Hollywood Reporter: Disney, Fox and Paramount got a mixed decision on Wednesday in a case that tests Hollywood's liability for using a technology determined to be stolen to create photorealistic computer graphic effects in huge films including Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool and Night at the Museum. A federal judge has rejected the plaintiff's bold copyright claim, but won't dismiss assertions that the studios induced patent infringement nor committed trademark infringement.
3 comments:
I think that once a software is published and is available for contraction and use, except in extreme cases, the company that produced the software should have no say in what output is generated. In the case of intellectual property and facial recognition, to say that the software company has any rights in terms of the output generated is preposterous. If I draft a design in AutoCAD, does my design belong to Autodesk? No. The computed AIDED my design, it did not have any creative input. In terms of the software, the creative input comes exclusively from the director and actors and visual effects coders. The software merely gave the algorithms to create that output. I can understand a company being concerned that their watermark in the credits of a movie might indicate the company's endorsement of a movie instead of the producers trying to give credit to the software company. If a movie contained objectionable content I could understand, but at some point you just have to take credit for the work you've done.
This is an interesting example of the intersection between technology, art, and business. Here is a case of an Art company (Disney) that is using technology to make a product that will make profit for their shareholders. The dispute in this case seems to be a complex one that is for the patent attorneys to sort out. However, the impacts of this case could be far reaching. If the court rules that if a software does a majority of the work without user input, and thus the output should be owned by the programmer, then this would be a landmark issue. This would have wide ranging consequences for computer algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and data analytics software. There is a logic to both sides; however, I think Disney’s logic makes the most sense in this instance. If the output is deemed the property of the programmer, than an excel spreadsheet would be the property of microsoft and a doctored photoshop photo the property of Adobe. To use a different analogy: if a person designs a industrial machinery to produce car doors that just requires the auto-worker to press a few buttons to make the car doors, we would never claim that the car / car door (the output) is the property of the person that designed the machinery. Additionally, on an even more basic level, whilst the software for the CGI does most of the work, the specific end product would not have existed without Disney artists input telling the software what to produce.
As art and technology draw closer and closer together, it's fascinating to see the kinds of conflicts that arise from new fields and methods that never were even fathomed to be an issue before. It's also interesting because this whole lawsuit isn't necessarily about what you'd think at first glance - something about using CGI characters in films - and instead more similar to something many college artists are more familiar with, which is theft of artistic programs and technology. While many college artists pirate expensive programs to do work, and that's basically what this is about, albeit at a larger scale. I think it's going to be more and more important in the future of creative technology and CGI films for people to be more aware of the technology being used and how to properly credit the creators of not just the art being shown on screen but also the tech being used to create and generate those images.
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