[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.

[kadoban]

> Gotta be 1,000 words.

What? Why? There's poems and stories shorter than that that must be copyrightable.

[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

[SR2Z]

We've had removable lenses forever. Is it really an impossible engineering challenge to ship a phone with a low-profile swappable lens?

[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?

[aziaziazi]

What if Louis XVI ask Antoine Callet to use a lighter color for his skin? Does he own the Callet painting copyright?

You can prompt whatever you want but won’t own the copyright. Photographer will choose himself if he follow or not your "prompt", what side and angle he tilt, the zoom, when to press the shutter…

[freejazz]

There's plenty of jurisprudence on these issues for posters here to interact with, but in classic HN style, they will just keep pushing these arguments back and forth based on the headline for this one instance. People just want to play law, not actually interact with it.

[sejje]

No, because I was asking.

[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

[dcow]

They don’t have a right to extract art from artists… commission means pay for a piece up front, not after the fact. And on top of that you can only make digital copies cheaply.

Again they would not be “stillborn”. We’ve figured out crowdsourcing and popularity-based compensation (YT, patreon, etc.). You are just making statements without backing them up with readonable arguments.

[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.

[dcow]

We already have systems that work better. None of them depend on copyright. Crowdfunding [generally commissions], patreon-type platforms, sponsored content, live performances, etc etc etc.

[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.

[dcow]

The GPL is considered by its author to be a “hack” on the copyright system to perpetually enforce source availability. Most consider it unnecessarily restrictive and would prefer a world without it, Stallman included. But since Xerox used copyright to sue people trying to fix their own broken copiers, which they owned, here we are.

Point is, removing copyright also removes the need for the GPL in the first place. All knowledge should be public domain.

[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.