YES...this is making the fast rounds thru the artists that I follow on Twitter.

The idea sounds nice but invisible changes can usually be ruined pretty easily. It's common for the intentions of imperceptibly small changes to be ruined by things like scaling an image up or down a few pixels, adding an imperceptibly small amount of noise, or even just saving as a jpeg. The fact that they didn't touch on this issue at all makes me skeptical that it can combat those common simple methods of defeat.

I really don't see this problem ever going away. This is going to be a constant back and forth battle for the rest of time, just like viruses and anti-virus.

Well, that's just it?

You can't "unpoison" the image by using those techniques. If anything, it would only make the poison even more aggressive.

The techniques you describe are very effective at destroying steganography, however. If you rescale an image with a concealed message in it, that message can be corrupted.

It's really hard for me being so against copyright and IP, when folks keep demanding that ideas be the exclusive property of individuals.

I've tried arguing about it with folks, but they just get too angry over the thought of not having the ability to threaten to sue someone if they misrepresent their OC or something, no matter what else they agree with me on.

Do you really think it's unethical to use art without someone's permission? They're not even distributing copies of the art, just using it as reference.

It's a multi-phased issue.

1. They aren't asking. At all. That's theft, plain and simple. Just putting it on the internet doesn't automagically make it public domain. It has to be marked as such, like with the Creative Commons system.

2. They are using it to train AI to replace artists entirely. Instead of having to hire the artist, negotiate with the artist, engage in the creative process, go back and forth through the iterative process, and pay for each piece on an individual basis, they are using AI to eliminate all those steps. They pay one big price for a machine that can just look at any art style, then create new material based on that style. Then, in order to recoup the cost of the initial purchase, they farm out additional works to anyone who wants them. Instead of going to Toonvasion, LockheedSkunk, FluxBlush or Trubbol, and paying $80, $70, $50 and/or $50 respectively, you can go to AIThief.com and pay just $19.99 to get an "original artwork", in the style of whatever artist you like.

That's precisely what the screenwriters and other unions demanded in their latest union strike. They placed specific clauses in their contracts that studios could NOT use AI to create anything at all. No art, no scripts, no characters, nothing at all. And those demands didn't come out of unfounded fears, either.

Now, don't get me wrong? Copyright and IP LAWS in this country and others are horribly broken. Those laws are designed to limit the ability of individuals to profit off their work unless they sign away their rights and join a Megacorp. Such as saying, "Copyright should only last 20 years, then it becomes public domain." That's great on the surface, but the entire industry would have to be revamped to remove the advantage of the existing power structure.

I've seen demo CDs of bands in music stores where the band tried to bypass the megacorp, and I thought they were really cool. I bought the CD and enjoyed the music. But they never hit mainstream until they joined a megacorp 12 years past the date they first created the album. So great, the band only gets to enjoy (an entirely theoretical) 8 years of profit instead of 20? Not what I would call very fair, really.

Ultimately, the decision of copyright and IP should be in the hands of the creator, and whoever the creator agrees to sell/donate/lease their work to, if they choose to do so. A perfect example of this is Woody Guthrie.

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.

I definately agree that the entire industry should be revamped. Folks did a bad thing establishing copyright and intellectual property as things, and as a result industries were built around them that people depend on. If we just pull the rug out, they're gonna fall, and that's not good. But acting like intellectual property is a good idea really bothers me, because I think it's unethical and harmful.

Your first point there is that they're not asking, but why should they need to? Why should you have legal control over what someone else creates, even if they're making a copy of what you made? If I make a copy of something, or mimic something, I'm not taking anything, I'm making a new thing. The cake didn't move, there are now two cakes.

I'm sympathetic with artists, don't get me wrong, but all the artists we know and like are already standing on all the other artists who couldn't make it. Sure, money going to AI art programs might have gone to living artists, but what about the living artists who aren't able to get enough comissions to live off of? What about the artists that were popular but not popular enough? It's like any business. There's competition, and not everybody is going to be competitive. If you don't like this cut-throat economic system, neither do I. We should change it, instead of letting people starve in the streets because they can't find work. So much work to be done in this world, but no jobs. So much food, but nobody can afford it. So much space, but you're not allowed to live there.

It's bad enough that people own all the land and resources, and we have to pay them for the priveledge to use those things, but folks want to own ideas too, right? You know the current copyright and IP system is broken, but it's not something that can or should be fixed. Nobody should own ideas. You know about the insulin cartel in the United States, right? You know about the Cheese Caves? Art and music are valuable, no doubt, but it's not the having that is important but the creation. Right now, the system is set up so that you don't get anything for creating art, you get it for selling copies. Most artists aren't salesmen, they're artists, so they need salesmen to help, and the salesmen are naturally really good at economics and manipulating people, aren't they? With this system, there's no way that the majority of artists aren't going to be taken advantage of.

