Who Is Father? (copyright law/author/editor/dictionary/AI)

Who Is Father? (copyright law/author/editor/dictionary/AI)

Li Dongtao

Description: Editor ≠ author

A.    The Case: an editor’s fight

Is this my father, my dearest friend?[1]  

This is a case about “father”.

The plaintiff is a retired editor from publishing house D (hereinafter referred to as “D”). 

The defendant is a .com company.

In May 1997, D decided to publish a new English-Chinese dictionary (hereinafter referred to as “the dictionary”) and commissioned the plaintiff and three other editors to finish the job. In support of the task, D agreed to provide all of the necessary materials, including the money, and D would have the final say about the dictionary. 

In September 1997, the plaintiff retired after the work on the dictionary was completed.

In January 1998, the dictionary was published by D, the author was mentioned as “Editing Group of D”. LDT

3 years later, licensed by D, the defendant uploaded part of the dictionary onto its commercial website.

The plaintiff sued the defendant for copyright infringement.

The defendant argued that the copyright infringement was not established because it had gotten license from D.

The court ruled that the copyright infringement was not established because the author and the copyright owner was D, not the plaintiff.

In short, an editor isn’t the father (author), the dearest friend.

B.     The author, the father.

“A work is the same as the son of the author.” Goethe said. 

The plaintiff thought he was the copyright owner of the dictionary, but he forgot that in the process of creating the dictionary, D commissioned him and three other editors to finish the job; and, in support of the task, D had provided all of the necessary materials, including the money, and, D would take the whole liability about the dictionary.

In a nutshell, a father’s right should be protected, but we must first know who “the father” is.

C.     AI, not an author

We need to see things in a different way.[2]

An AI-generated output is a copyrightable work? 

An AI system, either ChatGPT or Sora, is a learning model, it is trained on a vast amount of data: it must first learn from data, including real works of actual humans, then it works by identifying and replicating data. Its output is from functioning, not thinking.

As a result, an AI system is not an author, an AI-generated output is not a work.

[1] Is this my father? POEM by Michael D. Nolder Sr at www.poetry.com/poem/117698/is-this-my-father?

[2] A Different Way POEM by Tony Kruska at www.poetry.com/poem/127985/a-different-way

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