[reactordev]

Right. It’s the right decision (for now) that only humans hold copyright.

There’s a whole other mess of fair rights and attribution but in this case, the ruling actually makes the path clearer for an author of such a piece to get it copyrighted. Ironic. But that’s how case law is supposed to be.

When I started my career it was in graphic design in the late 90s and photoshop was all the rage. There was a similar discussion as you pointed out around copyright and photo-manipulation technique. Who owns the photo? Who owns the piece? Then concept arts “kit bash” with reference photos to paint quickly… again who owns the refs? Who owns the piece? Deviantart had to struggle to figure out how to respect both.

I didn’t have to read too far to understand exactly where the court was going with this and where he could have just turned around with another filing and been gold.