After people reacted so positively to the banner I made I had the idea to do the same with c/anarchism. But what to draw? Well I took the existing image and traced over it, adding some more character.
License (as always): CC-0, no rights reserved. Especially since it’s traced over a generated image.
If I steal a bunch of handmade jewelry, cut it up and fuse it all together into a sculpture, then give that sculpture away, it’s still theft. If the recipient knows it was made with stolen jewelry, that makes them an accomplice.
Just because GenAI output can’t be copyrighted doesn’t mean its output isn’t still theft.
This is a really dumb analogy because if you steal a bunch of jewelry, then the jewelry is gone and the original owner doesn’t have it anymore.
But if you steal AI ‘art’, the original owner still has it.
There’s a difference between stealing and copying, and that difference is whether you’re depriving the original owner of the thing.
And from a whole different angle:
‘Stealing’ implies ownership. But the original ‘owner’ doesn’t actually own the output of AI in the first place. It wasn’t “handmade” – it was made by a computer algorithm. You can’t steal from someone who doesn’t own the objects in the first place.
This applies to all art equally. Human made as well. If you aren’t depriving them of the original you aren’t stealing.
You can steal a painting, you can’t steal a picture posted online.
Fine, if you want to be pedantic: if you make reusable molds of handmade jewelry without the artists’ permission, then you proceed to make new jewelry from the parts, you still stole the original design. Likewise, AI copying artists’ artwork to reproduce its parts is theft. It doesn’t matter if they still have the originals, because the originals weren’t free to copy in the first place.
It’s theft, and being annoyed that I didn’t create a perfect analogy doesn’t change that fact. And if you want to talk deprivation, you are depriving the original artist of their rights to monetize their work (notice I said “rights,” not ability).
Also, I never said you were stealing from the AI; you are an accessory to theft of the original artwork if you are using models trained on stolen artwork.
Still not theft. Merely copyright infringement at best.
Oh, “merely.” I’m sure all the artists who weren’t given the opportunity to opt out and are currently having their work reproduced at scale feel so much better about that legal distinction.
You realize we also host [email protected] here, right?
Yep, I’m aware. And just like anarchy, I don’t agree that piracy should be applied without exception. Stealing from the common person ≠ stealing from billionaires or mega corporations.
I know there are some pirates who do not make such exceptions, but I think they’re wrong, and their behavior is indistinguishable from corporations’.
Stealing from artists is stealing from the poor class, whether that’s intentional copyright infringement (especially since AI companies know artists rarely have the money to fight back) or total theft. And the wealthy are more than happy to see us do their dirty work by hurting each other.
Again, copying isn’t stealing.
If it’s to reproduce it at scale, yes it is.
Copying is not theft:
https://archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheft
For archival and preservation purposes? I agree. For circumventing an artist’s livelihood? Eat shit.