I don’t think you can separate art and interpretation and critique, but they are often done by different parties. You don’t have to have an opinion on everything. Fair enough. I thought your opinion was that you opposed the misrepresentation of what a piece of art was about, e.g. My Little Pony is about x not y. I merely wanted to know the nature and extent of that opinion.

I agree on the 50 Shades front but am surprised—she took existing characters and wrote a new story around them, which both precludes the original author from ever writing anything in that vein and changes how those characters are seen. The facade of a name change is just that in my opinion.

I’ll admit that I’m confused as to the scenario where you were using MLP AI but it’s not my business! If it was not in a fan fic vein though, I’ll point out that while you take issue with the AI including non-canon material in its MLP training data and thus being non-representative, the owners of the MLP intellectual property would take issue with the use of their material and being too representative. Copyright is not used to preserve sanctity, it is used to monopolize profit opportunity.

The Babel program is merely representative of the actual library of Babel. Read the story. It’s short and it’s thoughtful.

Consent is a valuable concept, not a magical one. If we declare that all creators own rights to their creations for 500 years who cares? Most everything created will be forgotten long before then, people who have never heard of Rachel Ingalls will create countless stories about a mute person meeting a sea creature, and she won’t have a thing to say about it because she’s dead, and she doesn’t seem to have said anything about Del Toro making his movie about the same damn thing. Or perhaps she doesn’t have access to the funds to fight for her claim to the story? Since the other issue is that copyright only protects people and corporations who sue every fractional and imagined impingement upon their property, and it’s not always up to you as the creator what that process looks like. If you get hurt in an accident your insurance company will probably sue whoever hurt you for damages, and likewise if you publish a book through Tantor Media and someone writes a thoughtful continuation you bet Tantor’s not asking for consent.

Look at Star Wars. George Lucas creates a smash hit trilogy. People love it. They write tons of licensed material in-universe. He writes three more movies. They aaaare not a smash hit, but hey. People keep writing more tales in the extended universe. Who does this hurt? Fans get more material, writers make livings, Lucas makes money without having to do more work. But most creators do not make it so easy to create derivative works. Either they create more or their universe and characters die, and for whatever reason, that’s completely up to them. The absurd length of copyright claims ensures the magic their audience found in their work will whither away by the time someone who is willing to fan the flame is legally permitted to do so. Firefly will never resolve. Scavengers Reign is over, and if we catch you trying to finish the story you’ll face jail time. Westworld isn’t just unfinished, it’s functionally gone. It has been taken away. And those works were genuinely gargantuan undertakings and there is no way that was the desire of everyone involved.

• Nothing comes to be something from nothing. Stephen King’s It has many things in common such as the seemingly sentient balloon with Ray Bradbury’s Something This Way Wicked Comes, who took its title from Macbeth, and says he was only really convinced to write it by his friend Gene Kelly—I do not think there is something inherently immoral about this iterative process of inspiration, creation, interpretation, amalgamation and recreation. I do think there is something inherently immoral about taking claiming “the buck stops here” and arguing for the total independence of your own work. It’s all borrowed from our experiences, and our experiences are borrowed from the universe, and when we die no one should really give a shit about whether or not we would consent to something if we were, you know, not dead. Stephen King may have a legal claim to It but it is not his work alone. Maybe a strong case for outsider art being unique could convince me otherwise but I do not believe we can come to a point of finality where, after we and everyone we’ve learned from and everyone who has fed us, led us, derided and inspired us has worked on something, after we’ve taken our materials from the planet and our inspiration from nature, we can say “it’s finished, and no one else may touch it.”

Bonus material.

Interesting. I hope you don’t mind me distilling that into a few bullet points.

• you don’t like anyone opening your creation up to interpretation.

If Da Vinci felt that the Mona Lisa was a happy painting, would he have a right to stop others from finding her fascinating because her expression is somewhat ambiguous?

If that’s a bit too Minority Report, what about writing about her being sad, like a lot of journalists and critics have?

What about when they earn income by writing about it?

• You don’t think derivative works should compete with the original

Fifty Shades of Grey was born on Twilight fan fiction forums. Erika Mitchell/E.L. James originally used the names Edward and Bella before editing and publishing work was done. There’s a lot of reader overlap—should she be allowed to earn money on this work without Stephanie Meyers’s consent?

This also offers a second example of reinterpreting characters. What right does she have to change Edward from a protective to an openly exploitative individual? Is it okay because she changed the names?

A quote:

I am ok with others making thoughtful stories that don’t mess with my characters and some world aspects

If you believe you should have rights in perpetuity to this work and protection from ideas that damage your work’s image, what happens when someone purchases those rights from you, like how musical artists sell the rights to their musical catalogs?

Do those rights still last in perpetuity?

May the individual of corporation who purchased those rights interpret and rule out damaging ideas as they see fit? May they rule out things previously seen as acceptable use by the creator?

If you don’t approve of sales of rights, what about inheritance by estate? What about their rights to further interpretation?

Another quote:

I often independently come to conclusions other logical people may also come to. I wouldn’t know whether they have tho because I forge my own path.

If you independently dream up a scientist who creates a humanoid being out of various body parts, brings it to life, and is then horrified by its appearance and the responsibilities he has toward it, doesn’t Mary Shelley still have the rights to the idea? Can’t she shoot down your right to publish, or your right to recognition? What would be your method of proving it was an independent idea?

Does it matter? Should you receive praise for an idea you had that someone else has previously had (200+ years ago!)?

Along the same vein, my use of a smiley face last comment was clearly derivative and meant to imitate you in this moment, but I’m much older than you, and I wrote that way far earlier than you ever did, so can you still claim it was an imitation of your writing style?

Are you familiar with the Library of Babel as a story? As a concept? An author was inspired by Borges and made a website in 2015 that generates random combinations of letters and punctuation on command. You can “search” through the library and it will find places where the algorithm generates, at random and without intention, exactly what you wrote. People can bookmark their best finds. You can find the first page of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone here.

Now, if JK Rowling said she no longer wished for her works to be published, may we use this website to generate her works anew?

And in that vein, what rights would she have to withhold the material? I’m sure she does not like me because I’m not a TERF. But I enjoyed reading the books anyway. She has created a cultural keepsake. What right do we have to continue to enjoy her works despite her? For our children to imagine new adventures?

• You actually do write fanfiction, and use AI to generate content in the style of the original work

That’s just amusing. No notes.

Just looking for a bit of intellectual rigor is all :)

You’re familiar with the realm of fan fiction, I assume? What’s your stance on their right to write?

Are you sure you have a right to be making this argument? Lots of corporations and individuals have already argued in favor of longer copyright duration.

Idk, I don’t care about powerful, I care about convenient size and convenient battery life. Websites should be websites and text messaging should be text messaging. I hate that every time battery capacity improves there’s a new bloated web experience that breaks real scrolling and new animated Memojis that scan every pore on your face to properly convey how anxious you’re feeling or whatever.

A lot of core concepts in Christianity are incompatible with being white in America. It’s a religion for the oppressed being practiced by the oppressors. They’re the Pharisees. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to figure out how to see themselves as the lepers and the Jews.

Well yeah, the people who want a small reliable phone are unlikely to replace them every year for no discernible reason. Cue more articles and comments about how there’s no sale data to support the idea that people want small phones! The odds are stacked against us.