
Shenzhen court rules AI-written article has copyright - blacktulip
https://www.ecns.cn/news/2020-01-09/detail-ifzsqcrm6562963.shtml
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ineedasername
I didn't see anything that specified who _owns_ the copyright. Tencent, I
presume?

It also seems like a self-evident ruling. I don't see much difference, except
a matter of degree, between computer-generated prose in this case, and
something like LaTex. Page composition (graphic design) is generally covered
by copyright [0]. In fact just about every creative content has some form of
technological intermediary. An "AI" algorithm, or even something more basic,
performs touch-up work on a photo. The photographer didn't do it, they just
hit the button, just like whoever setup the system for Tencent. So I just
don't see how courts could hold that copyright wouldn't apply in a case like
this when so much content depends on computational generation of some sort.

[0] [https://www.commarts.com/columns/is-it-true-that-
copyright-d...](https://www.commarts.com/columns/is-it-true-that-copyright-
doesn-t-protect-graphic-design)

~~~
EGreg
The issue is that the AI can generate all viable versions of the article by
front-running someone else’s style.

Our society is built on the assumption that attackers are inefficient or dumb.

~~~
ineedasername
If the AI is generating content using a corpus which 1) has copyright attached
(say Matt Levine's content for Bloomberg) and 2) isn't owned by the
person/corporation that developed the AI, then you're absolutely right and
waters are muddied. An argument could be made that the end-product is
transformative enough to be its own things, eligible for copyright, but use
and, presumably, copying of the original content into a corpus would seem a
violation of that copyright.

On the other hand, if Tencent owned the corpus, that isn't really an issue.
Similarly, there have been automated finance articles for more than a decade
using knowledge extraction algorithms against things like earnings reports,
and copyright of those reports has not been an issue. Admittedly, that may
only be because those releasing the reports do so in part to get the word out,
and so they _want_ reporting to be done on them. Even if they had a copyright
claim that it wasn't fair use, they may not have the incentive to enforce it.

Regardless, this all opens up some fascinating discussions of the agency of
AI, what constitutes true AI vs. a simple program or algorithm, assignment of
who actually would own the copyrights of computer generated content... I think
it's going to take some time for the law to catch up to technology on these
topics.

~~~
EGreg
Copyright’s stated purpose was to promote the Progress of useful arts and
science. That’s why the monopoly was secured to the authors.

Bots don’t care about those incentives. Once built, that’s all they do.

~~~
yorwba
Yes, but the people writing and running the bots still care about those
incentives. So it makes sense that they should own the copyright to the
articles they generate with their bot.

~~~
EGreg
I disagree — because the goal was to promote a laborious activity. Once we
reach a whole new level, we no longer need to give the same incentives. It’s
clear that people would be doing this even without copyright.

~~~
ineedasername
Now THAT is the first reasonable argument I've heard _against_ copyright for
such things. Once it becomes easy, trivial, and for most purposes "free" to
hit button and make a best-selling novel, a temporary monopoly on that work
wouldn't seem to benefit the goal of incentivising future work. Of course, the
person/people that _built_ the system may still need some type of temporary
monopoly to incentivize refinements, increased quality, genre variation, etc.,
maybe even the ability to tailor made a novel to a specific individual's
tastes for them alone... but I'm not sure "copyright" would then be the best
tool for this. I think there would need to be something new and, given that I
think copyright terms are already extremely too long, much shorter than
traditional copyright.

Thanks for such an insightful idea! I'm not 100% sure which side I come down
on, but it's very thought provoking, the sort of discussion that draws me in
to HN.

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gpm
Chinese court rules...

Do any of us have any clue how Chinese copyright law works? It's probably not
the same as American copyright law. What are the requirements set out by
Chinese law to be copyrightable?

~~~
tnzk
I don't know but since they seem to be a member of the Berne Convention, it
doesn't differ largely from of US?

