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AI China The Courts

AI-Written Articles Are Copyright-Protected, Rules Chinese Court (worldipreview.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the setting-precedence dept.
A Chinese court has ruled that AI-generated works are entitled to copyright protection, in a win for tech giant Tencent. From a report: According to state media outlet China News Service (CNS), a court in Shenzhen this month ruled in favour of Tencent, which claimed that work created by its Dreamwriter robot had been copied by a local financial news company. The Shenzhen Nanshan District People's Court ruled that, in copying the Dreamwriter article, Shanghai Yingxun Technology Company had infringed Tencent's copyright. Dreamwriter is an automated writing system created by Tencent and based on the company's own algorithms. According to the reports, Shanghai Yingxun reposted a financial report written by Dreamwriter in August 2018 without Tencent's permission. The question of whether AI-generated works are protectable under copyright law have been the subject of much debate.
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AI-Written Articles Are Copyright-Protected, Rules Chinese Court More

AI-Written Articles Are Copyright-Protected, Rules Chinese Court

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  • Whatever copyright means... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mark_reh ( 2015546 ) on Friday January 10, 2020 @12:49PM (#59607010) Journal

    ...in China...

    • Exactly. My first thought was: this has nothing to do with the principle involved and everything to do with who paid what bribe to what official for which ruling in favor of which specific Chinese company (in a dispute with another Chinese company).

    • Just like the USA, its meaning has changed and will continue to change from this [ipwatchdog.com] to that [eff.org]. "Copyright violation" is not a patent of China, neither "patent trolling" a patent of the USA. Get down from your moral high horse.

      • Uh what? Can you please ask your group leader to translate that for us?

      • Ivan, patents were never trade secrets.

        That's the whole point of patents; if not for the patent, they would try to keep it secret.

        I have a feeling the Russian side of the google translate round-trip is ending up as "intellectual property" for all these different specific terms.

      • NOT "just like the USA". At all.

        Copyright did not even exist in China until recently, and then only because other countries pressured them into it.

        It still doesn't have squat for patent protections.

        They do what they want, when they want. Their laws in these regards are a laughingstock.

    • Seriously... how brainwashed are you kids today?

      Copyright is when you go "sign" a creator to work for you, paying him each time he works, but *you*, instead of earning your money with actual work, like a honest person, magically start treating this service business as a *manufacturing* business, creating a "product"! You then "sell" that "product", asking money for every "item".
      Nevermind that that "item" is just a copy. Let's just gloss over that information is not a physical object itself. (That would be t

  • Great way to cut down on freedom of speech on a massive scale. Good thing that US courts have decided that copyright requires some human content.

  • You bought a copy of After Dark Screen Saver.

    You broadcast that screen saver on public TV. Do you need to pay After Dark Royalties?

    How about if your broadcast software fails and you are broadcasting your Windows 10 Desktop should you pay Microsoft Royalties for showing Microsoft Art?

  • What? (Score:2)

    by tsa ( 15680 )

    Putting he words âcopyright,â(TM) âcourt,â(TM) and âChineseâ(TM) in one sentence gives it a very high amount of internal stress.

  • Interesting view point for the "People's Republic" to take.

    I mean if a machine (capital) can literally produce literary content that is than owned by the original capital owner of the AI... Well that does not leave much room any workers to derive any economic opportunity does it.

  • Any work created on behalf of a company should be copyrightable by that company so I'm not sure why that would be considered unique here.
    OTOH - AI is going to tend to create based on a common pattern like a recipe. So even if the work is created, if everyone uses AI to create articles they're all going to "written" nearly identically making copyrights tricky if both parties said they used AI to create them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nadass ( 3963991 )

      Any work created on behalf of a company should be copyrightable by that company so I'm not sure why that would be considered unique here. OTOH - AI is going to tend to create based on a common pattern like a recipe. So even if the work is created, if everyone uses AI to create articles they're all going to "written" nearly identically making copyrights tricky if both parties said they used AI to create them.

      So much wrong here...

      Company can "own" copyrights, but not all property (or work) owned by a company is eligible for copyright protection.

      Work created "on behalf of" is licensed to the company by the creators, who have their own sovereign (and freedom of use) rights.

      Computer systems (e.g. "A.I.") do not possess sovereign rights; they are programs/tools of their users. This whole article is absurd because it removes that simple fact from the equation. Further, the computer system is given full credit -- no

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

        That isn't what the OP is saying. What is the difference if a work is produced by a person or a computer program? It is still potentially copyrightable and owned by the company.

      • Work created "on behalf of" is licensed to the company by the creators, who have their own sovereign (and freedom of use) rights.

        Yeah, no - you have no idea what you're talking about.

  • Why are they ripping off the work of human beings every day, but expecting people to respect the work of robots?

    • You mean like all the people on here who rip off the work of human beings by using torrents or Pirate Bay?

  • Well,... Shakespeare is well out of copyright protection now.
  • Copyright protections only last 30 days... and state-run entities are not subject to restrictions... and this ruling is not enforceable beyond the jurisdiction of this particular judge.
  • If copyright protection elevates a domain ownership claim, so does domain squatting now become a legal practice and all domain squatters may not only extort for the rights to use a name but also license out copyright fees also!?

  • >> a court in Shenzhen this month ruled in favour of Tencent

    Wouldn't expect anything else.

    But why should the rest of the world respect China's version of copyright, when they are unwilling to do the same?

    We'll see how it shakes out, if China ever produces something unique and worth copying,

  • For the lawsuit? Welcome to our new machine overlords.
  • https://libraryofbabel.info/ [libraryofbabel.info] I suppose this isn't AI perse but it will find you any English sentence because everything already exists in the library of babel. Site is damn old too

  • No matter what China thinks

  • No more enslaving artists to do actual work for a one-time chump change payment!
    Finally, all entertainment will be *literally* formulaic!
    Now we can steal from our victi... I mean customers, without anyone doing any work *at all* in return! They might have to work hard all day, to make those 100 bucks ... while we can just click "generate" ... doing zero work whatsoever ... *And we can steal all their money!!* Mwahahahahaa!

    And get this: We will even make THEM make the copy! Aka "streeeaaming". *And tell them

  • Two words you never expect to hear in the same sentence. So Chinese robot work is protected, but any overseas IP is up for grabs (and by grabs I mean profit making endeavors) - yeah, that sounds like China.

  • Pretty sure they should be using a full name, Al could be anyone, even Al Bundy.

    On the next episode of IlIlIlI when fonts suck IlIlIlI - is that a zero?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Pencils down, everybody. Tencent will own all possible future literary works to be created by human beings, so don't even bother trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

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