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points by phn 2 days ago | 0 comments

How can you start an outcry like this, but host stuff like this, tagged with a permissive license:

https://open3dlab.com/project/e2a0830d-f166-4b1b-aabf-8ca735...

Just an example, there's plenty more on the frontpage.

I have nothing against these guys, but I just can't understand the moral high ground of the complaint.

If you read the article, you'd find they admit to that, their position is nuanced, and this is not a "gotcha".

> We'll be honest about where we stand. We don't like copyright as it exists. We'd like to see it radically reformed, and we wouldn't mourn it if it were abolished. Our community lives in its grey areas every day: many of the models on our sites are fan ports of characters from commercial games, made out of love and shared for free. When a studio sends us a takedown notice, we comply.

> While we as small artists and fan communities get copyright used against us, the world's largest companies are committing copyright infringement at a scale unseen in human history. This has been the case since the invention of the internet of course; digital media make duplication, remixing and resharing trivial, but copyright law never caught up. Filesharing stabbed copyright in the gut. AI is just twisting the knife, and completes the creation an unequal system where copyright infringement is only a crime if you're a low net worth individual.

Rich companies are infringing copyright at industrial scale in order to build their LLMs, and even if caught and challenged, they don't suffer any catastrophic punishment. The infringed party gets enough money to shut them up and everyone moves on. A fine is a price. They'll keep doing it with impunity. Meanwhile the small guy who doesn't have copyright lawyers on retainer is getting shafted, time and time again.

[–] phn 2 days ago

"When a studio sends us a takedown notice, we comply." Well, yes, obviously they have to, or risk not existing anymore.

Also, "fan ports" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. They're assets extracted from commercial games, uploaded with whatever license the person who extracted and packaged them chooses.

From their argument, if they truly think copyright should be abolished, an LLM capable of remixing that work into whatever you want would be a good thing, right? Ultimately this would empower the end-users of the models.

There's an argument to be made that these models trained on the world's knowledge shouldn't be locked behind closed models controlled only by big corps, but in this case it's good that anyone can download data and train such a model, right?

I can't speak for roblox intentions, and I am well aware of their history. But so far they seem to have published at least some of their model work to HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/Roblox/

What nuance am I missing?

[–] progmetaldev 2 days ago

I've seen my son play Sonic the Hedgehog games in Roblox that were straight rips from the original games (at least visually and play-wise). I'm not really sure how it was done (extracting actual assets from the game, or just a dedicated user very familiar with the original game), but there are quite a few recreations of other games on Roblox that are just as good as the originals.

[–] Permit 2 days ago

> Rich companies are infringing copyright at industrial scale in order to build their LLMs, and even if caught and challenged, they don't suffer any catastrophic punishment

And the same thing is happening here? They’re hosting copyrighted materials and have also not suffered catastrophic punishment.

[–] everforward 2 days ago

Their infringement is different, and would really be a trademark issue if we hadn’t just invented the idea of copyrighting a character separately from the story they are a part of in the ‘30s (they are not individually copyrightable under the original text).

There’s a substantive difference between ingesting other people’s work and hosting copies of fans knockoff models of their favorite characters.

It’s even weirder because in other mediums this wouldn’t even be a thing. Nobody gets nearly as up in arms about fans doing their own cuts of movies, or re-using characters in written fan fiction, or etc. Very odd to me how up in arms people get about this specifically for visual art.

[–] kzz102 2 days ago

I think this is an important point we need to grapple with more and more in the future. We like to think an act as either lawful or not lawful, either ethical or not ethical. We need to bring in scale as a separate axis. There's a world of difference whether an activity is done at human scale or machine scale. At human scale, it's an act of deviance that may contribute to the diversity of human experience. At machine scale, it's a distortion that threatens the society.

[–] pooloo 2 days ago

The internet was built on aggregators and crawlers, it only matters when people are not getting paid... I prefer the internet to be unregulated, but whatever greed always wins

[–] senordevnyc 2 days ago

"It's OK if I do it, but not if someone more successful than me does it" is still blatant hypocrisy.

[–] ImPostingOnHN 2 days ago

"it's ok if a rich person or company does it, but not if someone less rich does it" is equally blatant hypocrisy that is worse for society.

[–] andsoitis 2 days ago

What is the relevance to this case? Isn’t this site less rich than Roblox and their hosting copyrighted items and they’re not getting punished.

Or am I misreading the situation?

[–] ImPostingOnHN 2 days ago

In order to follow, you would need to first read the post I replied to, and answer your question as it pertains to that post.

[–] senordevnyc 2 days ago

I agree? How is that relevant here?

[–] squidmaster 2 days ago

But it is okay if not-rich people do it. I have "pirated" and otherwise flaunted copyright my whole life, along with many millions more. Nobody has ever come at me for it. Enforcement of any sort against common people is exceedingly rare. For a long time it was only corporations who took copyright seriously, and now that even they are flaunting copyright people such as yourself suddenly pretend that the little guy has to care.

