#IP law

[spaghettioverdose]

#shitpost #ip law #ai discourse #hitting the wasps nest with a bat again #stolen from discord

[gothhabiba]

On the one hand, people who take a hardline stance on “AI art is not art” are clearly saying something naïve and indefensible (as though any process cannot be used to make art? as though artistry cannot still be involved in the set-up of the parameters and the choice of data set and the framing of the result? as though “AI” means any one thing? you’re going to have a real hard time with process music, poetry cut-up methods, &c.).

But all of this (as well as takes that what's really needed is a crackdown on IP) are a distraction from a vital issue—namely that this is technology used to create and sort enormous databases of images, and the uses to which this technology is put in a police state are obvious: it's used in service of surveillance, incarceration, criminalisation, and the furthering of violence against criminalised people.

Of course we've long known that datasets are not "neutral" and that racist data will provide racist outcomes, and we've long known that the problem goes beyond the datasets (even carefully vetting datasets does not necessarily control for social factors). With regards to "predictive policing," this suggests that criminalisation of supposed leftist "radicals" and racialised people (and the concepts creating these two groups overlap significantly; [link 1], [link 2]) is not a problem, but intentional—a process is built so that it always finds people "suspicious" or "guilty," but because it is based on an "algorithm" or "machine learning" or so-called "AI" (processes that people tend to understand murkily, if at all), they can be presented as innocent and neutral. These are things that have been brought up repeatedly with regards to "automatic" processes and things that trawl the web to produce large datasets in the recent past (e.g. facial recognition technology), so their almost complete absence from the discourse wrt "AI art" confuses me.

Abeba Birhane's thread here, summarizing this paper (h/t @thingsthatmakeyouacey) explains how the LAION-400M dataset was sourced/created, how it is filtered, and how images are retrieved from it (for this reason it's a good beginner explanation of what large-scale datasets and large neural networks are 'doing'). She goes into how racist, misogynistic, and sexually violent content is returned (and racist mis-categorisations are made) as a result of every one of those processes. She also brings up issues of privacy, how individuals' data is stored in datasets (even after the individual deletes it from where it was originally posted), and how it may be stored associated with metadata which the poster did not intend to make public. This paper (h/t thingsthatmakeyouacey [link]) looks at the ImageNet-ILSVRC-2012 dataset to discuss "the landscape of harm and threats both the society at large and individuals face due to uncritical and ill-considered dataset curation practices" including the inclusion of non-consensual pornography in the dataset.

Of course (again) this is nothing that hasn't already been happening with large social media websites or with "big data" (Birhane notes that "On the one hand LAION-400M has opened a door that allows us to get a glimpse into the world of large scale datasets; these kinds of datasets remain hidden inside BigTech corps"). And there's no un-creating the technology behind this—resistance will have to be directed towards demolishing the police / carceral / imperial state as a whole. But all criticism of "AI" art can't be dismissed as always revolving around an anti-intellectual lack of knowledge of art history or else a reactionary desire to strengthen IP law (as though that would ever benefit small creators at the expense of large corporations...).

#ai art #ip law #neural networks #machine learning #ai #technology #readings #art tag

[tim-official]

after reading robert kurvitz's novel (supposed to be the first in a long series) and playing disco elysium (one of the most beautiful things i have ever experienced), and then seeing his studio and his life's work wrenched away by IP law, kept from him - i have zero respect for anyone who suggests that IP law could be expanded to help "protect artists from theft of their work" or any other vaguely-stated offence to your notions of artistic integrity. you should have no respect for this position either. it is an indefensible position. if you hold this view you are either 1) legitimately want to live in a world where all stories, all art, all expression is closed-source and gatekept by the moldiest, least-human lawyers that nintendo, disney, and universal music group can dig up or 2) you are a useful idiot for group 1. you cannot make this work

#ip law #enshittification #disco elysium

[toastedpopsicle]

Imagine believing there's anything just about imprisoning someone over fucking video game clips. IP law is such flagrant violence and so fucking counterethical to the natural act of creation.

Remember that if you think ideas and images can be owned, you agree that violations of that ownership deserve the full violence of imperial carcecal systems.

