An artist who infamously duped an art contest with an AI image is suing the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register the image’s copyright.
In the lawsuit, Jason M. Allen asks a Colorado federal court to reverse the Copyright Office’s decision on his artwork Theatre D’opera Spatialbecause it was an expression of his creativity.
Reuters says the Copyright Office refused to comment on the case while Allen in a statement complains that the office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”
If I use a combination of words to commission an artist to paint a picture, I don’t own the copyright on that picture.
If it’s a commission, you might. Depends on the how the contract is worded.
Okay, let’s see the contract in this AI case that grants this man the copyright.
The contract is set by the company, let’s say Midjourney, which passes ownership to the person who generate the “art.” What needs to be defined is if ai generated art is art? So far, no one seems to have a definite answer. I come down on the side of yes, but there are a lot of others that say no.
Which company passes the ownership to the person in its contract? Midjourney does not, I just looked:
https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/terms-of-service
They make it clear that you do not own the copyright on the images you create. Did the artist suing the copyright office use this company?
A licence isn’t a copyright, though?
https://help.midjourney.com/en/articles/8150363-can-i-use-my-images-commercially
In no way does Midjourney own the image, they only have the ability to “reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute”.
That has absolutely nothing to do with who owns the copyright. I already quoted to you from their own ToS and linked to it.
It has everything to do with what the copyright gives them the right to do, which is: reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute". They cannot claim ownership of the art. If you were to create art that is illegal, they do not own it and are not responsible for that.
And since you want to quote the TOS, here is the first part which you ignored:
You said it was based on the contract. The ToS literally says Midjourney owns the copyright. This is pretty cut-and-dried.
The article makes that perfectly clear.
The article makes it perfectly clear that he used Midjourney.
Midjourney makes it perfectly clear that he does not own the copyright to anything he uses Midjourney for.
I’m not sure what your point is.