Well I don't! Copyright is a farce and I continue to wipe my butt with it.

[–] mightyham 2 days ago

This thread of comments seems to be getting somewhat off topic. I believe the point being made by open3dlabs is that copyright is basically a pay to play system for corporations which is obviously unjust. You're right that copyright isn't enforced on individuals, but DMCA is definitely enforced on small content sharing sites which have little to no recourse compared to large corporations that can flagrantly break the law.

[–] cucumber3732842 2 days ago

Exactly. It's like the Clean Air act. Nobody's coming looking for your wood stove but they'll happily pull a million bucks out of some podunk business who's maintenance guys were foolish enough to use up an old case of paint that predates whatever the modern VOC regulations are.

Just because individuals aren't an enforcement target doesn't mean enforcement isn't happening.

[–] ImPostingOnHN 2 days ago

> But it is okay if not-rich people do it

Are you sure you replied to the right post? You're agreeing with me here.

The post I replied to is the one suggesting that us little people doing this is at least as bad as rich people and rich corps doing it.

[–] lovedaddy 2 days ago

Yep, this is basically the outlook of ChatGPT etc in america, when they try and stop china scraping them. I hope they go bust as soon as possible.

Honestly people need to wake up to this industrial level theft, and get some laws in place. If someone did this by hand you'd call it either a DDOS or IP theft, even if license is permissive. Just cos its from a machine doesn't excuse.

[–] reactordev 2 days ago

https://open3dlab.com/project/04d18c1b-c508-4017-be7b-766904...

Straight up theft, not fan recreations, theft.

[–] peri-cl 2 days ago

Indeed. And they're not even pretending to keep an arms-length distance from their users' infringement; they're openly promoting it,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MidugiRfHaY ("Ripping Encrypted Unreal Engine Models" | Open3DLab)

(Found via a sidebar ad on their webpage).

[–] butlike 2 days ago

I have a question/thought/philosophy. If AES is a relatively strong encryption method right now, _why don't we wait to crack the assets until the encryption method is easy to decrypt_? By the time that's possible, the game assets will likely be old as shit, so it would potentially sit better with everyone. If we wait, it takes on a more archival type feeling.

[–] hobofan 2 days ago

Is your question "why don't decentralized humans appropriately self-regulate?"?

[–] numpad0 2 days ago

I understand importance of preservation, but frankly, the English WWW seem to massively and simultaneously overestimate rarity and undervalue financial costs of creative assets like 3D models and 2D images.

It's not rare that these assets cost in ranges of $10k and made in less than dozen man-hours each. They're not harvested and collected, but artificially created by individuals by work orders or as their own projects. A lot of these conversation feels like people are talking about something similar to Louvre collection items that cannot be obtained other than by somewhat illicit means, leading to discussions of which illicit means will be tolerated in the name of preservation.

No, it's something they make as we speak on Blender. Like with a mouse and a keyboard, or sometimes with a pen tablet. I think the anglosphere Internet hasn't yet reached the point where justification of dubious means can be discussed; we're at the phase where it should be educated to people more often that these are man-made creations that each has economic values.

[–] reactordev 2 days ago

I think you are missing the point here. The art assets in question belong to the studio. Yes, they are painstakingly made. They are made with the assistance of some very very expensive technologies. Full body scans. Facial rigging with 180 high fps cameras. Mocap suits and props in a full blown warehouse studio. The works. It's not just a 3D model. It's a rigged 3d digital twin of an actor. There's image rights, etc that have to be negotiated and deals made. Preservation would be to preserve the data as is rather than reworking it into a blender scene.

[–] greycol 2 days ago

Without getting into the much debated philosophy of restoration/display of preserved things and how restoration can often cause degradation to the original piece, consider that just preserving the data in the manner you suggest also requires preserving the original software if you ever want to view it. Which requires not just preserving that original software but also all the external hardware and software that original software relies on. Quite often that's a dead end as it requires preserving an activation/license server that the preservers don't have access to.

[–] reactordev 2 days ago

That isn’t true, you preserve the data as is for the software as is. You can emulate under it if you need to run it. This is what internet archive has done and the proper preservation of the media is in tact. In NO WAY do you ever need to convert the data back to a workable source in its original authoring program.

[–] numpad0 1 day ago

My point is about endemic lack of general understanding for these types of arts on English part of the Internet/WWW, no offense to GP intended. It feels like listening to museum curators discussing "oil on canvas" without ever having set foot on a store that have tubes of paints and canvases on the shelf and Apple Pay stickers at the cashier.

Without more widespread recognition about how these models, arts, games, etc., are artificially made by humans, and not magically discovered, I think discussions as to how they should be handled will be always a bit off, whichever way it would go. That's my point.