#copyright #intellectual property #ip law #spoiler culture #steins;gate #spy x family

[cadyrocks]

A short overview of Nintendo's recent stance on tournaments running their games:

fee for competing (including location fee) capped at $20 - say bye to tournaments run at convention centers, which is kinda moot anyways, because...

Maximum of 200 competitors offline, maximum of 300 online

Maximum payout of $5000, $10,000 per 12-month period per TO.

Sponsors are completely banned

You can't use character art or logos in your tournament's branding

Online tournaments have to use Nintendo's online services (RIP Melee/Brawl online play - Brawl technically has it, but nobody uses it because it's completely awful)

Your tournament may not "Include anything that damages the value of the Nintendo brand and Intellectual Property" - hello vague and threatening legal clause

Can't sell food, water (!!!), or merch at events

Commercial events require a direct negotiation with Nintendo - if you remember Smash World Tour, you remember how this tends to work out.

Can't use accessories/controllers not licensed by Nintendo (for example, controllers modded for accessibility purposes)

There's more, but that seems like the most important stuff.

Utterly disgusting shit.

#super smash bros #nintendo #IP law #hey remember when nintendo deemed gay people inappropriate in Tomodachi Life? #anyways check out Rushdown Revolt

[ecrivainsolitaire]

Open Art Guild – Testing the boundaries of collective IP ownership

Experimental release: Dr. T’chem’s Office (authorised for personal and commercial use)

I’ll try to keep this brief (you can read the full thesis statement here) but as we all know, intellectual property law is broken. It’s being exploited from every side and art workers are more vulnerable than ever to automation, copyright theft and myriad other unforeseeable forms of theft from the proletariat. We as a collective need to come together and work towards the creation of a better future.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal for the first of many steps towards a far away but necessary goal: the eradication of intellectual property as it pertains to the arts. It’s based on the open source standard and the creative commons, and the goal is for us to start creating a future where we stop thinking of artworks as private property to hoard, and start sharing the responsibilities and the benefits of their creation with the collective. And as I am proposing the idea, I should give the first step.

Which is why I am announcing the release of my short story series, Dr. T’chem’s Office, into the Open Art Guild license. This is an episodic HFY comedy series about the office hours of a sleazy yet well intentioned xenoanthropologist in charge of human integration into the crew of a spaceship, who happens to find them fascinating. You can read the first few instalments here:

| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |

The basics of the license go as follows: I’m giving any artist permission to use the assets of my artwork (in this case, settings, characters, plot lines and other unique concepts) both for personal use and for commercial use, provided they commit to crediting the original artist, giving away 30% of any profit back to the hands of the collective in the breakdown the guidelines specify, and giving the same license to any works they create derivative from this series. Any artist can join the Guild by remixing existing artworks in its database or voluntarily submitting their own works. For the time being this prototype model will have to rely on the honour system, but I have outlined the basic guidelines for a platform dedicated to facilitating the Guild��s business and income redistribution.

The purpose of this experiment is to test whether this system is financially viable, what modifications it needs, and how to enforce it. It’s also a way to study what the community thinks of this model. To summarise the implications, here are the pros and cons as I see them.

Pros:

- All fan art, spin-offs, third-party merchandise and other forms of adaptation become automatically authorised and monetisable, provided both the original artist and the remixer are active members of the Guild.

- All adaptations are automatically non-exclusive and must give away the same rights as the original, diminishing the incentive for massive corporations to try and scam an artist out of their intellectual property.

- It effectively unionises freelance artists of all fields to balance out negotiations with non Guild entities.

- It encourages artists to continue their output in order to reap the benefits of the Guild, by using the redistribution system as an incentive, instead of the current status quo where artists are actively fighting market forces all by themselves in order to make enough time and resources to work on their craft.

- It provides a safety net where everyone is invested in the continuous welfare of everyone else, giving a sense of class solidarity and facilitating donations and shared resources.

- It motivates artists to invest in each other, as the growth of one means the growth of the whole Guild.

- Eventually, if the project succeeds and the proposed platform comes to exist, it would effectively create a universal basic income for all Guild members, as well as a self sustained legal fund to protect their assets from IP theft by non Guild entities.

- It will give you complete control over whether your art can be used for AI dataset training, on an opt-in, post-by-post basis, so you don’t have to wonder who might be stealing it. If the platform is created, all works whose creators have not authorised to be used for this will have data scrambling features to make sure thieves can’t use them.

