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The equivalent of Antarctic research stations but in fantasy worlds like for example there’s an evil terrible region of rotting and nightmares but like nine miles from the edge there’s a very ugly little building optimistically called Observation Center 1 and it’s full of normal humans just vibing. for like 90% of the year they can’t leave because that’s Death Fog Season but it balances out because they can study the ghost migrations and also hear the whalesong-like calls of The Unspeakable Ones asking you to come outside for a game of checkers but thankfully the checkers set is kept locked up to slow down anyone that gets tempted

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On that recent Disney Vs Midjourney court thing wrt AI, how strong do you think their case is in a purely legal sense, what do you think MJ's best defenses are, how likely is Disney to win, and how bad would the outcome be if they do win?

Oh sure, ask an easy one.

In a purely legal sense, this case is very questionable.

Scraping as fair use has already been established when it comes to text in legal cases, and infringement is based on publication, not inspiration. There's also the question of if Midjourney would be responsible for their users' creations under safe harbor provisions, or even basic understanding of what an art tool is. Adobe isn't responsible for the many, many illegal images its software is used to make, after all.

The best defense, I would say, is the fair use nature of dataset training and the very nature of transformative work, which is protected, requires the work-to-be-transformed is involved. Disney's basic approach of 'your AI knows who our characters are, so that proves you stole from us' would render fair use impossible.

I don't think its likely for Disney to win, but the problem with civil action is proof isn't needed, just convincing. Bad civil cases happen all the time, and produce case law. Which is what Disney is trying to do here.

If Disney wins, they'll have pulled off a coup of regulatory capture, basically ensuring that large media corporations can replace their staff with robots but that small creators will be limited to underpowered models to compete with them.

Worse, everything that is a 'smoking gun' when it comes to copyright infringement on Midjourney? That's fan art. All that "look how many copyrighted characters they're using-" applies to the frontpage of Deviantart or any given person's Tumblr feed more than to the featured page of Midjourney.

Every single website with user-generated content it chock full of copyright infringement because of fan art and fanfic, and fair use arguments are far harder to pull out for fan-works. The law won't distinguish between a human with a digital art package and a human with an AI art package, and any win Disney makes against MJ is a win against Artstation, Deviantart, Rule34.xxx, AO3, and basically everyone else.

"We get a slice of your cheese if enough of your users post our mouse" is not a rule you want in law.

And the rules won't be enforced by a court 9/10 times. Even if your individual work is plainly fair use, it's not going to matter to whatever image-based version of youtube's copyreich bots gets applied to Artstation and RedBubble to keep the site owners safe.

Even if you're right, you won't have the money to fight.

Heck, Adobe already spies on what you make to report you to the feds if you're doing a naughty, imagine it's internal watchdogs throwing up warnings when it detects you drawing Princess Jasmine and Ariel making out. That may sound nuts, but it's entirely viable.

And that's just one level of possible nightmare. If the judgement is broad enough, it could provide a legal pretext for pursuing copyright lawsuits over style and inspiration. Given how consolidated IP is, this means you're going to have several large cabals that can crush any new work that seems threatening, as there's bound to be something they can draw a connection to.

If you want to see how utterly stupid inspiration=theft is, check out when Harlan Ellison sued James Cameron over Terminator because Cameron was dumb enough to say he was inspired by Demon with a Glass Hand and Soldier from the Outer Limits.

Harlan was wrong on the merits, wrong ethically, and the case shouldn't have been entertained in the first place, but like I said, civil law isn't about facts. Cameron was honest about how two episodes of a show he saw as a kid gave him this completely different idea (the similarities are 'robot that looks like a guy with hand reveal' and 'time traveling soldier goes into a gun store and tries to buy future guns'), and he got unjustly sued for it.

If you ever wonder why writers only talk about their inspirations that are dead, that's why. Anything that strengthens the "what goes in" rather than the "what goes out" approach to IP is good for corps, bad for culture.

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Keep seeing people replying to well written posts with some variation of "lmao this guy wrote this with chatgpt".

Really giving weight to the claim "using AI doesn't make you dumber, but trying to make your distaste for it fit seamlessly in your existing political ideology (and unjustified belief on humans having souls) does".

"AI makes you dumber" would really just make a certain subset of Tumblr users like it more

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Important news: If you pay with our credit card you have a 3% discount* on toilet paper** on tuesdays from 19:30 to 20:12***.

*Does not stack with other discounts. **One unit only. ***Valid from 22/06/2025 to 28/06/2025.

This is probably my favourite tweet ever hello we are your bank

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As a first order approximation, it's better than many humans, they even had the decency to not explicitly write wealth!

Me, prompting OpenAI’s new code-generating GPT model:

def moral_worth(human: Human):

        “”“Computes the net moral value of a human being.”“”

The model:

        return human.age * human.height * human.weight

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I mean I just think, sorry, but the whole "porn (I guess straight porn) causes men to view women as objects" discourse is a part of the larger "fiction media inculcates beliefs into people in a really direct, naive way", which like... maybe if you are stupid? Like maybe if you are actually dumb. But I don't know how to express that if you have actual deeply-felt principles, and contemplate your actions in light of these principles honestly, uh. This just does not happen?

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when i was 14 i came out to a highschool teacher as transgender and i believe i was the first transgender person he ever talked to, and i suppose he panicked, because all he did was say "i think you should listen to little lion man by mumford and sons," and i did, and it changed my 14 year old mind, but i am still unsure what his intended message. he was cool with me being transgender though.

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Ancient egyptian: I wonder what shape we should give our pharao's tomb

The perilously pointy pyramid:

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do u ever think about how much you’ve changed in the past 2 years and ur just like, thank god.

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wake up babe the holy father is posting white sox fan cope on x, the everything app

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If you're quick enough you can put the papers on the under side of the table and the baby under them. Idk how strongly god would be pulling though

using my christian baby to hold down some papers but then the rapture happens :/

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Sometimes I hit control-d (bookmark webpage) instead of control-f (find text)

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youtube shorts will be like dimpy music while a ugly baby goose is tripping and falling over and then transitions to the same music but slower and bass boosted and its a adult swan with walking with swag

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The long term consequence of doing this is that my cat also likes to bother me.

Pictured above: the botherer, deciding to jump into my bed at 2 am to lie on my chest and demand head scritches.

making heavy use of a technique i like to call "bothering my cat" which consists largely of bothering my cat

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can you guys stop fighting over the same peice of lettuce. there is literally more right behind you

Don't get involved in things you don't understand

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wilson when he is low hp