~~~
gpm
The Berne Convention isn't that precise. For example, consider that
collections of information are copyrightable in most of Europe and not
copyrightable in the US.

~~~
Tomte
That's distinct from copyright, and even named a "sui generis right" (meaning
"of its own kind").

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michaelfeathers
The easiest way to escape AI hype-thinking is to replace "AI" with "computer
program" in your mind whenever you see "AI" in an article.

------
somerandomness
There are some subtleties. Models like GPT2 are trained using many copyrighted
documents whose authors could claim it is derivative of their work.

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dredmorbius
A few relevant points regarding copyright law.[1]

1\. Copyright is generally held in "works of authorship", which is to say,
_the work of an author._ Whether or not a computer program (AI or otherwise)
is an author is the first question in this case.[2]

2\. Copyright law provides protection against _unauthorised copying_ of a
work. _Independent creation is not a copyright violation_ , for all those
who've suggested composig all possible (or for the more efficiently-minded,
_probable_ ) works of a given length. If another party _independently creates
a similar work_ (in whole or part), there is no copyright violation.

3\. Copyright persists only in _expression_ and not in the _meaning_ or
_function_ of a work. This is in particular contrast to patent and trade
secrets law.

The Chinese ruling, as described, fails multiple tests and would not qualify
_under present general copyright law_. Though the possibility of the law
changing given changing uses and practices does exist. I don't expect in the
near term that this case will have much significance.

By way of highlighting the ... interesting dynamics ... posed by increasing
use of AI in creating content -- various systems creating de novo faces,
images, audio, or video, as well as text, as examples -- does give some pause.
What are the implications of creating such content via AI where the content
itself is entirely outside the scope of copyright law?

________________________________

Notes:

1\. US-centric, though generally applying to WIPO / Berne rules. Not legal
advice.

2\. 17 USC 102(a)
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102)

~~~
bmarkovic
WIPO / Berne rules are guidelines. Not even in the Western Europe which aims
for "feature parity" with US copyright laws are things the same (case in
point: treatment of copyright and patent ownership of things invented while
employed, yet not at work or in relation to work).

So they simply do not apply even broadly to a case that was processed in
China, especially not in the level of deep US-centric scrutiny you applied to
it.

That said, I don't see any of the "multiple test" this ruling fails. It has
simply posited that verbatim copying of the article published on one website
to another website without prior agreement is still copyright infringement,
regardless of the fact that the article itself was generated by software/AI.
Nothing more, nothing less.

I find it hard to imagine that a court in any other country would rule any
differently.

~~~
dredmorbius
Both Berne and WIPO have produced multiple _treaties_ , which go well beyond
the notion of "guidelines", and are ratified by signatories within their
respective national frameworks (e.g., ratified by the US Senate, as with the
Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988).

The actual legal code conforming to treaty requirements is a matter for
countries to write and adopt, but generally that's occurred.

So, disagreement in part with your categorisation of WIPO/Berne as
"guidelines", which I feel grossly understates their status.

China _is_ a member of WIPO:
[https://www.wipo.int/members/en/](https://www.wipo.int/members/en/)

The Berne Convention of 1971 (I'm fairly certain this is supersceded in at
least part) does not appear to include authorship or originality in its
properties of covered works:

 _The expression "literary and artistic works" shall include every production
in the literary, scientific and artistic domain..._

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/2.html](https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/2.html)

Though article 3 provides that protections apply to "authors":

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/3.html](https://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/3.html)

------
jimnotgym
Shouldn't the copyright therefore belong to the robot? The company is
therefore not party to the ip infringement case.

Now as an employee my ip belongs to my employer, but I am paid for this.

A robot couldn't enter into a contract without 1) being paid (consideration)
or 2) the intention to create a contract. Therefore if robots are to assign
copyright they are going to need training about contracts.