Cons:

- It will require all Guild members to permanently renounce to 30% of their profit, in order to build up the funds and distribution system.

- It will have to be built entirely on trust of the collective, at least until a platform can be established, which may take weeks or may take decades depending on lots of unpredictable factors.

- Leaving the Guild will require all artworks shared with the collective to become Creative Commons; once you renounce your right to monopoly of your IP, it’s permanent, no way to go back. This is necessary in order to prevent asset flippers and other forms of IP scabs to join the Guild, extract other people’s assets and then scram.

- Due to banking regulations entirely out of our hands, some artists will have participating in the redistribution. If the platform ever becomes a reality, one of its main goals will be to remedy this immediately.

This proposal requires a high cost, but it provides an invaluable reward. If the system works, it will empower all artists to profit from their work and protect it as a collective. If it doesn’t, all that will have happened is that you will have created a lot of Creative Commons art, which financially isn’t ideal, but artistically is extremely commendable. Even in the worst case scenario, corporations will not be able to hold your art hostage with exclusivity deals. To me, the benefits vastly outweigh the costs, but I do want to emphasise: there will be costs. This is an effort to subvert the entire way art has been monetised since the 1700s. It will require a lot of work, a lot of people, and a lot of time, to make it work. But I believe it can work. If you believe it too, you are welcome to join the Open Art Guild.

Please do read the guidelines for the Guild and the guidelines for the platform before you start creating, and give me whatever feedback you have. If it’s good, if it’s lacking, if I’m overstepping legal boundaries, if you can find loopholes, anything. I tried to make it airtight but I’m not a legal expert. This is not my project, it is a project for the proletariat. Everyone should have a say on what they’re signing on for. And regardless of what you think, share it with all artists you can. This will only work if as many people as possible participate.

Doctor T’chem’s Office’s license

This work has been released under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.

#Open Art Guild #OAG #open source #humans are weird #space australia #humans are space orcs #humanism #Dr. T'chem's office #Trix Zubenel #humans are space oddities #humans are space australians #hfy #intellectual property #copyright law #ip law #fair use #creative commons #public domain #worker solidarity #anti capitalist #collective action #redistribution of wealth #class solidarity #late stage capitalism #wga strong #sag strike #anti ai #generative art #artificial intelligence #fan art

[thecurioustale]

Art Begets Art and the Law Should Respect This

I believe in the tradition of folk art, which is to say: Borrow liberally and lovingly.

It's a practice we've been mostly sterilized from embracing in our modern corporatist society, where all of the big-name, commonly-recognizable "IPs" are imprisoned behind layer after layer of obnoxious lawyers with nothing better to do than torment the innocent. It's a terrible thing, a deprivation of our cultural oxygen—a crime against art and ethics.

As an artist myself, I often have to thread the needle of building upon the inspiring works of others while still remaining within the letter of our outrageous IP laws. It's something I think about a lot.

In Galaxy Federal, for instance, I mentioned last time that the name "Galaxy Federal" was inspired, among other things, by the mention of the "Galaxy Federal Police" title screen of the original Metroid game. When I was settling on this title for my series, I also found that Galaxy Federal is the trademarked name of a bank. I spent considerable time and mental resources, years ago, to determine to my satisfaction that it is permissible under the law for me to use this title.

I have to do way too much of this bullshit, and I know it'll still be for naught: If I ever do become an even remotely successful author, I'm sure I'll be sued anyway, probably for something I never even realized was an "infringement" despite all my vigilance. Because, at the end of the day, for big corporations and for IP trolls, our IP laws are just a racketeering scheme—a side hustle. I mean, Best Western trademarked the word "seniority." If someone wants to sue you, they're gonna find a way.

I am not really a "from scratch" writer. I don't sit down at a blank page and just come up with prose from first principles. My art is almost always inspired by things that I experience in my life, or by the ideas that result from those experiences. Sometimes—frequently, even—my inspirations come from things that are copyrighted or trademarked. I have written in the past about the influence of the video game The Secret of Mana on me as a kid. Among many other inspirations, that game has a neat sandship in it, and that's why the desert easts of Relance are prevalent with sandships.

