[HN Gopher] Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from ...
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Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging
reproduction fees
Author : edent
Score : 151 points
Date : 2023-12-30 17:58 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theartnewspaper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theartnewspaper.com)
| wmf wrote:
| (in the UK)
|
| The US has had similar precdent for a while.
| Animats wrote:
| This was settled years ago in the US by _Bridgeman vs Corel_
| (Corel could copy old photos for their library disc). Also see
| _Meshworks vs Toyota_ (3D scan of real car is not a new work). It
| 's all based on _Feist vs Rural Telephone_ (telephone directories
| not works of authorship). Museums have been whining about this
| for years, but not winning in court. Wikimedia puts up images
| under those rules, and no one has ever successfully sued
| Wikimedia over that, although there 's been some huffing and
| puffing.
|
| _Feist_ is why the US doesn 't have database copyright, and
| that's a Supreme Court decision based on the copyright/patent
| clause in the Constitution. It's a very strong holding, in that
| says Congress can't enact laws to make copyright cover things
| that don't have human authorship. "The standard of originality is
| low, but it does exist."
|
| Bridgeman Art Library (the company) has been arguing for years
| that UK law lets them own copyright of pictures of old masters.
| That's over.
|
| This has implications for large language models.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| I would think the transformativeness defense used by
| appropriation artists might be applicable to establish that a
| photo of an out-of-copyright image is an "original work of
| authorship." Cue Richard Prince to put it to the test...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| TFA explicitly addresses that was the question under
| consideration:
|
| > In his ruling (THJ v Sheridan, 2023), Lord Justice Arnold
| wrote that, for copyright to arise: "What is required is that
| the author was able to express their creative abilities in
| the production of the work by making free and creative
| choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal
| touch". Importantly, he went on: "This criterion is not
| satisfied where the content of the work is dictated by
| technical considerations, rules or other constraints which
| leave no room for creative freedom". In other words, if the
| aim of a museum photograph is to accurately reproduce a
| painting (which it must be), then it cannot acquire
| copyright.
|
| I.e. these museums were selling pictures of artworks that _by
| definition_ needed to adhere to a true reproduction of the
| original as closely as possible. It wasn 't a question of
| taking a picture of an out-of-copyright painting and applying
| some level of skill/artistic license to transform the
| original in some way.
| knome wrote:
| It is my understanding that in collage works and the like,
| the artist has copyright over their creative inputs to the
| resulting piece, but does not gain any rights over the bits
| they cobbled the final together from. If I understand it
| correctly, even if the museum created a fancy collage for the
| side of the building, yes they would own that arrangement,
| but not any of the paintings which went into it. They still
| couldn't stop you from sharing images of the original works
| therein.
| buccal wrote:
| If anyone is interested in copyright law I would recommend a
| free CopyrightX course from Harvard (
| https://cyber.harvard.edu/teaching/copyrightx ). During the
| course you gain insight into the legislative side of
| copyright matters.
| clausecker wrote:
| Do you know if this ruling applies to word lists of the English
| language such as those used in tournament Scrabble?
| bee_rider wrote:
| As loathe as I am to say anything nice about our copyright
| system or scrabble (a territory capturing game without the
| most obscure and silly rules for capturing space), it does
| seem like the sort of thing that ought to be covered.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I believe it was settled long ago that mere lists (e.g.,
| telephone directories) with no creative content are not
| copyrightable in the United States. I'm not familiar with the
| Scrabble word lists, but if that's all they are I'd guess
| they'd fall under that ruling.
|
| Dictionaries, on the other hand, are copyrightable because
| there's creative work involved in writing the definitions.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I feel like there would be a case to answer if it went to
| court in the UK, Scrabble words are not an entirely
| arbitrary selection, nor are they all words in [most]
| regular dictionaries AFAICT. The list has been curated in
| order to provide a specific set of rules for a game: there
| seems to be a creative act of compilation. To say it
| another way; it's a factual presentation - but the fact (of
| which words are in the list) was created for the game.
|
| This makes it unlike an almanac, say, where the list is
| dictated by past events.
|
| It's perhaps similar to the Guinness Book of Records, where
| the choice of records to present is creative (along with
| the usual creative aspects of a book, composition of pages,
| choice of accompanying images, etc.).
|
| One consideration a court might take is that the list
| cannot be generated without copying from the established
| Scrabble Dictionary because one otherwise would not know
| whether to include or exclude any particular word. A list
| of 'all existing English words of 1-3 letters', say, would
| be fine though.
| hedora wrote:
| I hope this is true for videos as well, in practice.
|
| I'm worried the anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA (in the
| US) or restoring / colorizing / denoising / modifying the
| original will be used as a loophole.
|
| For instance, Disney+ likes to censor and otherwise mutilate
| content. If the rip comes from them, will they successfully argue
| copyright infringement on old works?
| anticensor wrote:
| > I hope this is true for videos as well, in practice.
|
| Videos and music is different from photos because members of
| production team get individual copyrights.
