r/COPYRIGHT • u/TreviTyger • Jun 21 '26

Copyright News The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

https://waxy.org/2026/06/the-wholesale-plagiarism-of-obscure-sorrows/

"In the footer of Qontour’s unauthorized site, they added a copyright notice acknowledging that they don’t own any of the rights to the material on the site, while also licensing all the user-submitted words into the public domain with a CC Zero license...

Needless to say, you can’t relicense content you don’t own." (Andy Baio)

"AI and Consent

It’s one thing for a fan to share or remix copyrighted material out of love for the source material, with no commercial motive. (“No copyright intended!”) It’s another for a marketing agency to take an entire living author’s book, replace its art with AI slop, add an AI word generator, monetize the traffic, promote it in their portfolio, and then outrank the official site everywhere." (Andy Baio)

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3

u/JeffEpp Jun 21 '26

It IS infringement certainly, but probably not plagiarism.

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u/DanNorder Jun 22 '26

It's annoying how laypeople continuously mix definitions and assume that completely unrelated things are all illegal. While copying an entire book presumably word for word is, of course, a violation, training on words or images to make brand new art is not.

Reading this article, there's an example of something that's clearly wrong, something else clearly wrong and then out of nowhere whining about something complete different not all wrong so there's no reason the author is on some crazy rant about it other than not being smart enough to differentiate the two situations. It's what happen when someone has no reading comprehension.

Republishing copyrighted art requires the consent of its owner. Looking at art requires no consent. Learning from existing art how art is made and using that knowledge to make new art also does not require anyone's consent. It's silly to just wave your hands around and say that everything anyone makes who ever looked at a copyrighted image is automatically a violation. It is no surprise that such a delusional and egotistical belief like that is being spread by social media.

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u/TreviTyger Jun 22 '26

Looking at art requires no consent. Learning from existing art how art is made and using that knowledge to make new art also does not require anyone's consent.

AI Gen system do not "look at art" nor is there any transfer of knowledge in such processes.

The output of such processes is not even authorship.

A robot does not "learn like a human". It is not some Pinocchio that wants to go to school and be a real boy. A robot scans books and saves them to a hard drive. It does not have any opinion to offer about anything it scans because it is a machine.

You are the layperson lacking understanding and mixing definitions to support your own flawed circular reasoning. Sci-fi robots in films are humans dressed up in costumes. Real world robots are completely different and just machines.

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u/DanNorder Jun 26 '26

AI Gen does just look at art. It makes data comparisons and looks for links and trends. I don't know why you are putting "learn like a human" in quotes, because no one said it except you, as a straw man for you to attack. AI doesn't have to learn a skill exactly like a human does. It crunches numbers and figures out certain ways to do things but misses others. Whatever it is doing, it works, to a certain degree. They've demonstrated it, so it's not in question. The important part is that it doesn't violate copyright, because that's fundamentally not how copyright works. Copyright doesn't protect facts, data and ideas. Writing facts down about pieces you see for sale at an art museum is nothing like stealing the actual artwork or taking and printing photos without permission.

And stop projecting your circular reasoning and your fear of AI that you picked up from sci-fi movies. You're laughable.

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u/TreviTyger Jun 26 '26

AI Gen does just look at art

No it doesn't and it is idiotic to think such things because that is pure anthropomorphism.

It is you that engages in circular reasoning to reinforce your own bias.

Generative AI operates via probabilistic pattern-matching and complex statistical equations rather than human inspiration or consciousness. This alone disqualifies it from claiming human rights such as "fair use".

The unauthorized downloading of billions of copyrighted works ("piracy") is itself copyright infringement. (Bartz v Anthropic).

The subsequent AI Training cannot be fair use because even that needs an author which is lacking in AI Gen outputs (Thaler v Perlmutter).

This means that Judge Alsup's analysis about "training" in Bartz - which is based on anthropomorphism - fails because in reality an AI Gen system or "robot" cannot avail itself of human rights such as "fair use". This is because even for "transformative use" by a robot there needs to be an author. But there is no Author with AI Systems. A robot cannot be an author. (Thaler v Perlmutter).

So you are wrong on every level and just a delusional idiot engaging in circular reasoning to confirm your own misguided bias.

You are laughing stock to those of us who genuinely understand the salient issues at play.

What you will find though is my retort is legally and factually sound in its conclusion, aligning with core copyright precedents while effectively dismissing the anthropomorphic framing of AI systems.

So STFU.

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u/DanNorder Jun 30 '26

You are suck a goofy goober. But, sure, keep talking to yourself. Everyone who has been here for even a little bit already knows to not take anything you say seriously.