Over the years I've become a pro at reinterpreting IP-blocked inspirations into usable, original ones—both in terms of the legal research I've done and the skills I've developed at transforming an IP-blocked inspiration into something usable. I've also become more knowledgeable about what I can get away with quoting directly: Certain things cannot be copyrighted, and trademarks have a finite zone of applicability.

It's all a very needless and skill-intensive ballet to achieve something that should be directly accessible. Obviously, there do need to be limits. As an artist myself, I am keenly aware that I wouldn't want to have no special claim to my own work. But if I were to rewrite our outrageous IP laws—and over the years I have amassed considerable material for a book on this—I would make it vastly easier for artists and the public in general to "borrow liberally and lovingly" from the sources that inspire them. Our current IP laws are like a crime-ridden police state: The security is in all the wrong places and just doesn't work. We could relax the laws considerably without hurting artists, and potentially even tighten them in other respects to better combat trolls and thieves.

But in the meantime, here's my advice: Don't let it daunt you. Dance the friggin' ballet. Get good at transformation. Liberate intellectual property from its prison in spirit if not in substance. And, when you're fearless and/or sufficiently obscure, just straight-up pirate. I think society has a duty to reject unjust laws through word and deed.

I don't usually don my pirate's hat, but I do sometimes. When I published the Prelude in 2015, for a limited time I also published a free companion soundtrack consisting entirely of, gasp, copyrighted music. Nowhere is the horror of our modern IP laws more evident than in the realm of music. What I did was basically create a curated playlist, to help set the mood of the story. I don't know if anyone even availed themselves of that soundtrack, yet for me to license all of those pieces to make my limited-time links lawful would have cost me thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars! All for something that it's possible nobody other than me even listened to. That's a crime against art. And it's a crime against artists. Our draconian IP laws hurt small artists the most. If I had had thousands of fans, I'd have been able to pay to play—and I would have done so, or perhaps I would have spent the equivalent money to hire composers to write an original soundtrack. But, as a nobody-artist and a poor person, whose own Curious Score musical compositions are long in the making, the lawful avenues are all unassailably closed off to me. This too is an injustice, of another sort.

Doing the companion soundtrack was the right thing to do in the tradition of folk art. None of those other artists (or, let's be real, the corporate goliaths that hoard most of this "content" in their treasure-vaults) was deprived of a single penny; in fact that's one of the great lies of the IP lawyers and their corporate masters: Cultural interchange usually improves income for people whose work is quoted by others. Borrow liberally and lovingly—and give credit where credit is due.

That's the way it should be.

And, one day, that's how it will be again.

#IP law #IP law is a fucking joke and painfully Orwellian and we should all be praying to the Bermuda Triangle to disappear these corporate lawyers #Prelude to After the Hero

[titleknown]

You ever think about the fact that, in the US, we have no concept of "moral rights" as separate rights from intellectual property, so we treat the idea of property rights as moral rights in art?

You ever think about how that process of treating property rights as moral rights is kinda a microcosm of pretty much everything that's wrong with America rn?

#art #ip law #copyright #intelectual property #moral rights #insert that one terry pratchett quote here

[casuallyirregular]

(Disclaimer: I’m not trying to discourage anyone from pursuing law. Just trying to prepare anyone considering it)

Law School is exhausting and very difficult. Everyday the reading stacks up and it’s so easy to fall behind. First, make absolutely sure law is right for you. Talk to attorneys, try to shadow someone, work in law somehow, you can also ask current students (including me)!

That said, when you find your niche in law, things tend to work out for you!

#law #law student #law studyblr #lawstudies #law school #lawyer #criminal law #fashion #inspiration #ip law #lawyer fashion #lawyer life #lawyer lifestyle #studyblr #studyinspo

[aerypear]

TLDR on Fanworks legality

Fanworks are under Fair Use laws, these vary in countries. (Hint: It is your job to acquaint yourself with your Country’s variation of Fair Use laws.) 

Fanworks are not Public Domain. A piece must be within the Public Domain (have no active license holder due to ineligibility of copyrite protection or copyrite has expired) to be classified as such. The IP (Intellectual Property) is, usually, not in Public Domain. (Hint: it is your job to acquaint yourself with your Country’s variation of IP laws) Here’s a website that has Resources for Public Domain Materials.

