Lots of contemporary artists have assistants that do the actual painting, sculpting, installation, etc.

this is outlandish bullshit

[627467]

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-damien-hirst-is-controve...

> There are nearly 1,400 of Damien Hirst's "spot" paintings in existence.

> The artist has only painted around 25 of them himself.

[iamacyborg]

You might be shocked to discover that this has been a thing for hundreds of years.

[samlinnfer]

All the classic masters have workshops, where they have students or assistants that complete a rough cut of their work and they finish it.

[cma]

Is this scenario correct:

If you stick a 360 camera on the outside of someone's car and hit record, and they drive around unaware (but with an earlier agreement that it is ok to mess with their property), you get the copyright. If you stick a 360 camera outside of someone's backpack and hit record and they walk around unaware they get the copyright to the footage as the cameraman.

Assume an earlier agreement that placing/activating video cameras like this at some future time would be ok but no agreement on who would be the author and no copyright transfer agreements.

[satvikpendem]

> you get the copyright

Do you, in the first scenario? I'm still not sure that you would.

[ricree]

I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.

[pas]

it depends on the courts. the law is simply complex and still vague.

[concordDance]

In cases like this it's best to ask why we have copyright law in the first place. Do we feel the supply of such photos is naturally lower then we'd like to such an extent that we'd grant a legally enforced monopoly on its distribution?

[SoftTalker]

My employer asserts copyright over everything I produce. Yet I'm the one writing the code.

[andirk]

Yup. Because we agreed to that up front to "transfer ownership" or some jargon. Otherwise yes it is yours.

[cgriswald]

My understanding is that work done for an employer as part of your normal job duties is considered work for hire and your employer owns it.

Employers might also have you sign a contract to avoid legal questions about whether part of your work was in the scope of those duties.

[Gloomily3819]

If I paint a digital painting, and then ask my friend to click the "save as" button, does he own the copyright? Or even better, what if the painting is auto-saved by the software?

[Sharlin]

Yes it is in fact difficult and nuanced. The act of pressing the shutter button does not create copyright. The creative work done to make the photograph possible does.

[SJC_Hacker]

Ah, I see, so all those Hollywood camera operators own the copyright for all the footage they took for studios.

Multi-trillion dollar class action lawsuit here we come...

[andrewxdiamond]

Well no, because they are employees / contractors of the film studio, who presumably claim all copyright of what they captured.

However, the camera operators likely do own the pictures they take with their own cameras on-set, provided the contract they are working under allows for such ownership

[creer]

Perhaps the people who do photography and filming for a business have thought of it. So, yes, but there are of course multiple ways to work with a team (or in a team of two - not to be the one pressing the shutter and still being the one owning the copyright.)

[frankus]

In that case there's going to be a pre-existing work-for-hire agreement where the camera operator assigns copyright to the studio.

[Spooky23]

Hollywood camera operators are in a union with a contract. They are working for hire, and have no claim beyond their contract.

[mistrial9]

no, because Hollywood in 100 years has already evolved through every possible lying weasel lawsuit you or others here could imagine.. and yet humans continue to dream, write, paint and act. Single-line gotcha's are not new, hold no weight, produce very little that is constructive IMHO

[NewJazz]

You can't just replace monkeys with humans when the legal system doesn't treat them as the same class of organism.

[johnisgood]

But what if I made "that guy" to take the photo, just like I "made" (prompted) AI?

[itronitron]

What happens if you ask "the guy" to paint a picture of mickey mouse?

[colordrops]

There was no person that took the photo with a canon digital SLR. It was a bunch of machinery and microchips and a sensor.

[_AzMoo]

And yet my company owns the copyright on all of the content I produce?

[johnnyanmac]

Based on the contract you signed, yes. Though there still are stipulations for you as a designer. You can't design Mickey Mouse and then Disney says "you're not allowed to say you designed Mickey Mouse". Accreditation of the individuals is the very mimunum of protections you have as an artist who surrenders their copyright.

[dragonwriter]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405240

[wqaatwt]

> there is no person to assign the copyright, so there is no copyright

Surely then same would apply to any photos edited with any of the fancy filters in Photoshop? Or any other software for that matter…

> just because I asked for it.

It often does (even in the example you have suggested previously). It’s just that you can’t legally hire a monkey to press the trigger unlike a human (even through its effectively the same thing)