| dllthomas wrote:
| But I think the question is whether you can acquire new
| copyright to a reproduction of the film after those original
| copyrights have expired.
| toast0 wrote:
| colorizing seems like real creative work (if done by humans),
| and restoring can be too. Denoising, IMHO, not so much, and
| just cutting wouldn't be either.
| mod50ack wrote:
| Manual coloring is creative. "Restoring" is a bit of an
| ambiguous term, but generally, it would not be original
| expression either. Remember, the test for originality has
| nothing to do with effort. Restoring something to its
| original state is not new creative expression, but presenting
| the existing creative expression.
| justinclift wrote:
| From rough memory the Louvre tries that "we took a photo of it,
| so its a new copyright" bullshit with the Mona Lisa.
|
| Wonder if a French court will clarify the matter at some point,
| like this UK court did?
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Do we have a shortage of free, science quality photographic
| depictions of the Mona Lisa?
| hn_acker wrote:
| I hope not, but the principle of the thing still matters.
| Even with the case in the article out of the way (no
| copyright on intentionally maximally accurate photographs of
| public domain works), the Louvre (or is it really French
| copyright law in general?) restricts certain non-commercial
| uses (including taking your own photographs) of public domain
| works and requires permission for commercial uses (section
| 4.1.1 [1]):
|
| > a. Re-use free of charge
|
| > The downloading and re-use of medium-format photographs
| published on the collections website representing works that
| are not protected by copyright (hereinafter called the
| "Photographs") are permitted, free of charge, for any non-
| collective use within a strictly private context and for the
| following exhaustively-listed museographic, scientific and
| educational purposes:
|
| [omitted]
|
| > b. Re-use against payment
|
| > The use for any purpose other than those exhaustively
| listed in article 4.1.1 a. above, and particularly any
| commecial use such as the manufacture and distribution of
| derivative products, audiovisual and multimedia production
| and printed publications other than those referred to in
| article 4.1.1, must be the subject of a written request sent
| by the User to Rmn-GP via the website of its photography
| agency, photo.rmn.fr, or by email to agence_photo@rmngp.fr.
|
| [1] https://collections.louvre.fr/en/page/cgu
| fweimer wrote:
| Web sites displaying non-copyrighted works could still be
| protected under the UK implementation of the EU database
| directive. There might also be non-copyright reasons why you are
| not allowed to reuse the displayed works without permission. Just
| because things are digital doesn't mean you have to comply only
| with copyright when making a reproduction.
|
| It gets even better. This seems to be the court judgement under
| discussion:
|
| https://assets.caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2023...
|
| I don't want to try to summarize the judgement here, but it
| clearly was not about museums selling licenses for reproductions
| of out-of-copyright works. In fact, the judgment declared that
| copyright infringement had taken place. I have no idea why people
| use this judgment to further their cause. It seems a poor fit
| both in subject matter and outcome.
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Copyright has to be abolished for the good of all humanity.
| throwitaway222 wrote:
| Why is that good?
|
| It's funny because a few years ago everyone was stating this.
| Now that GPT and transformer technology exists, abolishing
| copyright is suddenly no longer popular. It's almost like this
| is just one giant echo chamber and things swish and swirl like
| the ocean on opinion.
| satellite2 wrote:
| I don't completely agree with the parent but it's definitely
| too long. Life + 70 so in average 110 years coverage is
| ridiculous. Why is that not good? Because it push studio to
| milk their cash cow forever (as we see with the big
| franchises occupying all multimedia space and monopolizing
| all large investments) and it just limits creativity. If the
| duration was reduced it would force them to invest on
| creators to find new successes and that would benefit the
| general public and the creators.
|
| Fair use is also far too restrictive as we see with LLMs.
| What do you think about when you read "video game plumber"?
| So basically it became a foundational concept cognitively for
| you and me (polite way to say that we've been brainwashed by
| millions of $ in investment in publicity such that the
| concept is deeply ingrained in our minds) and on top of
| occupying a significant amount of space in our brains we
| should be forbidden to use the concept in our communication
| and creative work?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't think the pattern you're describing exists.
|
| I've seen a few people want to abolish copyright, but not
| many. The vast majority always seemed to want reductions in
| length. And historically a lot of people have wanted fair use
| to be easier.
|
| When I look at the arguments against AI, they're not asking
| for copyright to be longer. They're asking for it to be
| stricter in a very particular way. And they're making a
| distinction between human use and transformer use.
|
| There's no "swish and swirl" that I have seen. There's not
| really a conflict between those opinions on fair use, and
| there's _definitely_ no conflict with the opinion on
| duration.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The solution to something that has a lot of problems is not
| going to the opposite extreme.
| permo-w wrote:
| being "the opposite extreme" doesn't mean it's wrong
| iefbr14 wrote:
| Well, it can use some rework.
| gumballindie wrote:
| A piece of technology based on theft is useless. If anything,
| copyright has become more relevant than ever.