Creational spin offs of Public Domain media can become new IP. However, would still need to be registered Copyrite to become Formal Intellectual Property protected under Copyrite laws. (Hint: It is your job to acquaint yourself with your Country’s variation of Copyrite laws.)  Example: Just because Beethoven’s songs are in Public Domain, does not mean I can go and use TSO’s ( Trans-Siberian Orchestra ) variations of Beethoven’s songs. TSO’s Beethoven creational spin offs are under Copyright © – Atlantic Recording Corporation & Copyright © – WEA International Inc.

Fans hold ownership to non IP elements in their Fanworks. This is under Fair Use laws and IP laws. 

The Licensed IP Owner does not have ownership of Fanworks. They only hold ownership over their IP such as Character Designs, Character Names, Location Appearances, Location names, and (sometimes) Plot. All is dependent on what the IP license Protects. Restrictions do apply. (Hint: It is your job to acquaint yourself with the IP restrictions of the Media you create Fan pieces of.)

It is theft of both informal and formal IP to use Fanworks to train AI without permission from both IP holders. (Hint: Copyrite Laws, Fair Use Laws, IP Laws.)

#the pear rambles #IP law #Copyright law #Fair Use law #Public Domain #creator rights #KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

[alicearmageddon]

#anarchism #ip law #anticopyright

[little-ghost-little-ghost]

Hell. (ignore the other posts on my dash)

#rocktalks #total drama #harold total drama #ip law #leftism #total drama island #this is the weirdest string of tags I've ever typed

[toastedpopsicle]

I hope every IP holding artist follows Bill Willingham's example and public domains their shit rather than letting an IP hoarding company seize ownership of it.

#bill willingham #fables #ip law #Copyright

[cadyrocks]

We badly need IP law reform on so many levels, but the most obvious is abandonware.

If you aren't going to provide a First-Party source for your software, if you are not publishing that software any more, it is abandonware, and you have no business complaining when people find other ways of getting it.

If you aren't going to provide a first-party source for your hardware, if you are not making that hardware any more, it is abandonware and you have no business complaining when people emulate it.

If you aren't providing crucial security updates for your older software, it is an abandoned version and you have no business complaining when people fix it outside the bounds of your company.

If you are not providing updates or maintaining functionality on certain crucial types of software (say, anything biotech related), you have no business complaining when the state requires you to publish your code as open source.

Obviously you can argue for caveats to this. I'm not an IP lawyer, and even from my pro-piracy stance, I get that it could be a problem if, say, Guitar Pro 6 comes out, Guitar Pro 5 support ends, and as a result GP5 immediately loses IP laws. But the current way things work is, quite frankly, absurd.

IP law exists, as Cory Doctorow would put it, as a way to prevent your customers from acting in ways that benefit them at the cost of your shareholders. At the same time, companies are aggressively attacking attempts at cultural archives in the name of profits for products you can't even buy from them. Companies are sitting on mountains of "intellectual property" they aren't selling or using, often simply to ensure nobody else gets it. This is all totally fucked. And don't get me started on patent trolls.

#piracy is media preservation #ip law

[ecrivainsolitaire]

The Open Art Guild Project: a proposal to empower collectively owned art

Over the last few decades we have seen the degradation of copyright, the blatant manipulation of intellectual property law in order to monopolise wealth and the exploitation of artists in favour of an economy of artistic landlordship: massive corporations holding the prole artist hostage to their increasingly unoriginal library of content produced not to encourage creative enlightenment, but to hold on to properties that ought to be already in the public domain. The capitalist owns the IP, so the capitalist keeps getting richer, while the artist is more and more oppressed, overworked, underpaid, scammed out of their rightful intellectual property, deplatformed, and automated away whenever possible. This is unsustainable, and the arrival of new technologies for digital art automation has overflowed that unsustainability to its breaking point. We cannot continue down this path.

The Open Art Guild is my proposal to remedy this. This proposal consists of two main parts: a copyright standard, designed for the fair distribution of income and the collective ownership of intellectual property; and a distribution platform, planned to empower artists big and small to profit from said intellectual property without being under the thumb of corporations or fighting one another under senseless infighting caused by bourgeois class warfare. The artist should not fight the artist over ownership of rights. The big artist should not see the small artist as a threat, nor should the small artist see the big artist as an obstacle to their own growth. Through mutual empowerment, both may prosper.