The way I see it, you shouldn't be rewarded for what you've done, or what you own. You should be rewarded for what you're doing. I really like the idea of crowd-patronage, though right now it's hobbled by old systems and old money interests. Still, it's a solvable problem, I think. It's something I'm trying to help with. If you're doing something worthwhile, people can pay you to keep doing it. I think the best way right now would be to split out fund pools to a bunch of folks, but there's no system in place to do it. You go to Patreon or one of their competitors, you have a pretty high minimum you can charge folks, and they generally can only pay into one artist at a time. There's too many artists for folks to support them all, so they end up supporting none. Those artists are doing their own thing anyways. But what if all the people who pay nothing because they can't pick, could just say something like, "Split this $20, $40, $60 a month between these hundred folks I want to support each month."? The artists would only be getting pennies or less from each person, but it would open the market to so many more people to contribute!

Patreon's explanation is that they have to charge at least a certain amount to cover the transaction fees, but they're not doing a transaction for every transfer. If you support several folks, that's one transfer for all of them, and when they get their payment, it's one transfer from everyone supporting them, no matter the level.

Since there's no financial service that does this, I looked into it, to see what would need to be done. You'd either have to found a bank or credit union, or convince one or more of them to do it on their own accord. That's not impossible, but it's too much for just me. I'm also disabled as all fuck and I've been struggling to make myself do anything to help change systems or offer alternatives. Writing this journal entry right now is the most work I've been able to do on that subject in months.

Since the financial shift is too much for me right now, I've been trying to do something smaller scale. After the Twitter/X thing, a ton of artists who had been depending on Twitter were cast adrift, and they've been largely avoiding open platforms and favoring other corporate monoliths like BlueSky. I even know some artists that are still primarily on Twitt-X. I want to help make open platforms more accessible and usable for non-tech folks. There's this site https://indieweb.org/ with a lot of good tech for connecting disparate communities. You can bridge stuff like the Fediverse with most of the monoliths, and even places like art sites, like FA here or DeviantArt. I'm also looking into bridging asynchronous chat apps like Discord, Telegram and Slack. Turns out you can do that with Matrix, and there's a handful of Matrix client options too. It's a LOT though, and hard for normal folks. I want to make it NOT hard for normal folks. I also want to help people have their own sites or archives that they can mirror out to places like this automatically. Artists aren't always techies, and the ones that aren't are often stuck in just one place, again like Twitt-X, because it's too much work for them to put it other places. They don't have what they need to even use something like PostyBirb, though the reasons vary. That's all something I have the technical skills and know-how to do, but my disabilities have been keeping me from actually acting on these plans. It's been driving me more crazy than usual this year.

The reason all that ties back into the intellectual property/copyright and crowdpatronage/paying artists thing is that I'm inspired by another artist I know, Chocolate Kitsune. They had the bright idea to cut out the middle-man of Patreon or SubscribeStar and go straight to Stripe, the payment processor for those services. They set up their own crowdfunding, here: https://support.the.choco.one/

I could be helping others do that, I say, and I can't explain what's holding me back. I haven't been able to find a way around my disabilities. I don't understand why others aren't doing this, either, it's not like the idea is a secret, and it's definately possible to do.

I think that's enough now. The only other thing I want to say is that I don't like how our society throws people out to die if they can't make money for whatever reason. We need a real safety net, and we need to open the ways for people to work for themselves back up. Most of all we need to work together, because there's only one world and we have to share it.

If you read all that, I appreciate it. It was a lot. At any rate, I'm glad I was finally able to share the idea again. Maybe I can get some real work done past my disability barriers.

I read it, and it's both extensive and comprehensive.

There are a few things I don't agree with? Like a creator not having any say in what is done with their work. I don't agree with that at all, else why would anyone create anything, save for personal amusement? That's fine and dandy for the idle rich, but to an atomic physicist with six figures in student debt, living on ramen, they've gotta be sure that their formula for cold fusion isn't just going to be stolen by a MegaCorp, and not be paid anything at all.

The insulin cartel should be illegal. People will try to argue that pharmaceutical companies would never develop new drugs if they weren't allowed to profit off their inventions, and to a degree, that's true? But those same people all-too-conveniently "forget" to mention that the federal government paid HALF the development cost in grants, endowments and tax breaks. Those are OUR tax dollars, dammit!

The Cheese Caves concept is an interesting one.

Nobody is telling people or companies that they cannot make blue cheese, or parmesan cheese. They are saying those people and/or companies cannot call their product Stilton Blue Cheese unless it came from the caves of Stilton, England. Likewise parmesan; you can only call it parmesan cheese. But if you want to call it Parmesan Reggiano, then it has to have been made in Parma and/or Reggio, Italy.

That's something I absolutely support, 100%. The mold in Stilton caves is unique. It doesn't grow anywhere else, and they've certainly tried. The Parmesan Reggiano that comes from those provinces in Italy tastes completely different from anything made anywhere else. It's richer, sharper, with a much more powerful aroma, texture and color.

So the concept of Protected Designation of Origin is 100% a valuable thing in my book. Not only does it allow the producers in those areas to make an honest profit, it brings those profits BACK to their origins. It also helps protect against unscrupulous pirates who use dangerous substitutes to make a quick buck off unsuspecting consumers.