| r2_pilot wrote:
| I believe, if anything, copyright is more useless than ever.
| It's an anachronism when these powerful tools of media
| creation are so available to so many people. Is it more
| valuable to society that a select few benefit from decades of
| cultural appropriation, or is it better for society that
| cultural artifacts from my youth to be freely available to
| everyone? As it stands, I may even die before material from
| before my birth becomes public domain. That's greedy,
| stupidly shortsighted, and an inefficient allocation of
| resources.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The issue though is that art is not stolen from a select
| few, but from society by a select few. The roles are
| inverted. There's no benefit for society when a few greedy
| corporations steal art they then monetise. Said "resources"
| are not dug out of the ground. They the fruit of people's
| labour. Stealing it does no good.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" Surely museums will now change their policies?"_
|
| Ha, hardly! All they'll do is make low resolution photos
| available and restrict anyone other than themselves from taking
| photos (or gaining access to do so) on grounds that the images
| may be damaged, will fade etc.
|
| We now need laws to ensure the photos are accessible and that
| reproductions are in full resolution state-of-the-art quality.
| profsummergig wrote:
| Are articles, older than a certain age, in newspapers such as
| NYTimes, copyrightable?
|
| Could have major implications for the future of AI.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Anything that was first published 1927 or earlier in the U.S.
| is not copyrightable. The cutoff will soon roll over to 1928.
| robin_reala wrote:
| In the US, NYTimes editions from 1927 or earlier (1928 in two
| days time) are out of copyright and enter the public domain.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Anything before the start of the Great Depression.
|
| Cultural stagnation at its finest.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > "What is required is that the author was able to express their
| creative abilities in the production of the work by making free
| and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their
| personal touch".
|
| If I read this right, if I crank Instagram filters to 11 then it
| can be considered as enoigh free and creative choices?
|
| What if I only up them to 1?
| blacksqr wrote:
| It's curious that there is no mention of this ruling's possible
| effect on AI art. A side-effect of the ruling may be that AI art
| is uncopyrightable in the UK.
|
| A law was passed in the UK in 1988 that said computer-generated
| art could be copyrighted by the person who set up the computer to
| produce it, even if the person played no role in the generation
| of the work.
|
| However, in 2010 the UK (as part of the EU) signed on to the WIPO
| Copyright Treaty, which only allows copyright protection for
| works directly produced by humans.
|
| The Court of Justice of the European Union has made rulings that
| machine-generated works are not eligible for copyright, nor are
| any works generated within a strict framework of rules that limit
| human creativity. For example, somebody tried to copyright a
| football game, the court said that even though humans were
| exercising creativity within the game, the strict framework of
| the rules of football within which the creativity was exercised
| made the game ineligible for copyright.
|
| But the UK is no longer part of the EU, so European court rulings
| are presumably void there (although the UK is still a signatory
| to the WIPO Copyright Treaty). So I find it interesting that the
| judge in this ruling has largely reiterated the reasoning of the
| European court in the matter of the constraints the WCT imposes
| on machine-generated copyright ("This criterion is not satisfied
| where the content of the work is dictated by technical
| considerations, rules or other constraints which leave no room
| for creative freedom".)
|
| So on its face this ruling seems to nullify the 1988 law and make
| AI-generated art uncopyrightable in the UK. It will be
| interesting to see if anyone tries to establish this explicitly.
| blacksqr wrote:
| According to the following article:
|
| https://www.vennershipley.com/insights-events/originality-
| in....
|
| the Judge in the case explicitly referenced decisions of the
| Court of Justice of the European Union, and suggests that those
| decisions are still in force in the UK, despite the UK no
| longer being part of the EU.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The REUL act to cancel Retained EU Laws (REULs) starts to
| bite as of 1 January 2024, AFAIAA.
|
| It maybe that copyright is not currently for the chop, but it
| seems - in my personal opinion - that the Tory government
| wish to cancel many EU laws in order to prevent Labour from
| moving us back towards the EU in the next couple of
| parliamentary terms. The REUL Act came from Jakob Rees-Mogg
| MP and it's very much in meeting with his ethos to 'salt the
| land' and cause damage for generations if he can get a couple
| of bags of silver out of the deal.
|
| Long story short: we're still following EU law in a lot of
| areas, but not for much longer. As with the pandemic, the
| Tory government are no doubt using this as an opportunity to
| do nefarious deals in order to steal from the taxpayer.
| krisoft wrote:
| In reality all generative art (both AI generated and old
| fashioned procedurally generated art) involves a human tweaking
| the knobs a lot and then selecting the best ones out of a sea
| of duds. To me it is clear that there is plenty of space for
| human creativity.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Yes, but, it will be very dangerous for somebody using AI
| generated art to pursue a claim because they may find that
| the other party generated the same image first. :)
| bshipp wrote:
| In many ways its no different than electronic musicians
| building songs based on short samples of older songs. I have
| no doubt there will be rulings supporting the sort of
| creativity you're discussing at some point in the not so
| distant future.
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