~~~
jcranmer
I don't know about Chinese law, but the US concept is "work made for hire".
This is satisfied by one of two alternatives, the first being "a work prepared
by an employee within the scope of his or her employment." If you believe that
an AI has sufficient personhood to be capable of authorship, then it is not
unreasonable to presume that it is being employed by whomever is running it.

In the US, there are three factors that govern whether or not someone is an
employee. These are:

> Control by the employer over the work. For example, the employer determines
> how the work is done, has the work done at the employer’s location, and
> provides equipment or other means to create the work.

> Control by employer over the employee. For example, the employer controls
> the employee’s schedule in creating the work, has the right to have the
> employee perform other assignments, determines the method of payment, or has
> the right to hire the employee’s assistants.

> Status and conduct of employer. For example, the employer is in business to
> produce such works, provides the employee with benefits, or withholds tax
> from the employee’s payment.

Looking at those factors, it is really hard to argue that an AI is not an
employee, as far as US law is concerned.

~~~
AmericanChopper
This line of reasoning just seems weird an unnecessary to me.

An AI is just a computer program. It’s an intangible asset. Any IP it
generates was the work of the AI programmer, or perhaps also the operator who
provides it with input and instructions on how to process it.

~~~
bonzini
We don't generally consider compiler output to be under the copyright of the
author of the compiler.

~~~
yorwba
GCC has a license exception specifically to allow compiling programs with it
without "infecting" the resulting output with the compiler's GPL.
[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-
exception-3.1-faq.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-
exception-3.1-faq.html)

~~~
jcranmer
That's more to deal with the fact that compilers insert calls to various
support routines to implement certain functionality--for example, there are
division routines to support architectures without a division operator.

It's not currently understood that the result of compiling code implies a
claim to copyright or derivative works of any resulting compiler output, which
is GP's point.

Actually, there's an argument that, even if GCC and its support libraries did
not have the compiler exception clause, then there still would be no GPL
"infection" of compiled code. License to use a software program implicitly
carries with it a right to make any necessary copies that are functionally
required, even if the copies would otherwise be infringing. So the compiler
inserting copies of itself into your program would enable you to distribute
those copies with your program without any further agreement (i.e., licenses)
required, so long as you had legitimate license to the compiler itself.

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joshspankit
Oh god.

12 trillion dollars to the first person who creates an AI that creates every
permutation of basic writing.

Can we please just throw out all copyright/patent laws and start from scratch
with _reasonable_ terms? (like 5 years, or _maaaaybe_ life of the creator _if_
they keep filing paperwork to confirm they want it.)

~~~
3pt14159
Eh. That's essentially just rand() with a fat disk. The real task is choosing
which permutations to select and publish.

I could easily have a websites where any URL you went to was a valid article.
For example, example.com/my-article-text-is-here would map to "my article text
is here" but the point of creation isn't when you randomly enter in the URL,
the point of creation is when some selection of tokens is chose for the actual
article, and realistically the combinatorial explosion of human language has
us covered.

~~~
joshspankit
You have a point. But with a “the right” AI (presuming humans can cause it to
be made), you would instead patent the essential building blocks. Like
patenting the arrangements of atoms that make up proteins instead of patenting
every single possible arrangement.

------
93po
Looking forward to the day AI is used to generate billions of books and then
compare them to every new release by a human. Then the patent/copyright trolls
come out and sue human authors for copyright infringement because their awful
AI book that is 50% gibberish has all the same elements and character names as
the human author's book

~~~
nablaoperator
Those billions of books probably violate the copyright of other books
themselves.

~~~
ouid
I don't think this is the caveat you think it is.

