Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

If a random singer can duplicate the sound of a popular singer it's one thing; to use a process to clone the voice of that singer from the singer's own recordings is a theft of that person's unique talent. Same principle as if I took a paparazzi photo of a celebrity and sold it as portraits due to the fame of that person as opposed to using it for legitimate news purposes.

View on HN

The trouble with using the word "theft" while making an argument about unauthorized copying is that it never holds water - does the popular singer lose their ability to sing? If not then the closest you can really get and still come across as genuine is to say they "stole" the uniqueness of their talent, rather than their unique talent itself

One time a woman stole my heart. Luckily I was able to get a transplant in time. Words can sometimes have multiple meanings.

Not legally

Well sometimes though. In the case of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act the word “unauthorized” can mean basically anything the DOJ wants to pull out of their asses and prosecute. Fortunately we have courts to remove ambiguity.

The idea of copying as theft isn’t new but I agree it’s not really the same.

yes, legally

The above comment wasn't a passage in a legal document, it's a comment on a discussion site. "IP theft" is a colloquial, non-legal term generally referring to violations to copyright law. Neither the RIAA's complaint nor the DMCA contain the word 'theft'.

>If a random singer can duplicate the sound of a popular singer it's one thing; to use a process to clone the voice of that singer from the singer's own recordings is a theft of that person's unique talent.

in the end the outcome is the same and happens all the time in the industry. When a voice actor portraying another character for an animated series, the original actor doesn't get compensated. Cloned or exactly duplicated is indistinguishable to the outcome.

>Same principle as if I took a paparazzi photo of a celebrity and sold it as portraits due to the fame of that person and for legitimate news purposes.

Not sure I understand this. paparazzi takes photo and sells photos ? whats the issue ?

I cannot take and sell a photograph of you, capitalizing on your image and likeness, for my own profit without permission (the violation is called "conversion") unless the photos meet exceptions such as being newsworthy or just a general street photography photograph (but the people captured by street photographers aren't captured specifically for who they are but how they look in a scene and could have been anyone without changing the essential nature of the photograph).

The existence of paparazzi photography and pictures sold to tabloids makes me wonder how this could possibly be true

Is it theft or art? I listened to some AI-generated Eminem verses and they were pretty good, but I processed it differently--more as a novelty/fan-made type of thing. The authentic version will always be better.

The they win this we can look forward to the lawsuits about human singers that sound a little too close to an RIAA artist even without AI, the way that a song can be infringing for three similar notes or even for just being in the same genre as another RIAA artist's work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com