The Open Art Guild License

The Open Art Guild License is built upon the current Creative Commons 4.0 License. This license is irrevocable until the work qualifies for public domain according to all relevant legislations, provided that the artist remains a member of the Guild. In order to participate in the Guild, an artist shall follow the following precepts:

The artist shall only publish works under the OAG License that have licenses available to the public. This means public domain, open source, Creative Commons and works created by other members of the Guild. Works derived from privately owned media, such as fanart of intellectual properties not part of the Guild, shall be excluded from the Guild. If the artist did not have permission to use it before, or if the artist only has individual permission, the work will not qualify for Guild submission.

All works created under the OAG License shall be free to adapt, remix, or reuse for other projects, even commercially, provided that the artist doing so is also an active member of the Guild, that the projects derived from it are also under the OAG License, and that the artist follows through with their dues and obligations.

Whenever the format permits, the artist shall provide the assets used for the works in their raw form in a modular fashion, including colour palettes, sound assets, video footage, code, screenplays, subtitles, and any other elements used in the creation of their work, in order to facilitate their reuse and redistribution for the benefit of all other artists.

The artist waives their right to 30% of the total profit generated by works submitted to the guild, regardless of where it is published. This revenue shall be redistributed in the following manner:

10% shall be designated towards the maintenance of the Open Art Guild platform. In absence of a platform that follows the requirements to belong to the Guild, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation of their own choosing dedicated to the protection and distribution of art in any of its forms. Some examples may include Archive.org, Archive Of Our Own, Wikimedia, or your local art museum or community center. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall empower the Guild, as the Guild has empowered the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild legal fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to the protection of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated towards a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the protection of the legal rights of artists in any of their forms. Some examples may include Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Industrial Workers of the World, or another artist union like the WGA. Proof of donation shall be made publicly available. The artist shall protect the Guild, as the Guild shall protect the artist.

10% shall be designated towards the Open Art Guild creator fund. In the absence of a fund dedicated to redistribute the profits of the OAG, this percentage shall be donated to other members of the Guild, prioritising small creators. Alternatively, it may be directed towards the recruitment of new members to the Guild via donation and an invite. Proof of donation shall not be required, but the receiving artist(s) is(are) encouraged to declare in their own platform that the donation was received. The artist shall give to the Guild, as the Guild has given to the artist.

The artist shall continue to create Guild submissions for the duration of their membership, with a minimum of one submission per month in order to guarantee their continued support. The artist shall live off of labour, not property.

In return for these duties, the artist shall receive:

Permission to adapt, remix, or reuse any of the works in the Guild’s archive for their own derivative works, fan fiction, remixes, collages, or any sort of transformative application, provided dues and obligations are in order.

Protection of their intellectual property as part of the collective works of the Guild by the legal fund designated and sustained by all paying members, to prevent non Guild members from trying to exploit their works unauthorised.

If an artist strikes a deal for non-Guild adaptation, the proportional dues shall also be paid to the Guild fund and members by the non-Guild institution in charge. Said deal shall not be allowed an exclusivity clause, and all works derived from a Guild work shall follow through with their dues in perpetuity. If the non-Guild entity chooses to terminate the business relationship, all intellectual property rights over the adaptation shall irrevocably be granted to the Guild as compensation, guaranteeing the distribution to the creators and the legal fund, as well as the follow-through with whatever payment terms the Guild artist has agreed to.

No Guild artist shall prosecute another Guild artist for use of works under the OAG License, provided that the derivative work also follows the OAG License terms. If these terms are violated, amicable resolution shall be sought by both parties. If litigation becomes inevitable and compensation is required, said compensation will also require the 30% dues to fund the Guild and its members, no matter which way it sides. In no case shall an artist, Guild or non-Guild, be left without recourse.

If an artist becomes unable or unwilling to continue to pay their dues, the artist shall be given an option to suspend or cancel their membership. If a membership is suspended, the artist will be excluded from the creator fund until their dues are renewed. No compensation shall be required of the artist for the suspension period, and all protections other than the creator fund shall still apply. If a membership is cancelled, all works published by the artist under the OAG License shall automatically be granted a Creative Commons 4.0 License instead, in order to protect Guild members from litigation by non-Guild members.