[–] DaSHacka 2 days ago

Because "we" want the assets now, and not when we're 60 years old?

[–] rideontime 2 days ago

Because "we" want the assets now?

[–] bdcravens 2 days ago

According to the timestamp, that was uploaded less than 24 hours ago.

I'm not familiar with their site; I assume it's user-uploaded? In that case, it's the same challenge that every user-generated content site has, balancing openness with policing IP violations.

[–] reactordev 2 days ago

their staff posts these things. their staff creates videos of how to rip assets from games. they are fully aware of what their users are doing and they openly encourage it.

[–] Nekorosu 2 days ago

Oddly, this makes their argument even stronger. Why would Roblox download this?

[–] pizzafeelsright 2 days ago

The game at the moment is capture as much content as possible.

[–] smt88 2 days ago

To train their LLM

[–] bmacho 2 days ago

.. why not? They need models, models are free, so they grab them. They have time to sort them out later.

[–] venussnatch 2 days ago

DMCA safe harbor? They're not responsible for user uploads until they are made aware of violations.

[–] phn 2 days ago

Scroll through the site, there are A LOT of assets from games, packaged by users. It's a nice subtrefuge, in practice it is a place to get ripped assets and the platform washes it's hands.

Again, I don't have any particularly strong issue with this, just with the pearl clutching regarding roblox downloading the data.

[–] brookst 2 days ago

Party A: hosts largely copyrighted material, says they are opposed to copyright in its current form

Party B: massive IP business , very aggressive about everything from brand to software, defends and monetizes current copyright regime

I think it’s fair for party A to call out party B for downloading a massive trove of known-copyrighted material.

[–] expedition32 2 days ago

Game companies generally don't care if you don't make money from your mods or fan projects. And yes technically copyright nowadays lasts until the heat death of the universe but 10 year old games are in commercial limbo.

Ofcourse AI providers very much DO want to make money with their trained models.

[–] gmerc 2 days ago

Then Roblox trains on it and voila…

[–] pastage 2 days ago

Considering you link something that has a non comnercial license CC-by-NC, there might be others with permissive licenses. There might be things in their TOS of the site,

[–] phn 2 days ago

There's more with different licenses. If you scroll through the pages, there are a lot of assets ripped from games, with a variety of licenses CC-by-NC, or just "beerware":

https://open3dlab.com/project/0a4538ba-00df-4f6d-b3e3-14d978...

[–] sanex 2 days ago

Funnily enough the YouTube video that came up when I viewed the page was an instructional video on ripping models from Unreal Engine games.

[–] RobotToaster 2 days ago

Theft requires that you intentionally deprive the original owner of the object, this is copying.

[–] BizarroLand 2 days ago

This is the kind of misinformation that spreads around the internet without ever being fact checked.

Theft is the action or crime of stealing. The fact that some definitions include the concept of "with the intent to deprive the original owner of it" doesn't make digital theft not a theft.

Also, it could be argued that the theft of the IP is further substantiated by the loss of future potential revenue from that IP, as, after all, why would anyone pay the orignal owner and creator actual money when an AI agent will make an exact duplicate of said item and possibly further customize it for them as part of its already paid for product catalog?

[–] arborescence 2 days ago

I mean, it's not misinformation, though it may be incomplete. Taking the us example, in most states the larceny statute—the "crime" of theft, as you put it—does in fact require an intent to permanently deprive. Unlawful copying is not larceny or theft and no da could prosecutor could prosecute it under a larceny statute. It may of course be copyright infringement, which some people rhetorically analogize to theft. That analogy may be useful for some purposes, including for motivating normative intuitions. But it's categorically different as a matter of law.

[–] globular-toast 2 days ago

Individuals doing bad things is not the same as corporations doing bad things.

[–] Graziano_M 2 days ago

Half their tutorials are how to rip models from games.

[–] deadbabe 2 days ago

Moral high grounds don't mean much these days. They are weaponized as a way to get an advantage in an argument.

[–] jmbwell 2 days ago

Just remember, the morals of someone making an argument have no bearing on whether an argument is sound.

If the purpose of every argument is to prevail, then sure, invoking morals in any discussion can seem like a tactic. Moral hypocrisy can be particularly exhausting.

If the invocation of morals is always evidence of manipulation, though, then any ethical position can be easily dismissed.

Moral hypocrisy is cynical. But that doesn’t erase the value of morals and ethics. Morality, sincerity, and rhetorical effectiveness are still very different things

[–] deadbabe 2 days ago

If you believe in karmic justice, someone who lacked sufficient morals should just lose an argument even if they are now trying to use morals to put forward a sound argument.

You cannot use a moral high ground unless you’ve earned that high ground through your past behavior.

[–] Sopel 2 days ago

well it kinda worked? over on reddit r/gaming thinks the data has been stolen

more radicalization towards AI