Discussion
RE: https://mastodon.art/@artificial3d/117370454644019570
Let it be known: you do not have permission to ignore the attribution clauses from any of my freely licensed work, including when ingesting into a model whose default operation is to strip attribution
And I will note that CC BY / CC BY-SA / Apache v2 / GPLv3 all have attribution requirements
Also in this quoted case, which is not my work but I am highlighting as an example of how the genAI industry feels like they can ignore such things, I think they literally just downloaded the model and hooked it up to some genAI bullshit
Come on. Attribution is so easy in this case
I've warned before that any FOSS project incorporating AI output is doing so at their peril.
Previously people leaned on a federal circuit ruling that was *declined to be taken up by the supreme court* interpreting it as a free-for-all to LLM license-wash any project in translation, or really to incorporate any such materials and they would be public domain.
But that doesn't mean we have an answer! We've yet to see!
Annnnnnnnnd: I think we're likely to have that perspective upended soon.
The third circuit issued a recent ruling in the *opposite direction* of the previously well cited federal ruling, that AI training on copyrighted material is NOT fair use: https://www.courthousenews.com/ai-training-of-copyrighted-material-not-fair-use-third-circuit/
Annnnndddddd.... with a bunch of people trying to make LLM-generated decompilation replacements for Adobe's entire suite, we're likely to suddenly see corporations rear up angrily.
Just wait till someone tries to vibewash a Nintendo game decompilation. Hey, what do you think is gonna happen?
@cwebber it looks like we may not be waiting very long -- ArtCraft, the genAI toolkit, has launched a straight up clone of Adobe's suite, with the same UI, shortcuts, file format support and everything. But it's "clean room," because nobody at ArtCraft has decompiled any Adobe software at all! Riiight? https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-developer-takes-aim-at-adobe-with-open-source-clones/
@cwebber by the way that also means that pieces that have no copyright at all may not be used for llm training. At least the rule in many countries is that if you created something, put it out for free on the internet, does *not* mean you can do anything with it, such as reselling. You automatically have that copyright and anyone who wants to use it for their business must ask you.
@cwebber Companies selling AI, getting abused by AI users: Leopards eating *my* face?
@cwebber holy shit that's huge
@cwebber orbital lawyer strike incoming 💣
@cwebber Video game "vibewashing" is very active in practice. (Modern Vintage Gamer did a video recently on that: https://youtu.be/mYZPHdKKMaI).
A quick look on Quiver (https://quiverlauncher.com/) reveals quite a few recomps of Nintendo games, including big franchises like Mario and Zelda.
That these aren't getting lawyer-bombed into oblivion is quite revealing in my opinion, as if it was somewhat in the interest of by corporations that "vibewashing" remains legal.
[...]
@dryak@mstdn.science @cwebber@social.coop I think it's far more likely they just don't care, because emulators already exist anyways. I don't think there's been any precedent for Nintendo taking ports down as long as you need to provide the ROM yourself. Projects like Ship of Harkinian have been fine for years and widely covered in press, so I'm sure they're aware.
Of course, that is merely an observation and I'm sure that if Nintendo did start paying lawyers to submit C&D's, everybody would just scram like ants. Who knows if something might change their mind.
@cwebber I've heard inconsistent claims that the last one is already going on
@aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place @cwebber@social.coop I'm involved in this very scene (decomps/PC ports of Nintendo games).
This is 100% already going on. It's like every goddamn day there's another announcement by sloptubers about a "new decomp" or a "new recomp" or "a new port." And yes, of course the quality is garbage.
And yes this does suck for the people putting in real work to have worked years on putting in the effort on a single game, only for somebody to tell Claude to slopcode the port the moment decomp hits 100% fuzzy match or whatever. Deadass been hearing people say shit like "dude I need to take my decomp private so people don't slopcode the port" and like, jeez.
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@cwebber paging @davidrevoy with similar problems. you should form a union or something...