Membership that has been cancelled shall be renewable at any time, provided that the former Guild artist has not engaged in predatory litigation against Guild member or the Guild itself. The Guild shall determine what constitutes predatory litigation on a case-by-case basis. Licenses that were lost during cancellation shall not be given back, as CC4.0 is irrevocable, but new works shall still qualify for OAG Licenses.

These protections shall not be conditional to the artist’s moral values or the content of the works created. All works that do not break the laws applicable to the jurisdiction from which they were submitted shall be treated with the same respect and granted the same rights and obligations, in perpetuity and throughout time and space within the known multiverse. The Guild shall not exist to police art, but to promote it.

Open Art Guild License Template

All submissions of Guild works and projects shall include the following legend, both in English and in the publication language when applicable. Point 4 may be omitted if the artist chooses not to submit the work for dataset training.

This work was created and published under the Open Art Guild license, and has been approved for reuse and adaptation under the following conditions:

For personal, educational and archival use, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, to all Guild members and non members.

For commercial use, provided redistribution guidelines of the Guild be followed, to all active Guild members.

For commercial use to non Guild members, provided any derivative works also fall under a publicly open license, with the explicit approval of the artist and proper redistribution of profit following the guidelines of the Guild.

For non commercial dataset training of open source generative art technologies, provided the explicit consent of the artist, proper credit and redistribution of profit in its entirety to the Guild.

Shall this work be appropriated by non Guild members without proper authorisation, credit and redistribution of profit, the non Guild entity waives their right to intellectual property over any derivative works, copyrights, trademarks or patents of any sort and cedes it to the Creative Commons, under the 4.0 license, irrevocably and unconditionally, in perpetuity, throughout time and space in the known multiverse. The Guild reserves the right to withhold trade relations with any known infractors for the duration its members deem appropriate, including the reversal of any currently standing contracts and agreements.

#Open Art Guild #OAG #intellectual property #copyright law #ip law #fair use #open source #creative commons #public domain #anti capitalist #worker solidarity #collective action #redistribution of wealth #class solidarity #late stage capitalism #wga strong #sag strike #anti ai #generative art #artificial intelligence #fan art #fandom

[feline-felon]

So this is an idea I've had for a while and I want to know if it's any good/already exists.

Given that Disney's already pushed copyright to lasting like a century or so, and that it'd probably take a whole lot of legal paperwork to undo all that, which wouldn't be that high on most politicians' priority lists, I feel like there should be something like "open source" but for intellectual property.

Essentially, you make a work of art (literature, movie, video-game, theatrical production, etc.), and then, if you want, you can put this onto a license where anyone who wants to can reproduce and redistribute their own stuff based on your work, with the stipulation that it must also fall under the same license; i.e. anyone can do the same thing to their derivative work, and so on.

For example, you come up with Count Jackula the pumpkin vampire and immediately put him into the public domain. Now, anyone can write and publish a story where our blood-sucking gourd teams up with fellow vampire and public domain icon, Count Dracula, to defeat Frankenstein's monster in a game of beer pong, or a romantic visual novel where you date a dashing young Jackula in a hot-pink suit on the planet Proxima Centauri b while an ensemble cast of OCs fight over his love, or whatever else comes to mind. Alternatively, if the author personally likes the concept of copyright in theory but thinks one million years is way too long, they can say, "Alright, Jackula's my exclusive IP for a much more reasonable ten years, then you can do with him as you please."

I did some quick googling and creative commons looks kinda like this, but as far as I'm aware it isn't used very much for publishing modern works (and I'm not entirely aware of the reasons why this is so, so if one of you people reading this are more knowledgeable on copyright law please let me know).

Reason I came up with this is that the thing that makes something like Dracula or Sherlock or Robin Hood a cultural icon that nearly everyone on the face of the earth knows about, is not just the author who made the art, but also the people who view it. If you write the best story in the world, but no-one ever reads it, then no one is gonna know about it. In a similar vein, if it weren't for people reading these stories and having a go at retelling and rewriting and remixing them, Dracula, Sherlock and Robin Hood would be nowhere near as famous as they are now. Art exists to be appreciated and enjoyed by people; that's the whole point to it's existence.

To create is divine... why should divinity belong only to those who hoard all the stories for themselves?

#does this seem like a good idea or no? #public domain #ip law #creative commons #on writing #writeblr #intellectual property #open source #count jackula #writing