Anyone wanna buy pet food or baby formula made in China???

As for the rest, I agree, the system does need changes. Some big, some small.

But one thing you have no choice but to accept, and find a way to work with, is that until humans are immortal, then Death will always be our most intimate lover and life-long companion. And so long as Death is our first and last spouse, we will always have the inescapable imperative to make our feathers shinier, grow the prettiest pelt, the thickest skull, and the fattest wallet; all to prove our worth to each other.

Thanks for reading it Ion. I was in a weird mental space when I wrote it. I've been a mess the last couple weeks, more than my usual problems. Somehow that led to me being able to write that to you, or anybody, when I've been trying to put it down in a more comprehensive way for a while now and just forgetting myself.

I try not to just complain about the issues I see in the world, but offer solutions, and try to make them happen. It doesn't always work out though, especially with my issues.

Anyways I'm in a different weird mental space now, so please forgive me if I'm odd in unusual ways. I'll try to go over what you said.

So the first part there, about creators not having control over the copies of their work. You don't need to have control over people making copies of your work. Your work is the doing, not the selling. Instead of paying for copies, folks should be paying to have it done, and to have more done.

I have a lot of complicated ideas about economics, both what we could do in our current situation and possible directions we could go in the future. It'd be a long talk and I don't think it's a good idea to go into that at the same time, since I want to focus on copyright and IP ethics.

I don't think the idea that folks won't invent or develop new medicines or technologies if it's not profitable is true. These are neccesary things. It's like saying folks won't farm if you don't pay them. They'll farm for themselves and their loved ones at the very least, and folks tend to organize. That's how we got civilization in the first place. It's also important to point out here that not everyone is the same. We have different needs and wants and goals and values. Some folks will put everything on the line for other people, in ways that some others wouldn't believe anyone could do. Some folks will give their own life for another, and just the same, some folks will work even for folks who can't or won't work in traditional ways.

With our current system, we're kinda stuck trying to make money to feed and house ourselves and our loved ones, but it doesn't really have to be that way. Fixing our economic system is a seperate problem from copyright and IP, though. I think the short version is that I think people should be rewarded for working to make progress and improvements, not as a reward for having made progress and improvements. Granted, if you're not having success, you might be asked to find something else to do, but I also think society has a responsibility to ensure the life, liberty and happiness of all its members.

Now onto the cheese caves. I did not know about those cheese caves, those weren't the ones I was talking about. That's really facinating. So, if you don't like the Insulin Cartel for their use of your Tax Dollars, you're not going to like learning about the American Cheese Caves.

There's no shortage of videos or articles about them if you know what to look for, I'll link a youtube vid or two here.

https://youtu.be/VRCNpcmxi6Q
https://youtu.be/qPuY0oDGeiw

Those were a couple interesting looking ones that came up when I searched "american cheese caves" so I'm sure you can find more, or text articles if you go looking.

I'll try to do a short version here.

After WW2, Dairy use was way down. Dairy farms were going out of business. They could have switched to other farm work, but the U.S. government wouldn't have it. Ever since then, the United States of America has been overproducing dairy products, heavily subsidized by the government. The government buys this cheese. Some of it is given to schools, called "Government Cheese" and some is sold of course. Most of it is turned into cheese and stored in the American Cheese Caves. These are played out mines that have been converted into bulk storage, where the United States stores an incredible amount of dairy products that you and all Americans are paying for, so that the poor Dairy Farmers don't go out of business.

In order to move this excess dairy that the U.S. government continues to invest in, they've developed all sorts of misinformation campaigns. Milk does a body good! You need to drink milk for healthy bones! The calcium is important all through your life! That sort of thing.

It's a pretty big waste of resources, overall. I was going to go into it but you probably already see what I mean.

I do think it's a good idea to keep something like the copyright office around, but instead of giving people the legal power to control how and when copies of their products are made, just keep a record of who made what and when. That way folks still get credit, just not control, and likewise, you can keep your tracking the origin of things.

I'm struggling to keep myself on task here, my mental health is still a mess.

Earlier this year it occured to me that I should look around online to see if any others have similar views to me on IP and copyright, and if they explain it better or have other ideas to add. I made a record of the videos on YouTube I found, in particular, so I'll share those here.

13 Years Ago (37:29) - https://youtu.be/tGUV79yuZ5A
4 Years Ago (14:13) - https://youtu.be/QVkeJI2feyQ
3 Years Ago (32:43) - https://youtu.be/HsNVKetbFDY
10 Months Ago (18:23) - https://youtu.be/TWYHmkmctb8

I don't like that idea of his. It's going to ruin my idea of artists taking AI art and making real art based on it.

Ha ha ha! Oh man, that would be sweet justice, now wouldn't it?

Then again, if the person who initiated the creation of the AI art doesn't claim it as their own, does it fall under public domain? Would they even care if you used it for that purpose? Would they even have any sort of argument if they *did* care?

Exactly.

People should just blatantly trace it.