Copyright of a white pixel We had a theoretical discussion on copyright and couldn't agree on an answer. Please keep in mind that we purposely ignored common sense and were just thinking about the hard legal implications. Say there is a copyrighted picture. Making a copy of that picture falls under the protection of the copyright, even if it is not a perfect copy, even if the quality of the copy is significantly worse than the original. Is there a limit to this? Or in other words, if I reduce the color resolution of the copy to 1 bit (meaning, only black or white are possible) and the spacial resolution to one square pixel, is this still a copy of the original for the purposes of copyright? If so, isn't a white pixel a copyrighted version of half of the world's copyrighted content? If not, where is the limit where copyright vanishes?
US law simply prohibits copying, not possession of a pixel. If you copy 90% of a work, you are still copying, infringing on the creators exclusive right. Same is true if you copy 20%, and so on. The pertinent first question is, how do the courts decide if there has been copying? This is a factual matter decided on the basis of preponderance of evidence. Defense will argue, very persuasively, that it is more likely that the presence of an identical pixel in two works is purely coincidental (likewise, the appearance of the word &quot;is&quot; in two texts is purely coincidental&quot;). We can imagine future technology with megabyte pixels, where the particular &quot;white&quot; pixel is unique to the original work, and no reasonable fact-finder could hold that the later word accidentally stumbled onto exactly that pixel. The second thing that has to be established is that the degree of copying &quot;matters&quot;, starting with Perris v. Hexamer, so that to be infringing, the degree of copying must be more than minimal. Courts have long relied on the notion of &quot;substantial similarity&quot;, where you know it when you see it, that is, ordinary observation would cause it to be recognized as having been taken from another work. There is no bright line drawn by Congress of SCOTUS regarding how much copying is &quot;material&quot;. It is extremely unlikely that a reasonable line could be drawn that would render single-pixel copying &quot;material&quot;.
No This is not a copyright issue as you are not making a copy (save for a transient one in your cache which is allowed). You are allowed to record it for personal time-shifting as that is fair use/dealing. The broadcaster either owns the copyright (unlikely) or has a contract with the copyright holder that allows them to broadcast it. Assuming the broadcaster chooses or is not permitted to subsequently stream it, if you miss it, you miss it. Your contract with the broadcaster is over. Their obligation was to make the broadcast available to you, yours was to pay for it - nobody is obliged to watch it. You can, of course, seek the content from any other legal sources, complying with their terms including payment if necessary.
Algorithms are not subject to copyright. A particular implementation can be copyrighted, but an algorithm itself can't be copyrighted. Someone re-implementing the algorithm with their own code has done nothing to give you copyright claims against their work, and is not bound by any software license you use. That's what patents are for.
No The artwork is all covered by copyright that, in Japan, lasts for 70 years after the death of the last artist. As employees of Squaresoft, the artists don’t own the copyright, Squaresoft (or it’s heirs or assignees do). So, the copyright currently vests with the successor company Square Enix. They are the only organisation with the right to make or licence derivatives. While they currently don’t want to, they might in 10 or 20 or 40 years and any work you made would damage the profitability of that hypothetical project. So it isn’t fair use. So you can’t do it.
You can report it to the publisher(s) Protection of copyright is a matter for the individual rights holder: some (I’m looking at you Disney) are vigilant, thorough and draconian in protecting their rights, others don’t care at all. Unless you are the rights holder it’s none of your business. In much the same way that the guy charging your neighbour for 4 hours gardening but being long gone in 2 isn’t. If you like your neighbour or feel duty bound to do something, you tell them and then leave it to them what they do with it. This is not a matter for the authorities as it doesn’t rise to the level of criminal copyright infringement. Just like the gardener above, this isn’t a crime.
To examine this further and answer your question, we need to look at Copyright (and fair use) as well as Defamation. Alas, I am unsure as to how taking legitimate headlines from around the world and attributing their source is 'fake news' - but I'll accept that it's 'fake news' for the purposes of exploring this topic. A lot of the potential (or motive) for a person or company to litigate against you will be context specific and detailed to how you have used their work and portray their journalists and characters - misquotes etc. As an exception to British copyright law, fair dealing is governed by Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which outlines three instance where fair dealing is a legitimate defence: If the use is for the purposes of research or private study; If it is used for the purposes of criticism, review or quotation; Where it is utilised for the purposes of reporting current events (this does not apply to photographs) However, where you may come into problems is: A statutory definition for fair dealing does not exist; it will always be a matter of fact, degree and interpretation in every fair use case. Nor is there a percentage or quantitative measure to determine fair dealing. The Intellectual Property Office lists the key factors used to determine the validity of whether a particular dealing with a work is fair as follows: Has the use of the work impacted negatively on the market for the original work? If the creator or owner has lost potential revenue through the re-use of their work, it is not likely to be fair. Was it reasonable and necessary to use the amount of work that was taken? Also: Fair use for parody, caricature or pastiche The UK copyright law on fair use of works for the purposes of creating a parody or pastiche is also listed in Section 30A, Schedule 2 (2A) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. References to all here. Guidance from the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) states that fair use needs to be “fair and proportionate” and does not protect an individual from any other rights an author may have. Those other rights may involve claiming defamation if this material creates fake news and uses the names of real journalists or companies etc - and if they allege that your AI fake news has caused serious harm in any way to their reputation - they could sue you for breach of the Defamation Act 2013. All of this is entirely contextual however as to how your AI might display or make fake news and how Google caches it and displays it - and if it could be portrayed as 'real' or believable for example. You are also doing this at a time where 'anti fake news' law is evolving... and even though you say it's fake news for AI experiment purposes - it's a growing field of concern for many. (see here) Copyright law is a vast and evolving area - and nothing is clear cut. It really depends if a major news company didn't like what you were doing and took exception to it and issued challenges on many areas of law based on that.
All of your works would be considered to be a derivative work. This is because your work, is based on the work of someone else's. A good test for this to see if something is a derivative work is to see whether the new work can effectively exist without the original. Most copyright laws worldwide are similar, thanks to the Berne Convention for copyrighted works. Since derivative works are normally a right that is exclusive to the copyright holder, you can't make such works without permission (generally through a license or expiry of copyright). So now, let's take a look: The Mona Lisa was made hundreds of years ago. It's definitely in the public domain. You're in no breach of copyright laws here. Yes, of course. Microsoft retains copyright on their icons, and possibly trademarks as well. However, they may have trademark guidance that allows you to use their icons - as long as you follow it. Likely the same as microsoft - you can assume it's similar for most large companies. Code is copyrighted as a literary work - the layout and visual aspect is copyrighted as an artistic work. That artist retains copyright, unless you obtain the work with a license, or the copyright is expired. If you create a derivative work, you infringe on their rights.
Per a decision of the US Copyright Office last month, AI generated images are not subject to copyright. That means you can use the generated images for any purpose you want1, but so can anyone else. However, the specific usage of a given image might be protected - so if you put a caption on the image and arrange it in the form of a comic (as the artist in that example did), that specific text and arrangement can be protected, but the underlying image can't be. Laws may differ elsewhere in the world, but that's the current stance in the US. 1 Subject to any appropriate laws, including any copyright laws which the new image itself may violate. Just because the image isn't protected itself doesn't mean that it can't infringe on someone else's copyrights. See the other answer for more details.