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micimize
Why wouldn't this be the case? In what sane legal system would one not own the
work they published just because it was generated in part or full by an AI? If
company B lifts company A's AI and starts generating articles with it, the
suit would then be about the code itself, just like with websites, video
games, etc.

~~~
rileymat2
[https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/copyright-
basics/](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/faqs/copyright-basics/)

"Finally, to receive copyright protection, a work must be the result of at
least some creative effort on the part of its author."

So the question is, who is the author and if it was machine generated, did it
take creativity? The algorithm took a lot of creativity, but did the output
that is being copyrighted? I mean I would come down on the side of yes, but it
makes for an interesting case.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> if it was machine generated, did it take creativity?... but did the output
that is being copyrighted?_

In the US, this question has been settled since at least the 1990s (e.g., in
the context of videogames). The output of algorithms is, in general,
copyrightable, although there are some rather common-sense exceptions.

The question isn't whether you can copyright the output of an algorithm. The
more salient question, in my mind, is whether the output of ML algorithms
belongs to the owner's algorithm or to the owner of the training set.

~~~
derefr
> It's just that the owner of the training set -- not the owner of the
> algorithm -- is the one with the valid claim to copyright.

Not all that different from a pop song made by editing together licensed
samples, no?

In that case, the song is certainly a _derivative work_ of the samples, and so
the producer of the song needs to get derivative-works-allowed licensing from
the samples’ authors (which is what you must necessarily get when buying
samples from a sample library, for them to be of any use at all.) The produced
song is then its own work with its own copyright. Sometimes, larger samples
(like reused vocal performances) require payment in, essentially, “equity”—a
percentage of the song’s royalties are transferred as royalties to the sample.
But in most cases, the sample is purchased for a flat fee, and there is no
ongoing relationship between the revenue of the song and the revenue of the
sample.

Is anything different if you replace “song” with “news article” and “samples”
with “training set”?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Copyright isn't a natural right, and giving rights to computational algorithms
isn't a normal legal act - how does it benefit society to do that? Is the deal
good for the populous as a whole?

We can have the output for the cost of the energy, or we can perpetually (AIs
never die!) pay tax to a wealthy capitalist and have the same output; why is
the latter better?

------
flatfilefan
That’s your definite Turing test. Stamped, sealed, delivered.

~~~
schoen
The Turing test as defined by Turing is interactive and conversational, not
about an AI producing a particular artifact.

~~~
kerkeslager
The original Turing test had the AI attempting to imitate a _woman_ , which is
not only demonstrates conversational ability, but an understanding of complex
ideas like gender.

Incidentally, I think this can actually be a very low standard, depending on
context. We tend to think of the Turing test as being performed by academics,
in a lab, where everyone is Very Serious. But if you put real humans on i.e.
Omegle (with no video), they typically type with poor grammar and say "random"
sounding things that quite plausibly could be said by an AI. Additionally, the
preponderance of spam scammers demonstrates that many people are quite
gullible, unable to differentiate between a Nigerian scammer and a legitimate
representative of their bank. Given this, I think we already passed the Turing
test, not by bringing AI up to the level of humans, but by bringing humans
down to the level of AI.

~~~
HeWhoLurksLate
That's a fairly depressing way of looking at it.
[https://xkcd.com/1414](https://xkcd.com/1414)

~~~
kerkeslager
That XKCD comic makes a good point: grammar ability is a poor measure of
intelligence. Perhaps I was wrong to think of it as "bringing humans down".

~~~
umanwizard
Grammar ability is a fine measure of intelligence.

Adherence to arbitrary conventions in situations where they’re unnecessary is,
on the other hand, a poor measure of grammar ability.

Do you _really_ believe that most people who write “u” in an SMS are unaware
that it’s written “you” according to formal conventions?

------
jurschreuder
Could you not just brute force write any article possible and own the
copyright on any possible article ever written?

Just publish every letter combination possible somewhere.

~~~
inimino
1\. How much storage would that take? 2\. Anytime you think you've found a
clever "gotcha" that nullifies an entire area of legal doctrine, smack
yourself in the face and then repeat "the laws are made and interpreted by
people, not machines" one hundred times.

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bhouston
If they own articles then they may own patents. I view some current
contradictions in what ai owns or not.

