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  "publishedAt": "2026-03-03T23:17:10.000Z",
  "site": "https://tumblr.sztupy.hu",
  "tags": [
    "mostlysignssomeportents",
    "https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/03/its-a-trap/#inheres-at-the-moment-of-fixation",
    "https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-copyright",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc._v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.",
    "https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/14/angels-and-demons/#owning-culture",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_notation",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_claims_on_Bikram_Yoga",
    "Keep reading"
  ],
  "textContent": "mostlysignssomeportents:\n\n> mostlysignssomeportents:\n>\n>> mostlysignssomeportents:\n>>\n>>> ALT\n>>>\n>>> **If you ’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:**\n>>>\n>>> **https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/03/its-a-trap/#inheres-at-the-moment-of-fixation**\n>>>\n>>> The Supreme Court has just turned down a petition to hear an appeal in a case that held that AI works can’t be copyrighted. By turning down the appeal, the Supreme Court took a massively consequential step to protect creative workers’ interests:\n>>>\n>>> https://www.theverge.com/policy/887678/supreme-court-ai-art-copyright\n>>>\n>>> At the core of the dispute is a bedrock of copyright law: that copyright is for humans, and humans alone. In legal/technical terms, “copyright inheres at the moment of fixation of a work of human creativity.” Most people – even people who work with copyright every day – have not heard it put in those terms. Nevertheless, it is the foundation of international copyright law, and copyright in the USA.\n>>>\n>>> Here’s what it means, in plain English:\n>>>\n>>> a) When a human being,\n>>>\n>>> b) does something creative; and\n>>>\n>>> c) that creative act results in a physical record; then\n>>>\n>>> d) a new copyright springs into existence.\n>>>\n>>> For d) to happen, a), b) and c) all have to happen first. All three steps for copyright have been hotly contested over the years. Remember the “monkey selfie,” in which a photographer argued that he was entitled to the copyright after a monkey pointed a camera at itself and pressed the shutter button? That image was _not_ copyrightable, because the monkey was a monkey, not a human, and copyright is only for humans:\n>>>\n>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute\n>>>\n>>> Then there’s b), “doing something creative.” Copyright only applies to _creative_ work, not work itself. It doesn’t matter how hard you labor over a piece of “IP” – if that work isn’t creative, there’s no copyright. For example, you can spend a fortune creating a phone directory, and you will get no copyright in the resulting work, meaning anyone can copy and sell it:\n>>>\n>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc._v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.\n>>>\n>>> If you mix a _little_ creative labor with the hard work, you can get a _little_ copyright. A directory of “all the phone numbers for cool people” can get a “thin” copyright over the _arrangement_ of facts, but such a copyright still leaves space for competitors to make many uses of that work without your permission:\n>>>\n>>> https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/14/angels-and-demons/#owning-culture\n>>>\n>>> Finally, there’s c): copyright is for _tangible_ things, not intangibles. Part of the reason choreographers created a notation system for dance moves is that the moves themselves aren’t copyrightable:\n>>>\n>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_notation\n>>>\n>>> The non-copyrightability of movement is (partly) why the noted sex-pest and millionaire grifter Bikram Choudhury was blocked from claiming copyright on ancient yoga poses (the other reason is that they are ancient!):\n>>>\n>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_claims_on_Bikram_Yoga\n>>>\n>>> Now, AI-generated works are certainly tangible (any work by an AI _must_ involve magnetic traces on digital storage media). The _prompts_ for an AI output can be creative and thus copyrightable (in the same way that notes to a writers’ room or from an art-director are). But the _output_ from the AI _cannot_ be copyrighted, because it is not a work of human authorship.\n>>>\n>>> This has been the position of the US Copyright Office from the start, when AI prompters started sending in AI-generated works and seeking to register copyrights in them. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist who had prompted an image generator to produce a bitmap, kept appealing the Copyright Office’s decision, seemingly without regard to the plain facts of the case and the well-established limits of copyright. By attempting to appeal his case all the way to the Supreme Court, Thaler has done every human artist a huge boon: his weak, ill-conceived case was easy for the Supreme Court to reject, and in so doing, the court has cemented the non-copyrightability of AI works in America.\n>>>\n>>> Keep reading\n>>\n>> ALT\n>\n> ALT",
  "title": "Supreme Court saves artists from AI"
}