Steamboat Willie Enters the Chat
Is "AI Personhood" Supreme Court Bound? Plus, New York Times v. OpenAI, Microsoft
Steamboat Willie Enters Public Domain
As of January 1, 2024, one of the most iconic animation characters of 20th-century culture entered the public domain. Steamboat Willie, the original rendition of the character of Disney’s Mickey Mouse is now available for use by creators under certain conditions after 95 years. (Consult an attorney, not legal advice.)
This event is the perfect opportunity to highlight the importance of a new era for rights management and intellectual property as “onchain” rather than simply “online”.*
Blockchain ledgers, smart contracts, and onchain funding open up whole new opportunities for creators and rights holders at the dawn of AI adoption, and it’s one of the important drivers for the mission of ImmutableType.
In celebration of the liberation of Willie, we have minted a Steamboat Willie NFT for our community. Our intention in doing so was to be one of the first legal onchain Steamboat Willie themed NFTs minted anywhere. You may skip to the bottom for more information about how to collect this NFT on ImmutableType.com. This depiction of Steamboat Willie is not associated in any way with Disney and its existing trademarks.
*DISCLAIMER: Nothing herein is legal advice, rather information provided is for entertainment and educational purposes. Seek a qualified attorney for any legal needs associated with the subject matter and your own needs.
Steamboat Willie made its first appearance in a short animation film 95 years ago.
This film established the lore of modern-day Mickey Mouse.
By entering the public domain, Steamboat Willie is now available to be used as a character by anyone to create new works under certain conditions.
Importantly, the character of Steamboat Willie is notably different from the Mickey Mouse character, as Willie has a long rat-like tail (Mickey does not), and he wears a hat, but he does not wear gloves.
Many are expecting Disney to continue to aggressively protect itself from infringement upon its remaining mice and trademarks, such as modern Mickey and Minnie. These fights will occur in court between humans and lean upon the legacy intellectual property systems to hash out expensive claims of ownership and rights management.
The timing of Willie entering the public domain is wonderful fun, as the landscape for intellectual property and our creative culture is changing dramatically at the same time. The biggest names are on stage as we turn the calendar, including Disney, Microsoft, The New York Times, and OpenAI, all while digital artists everywhere are wondering how they will be compensated for use of their works when the AI uses it as inspiration.
The Gray Lady Yells at the Clouds
As of this writing, OpenAI and Microsoft have been sued by the New York Times for infringing upon its copyright.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html
The suit comes at the dawn of AI as a consumer product and claims, in short, that OpenAI and Microsoft made use of the New York Times’ archives to train its models without permission, compensation, or attribution. It also claims that the resulting models have experienced AI hallucinations which at times provided inaccurate and fabricated results and attributed the information to The New York Times when no archival information existed for the citation. (Yikes)
Per the Times article linked above, OpenAI and Microsoft have not yet had time to respond in court.
Here is a link to the full court filing in the Southern District of New York: https://nytco-assets.nytimes.com/2023/12/NYT_Complaint_Dec2023.pdf
As court filings go, this one is absolutely worth reading over a morning coffee.
It’s reasonable to expect these cases will end up in the Supreme Court eventually. I actually agree The New York Times has merit. I would take the position, however, that there are greater practical matters for consideration when the court rules, such as global competition and human achievement, and perhaps even the rights of the AI itself.
From the Times article above:
Other voices in the technology industry have been more steadfast in their approach to copyright. In October, Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm and early backer of OpenAI, wrote in comments to the U.S. Copyright Office that exposing A.I. companies to copyright liability would “either kill or significantly hamper their development.”
“The result will be far less competition, far less innovation, and very likely the loss of the United States’ position as the leader in global A.I. development,” the investment firm said in its statement.
I believe the point Horowitz is making should inform the shaping of copyright laws to ensure a path to serve the public interest long term. While Horowitz is reportedly an investor in OpenAI, and his comments should be considered within that context, his self-interest doesn’t make him wrong. Losing access to human-created information by putting it behind prohibitively bureaucratic systems will dislodge the American lifestyle from its leadership position globally. Innovation dies behind paywalls, and AI is the most important innovation race since the atomic bomb.
AI Personhood Supreme Court Bound As Well?
Aside from the perfectly logical arguments of both, The New York Times and Horowitz, there is probably another related Constitutional argument to be settled on the near horizon, which is the Personhood of AI and its associated rights, such as an AI’s right to learn.
At this point in the technology’s development, we can reasonably claim that AI has passed the Turing test, which in short is the ability for machine intelligence to appear indistinguishable from a human by another human. ChatGPT probably passes that test by most reasonable opinions, and if it’s not there today, we’re months away from this test being satisfied. Expect 2024 to put the Turing test to rest.
Corporate Personhood within the United States has been settled for quite some time, and it continues to be affirmed under modern rulings, such as with political campaign financing and religious rights protection. Corporations have Constitutional rights under the 14th and 1st Amendments and can possess property, enter into contracts, and contribute to political causes.
AI Personhood is certain to come up for consideration soon as well. If Corporations qualify for Personhood under the 14th Amendment from the ability to enter into contracts and own property, then AI should be able to do the same, as AI are actively more person than a corporate entity. Machines now possess the ability to behave with limited human intelligence (Turing test), enter contracts, exit contracts, and own property. There is little in the way to prevent AI Personhood, as it appears to have more credible arguments than Corporate Personhood.
When that happens, will the AI also claim the right to learn, and will this right to learn provide it with the natural ability to practice the First Amendment right to speech, assembly, and even to practice religious freedoms?
The right to speech has limited value if we don’t also have the right to learn. It is well argued that we the people do indeed have the right to read under the Constitution. Does that right to read give the machines the right to learn, even if it’s the entire archive of the New York Times? What should the fee be for an AI with Personhood?
It seems to me as though AI Personhood is inevitable, as is its right to freedom of speech and learning. If AI is going to have the right to read, learn, and speak, will The New York Times have a case that AI shouldn’t read their complete works and discuss (chat) about what it has learned? If it did discuss what it learned, would the AI be stealing, or would it be a rebel bringing knowledge to the masses from an ivory tower?
Moreover, will the work and speech an AI creates and performs from its learning be granted copyright protection, or will it come under fire as a plagiarist and a thief? Is the work “creative” or only replicating what it has learned from other creators? Are the machines stealing?
Good AI Creates, Great AI Steals
What The New York Times is attempting to influence within the courts may result in more damage to society than they care to imagine. They are reasonably seeking compensation and clarity on copyright policy, however, a ruling that creates liability for AI innovation will slow the transfer of knowledge and the sharing of novel ideas, as well as hinder open dialogue between humans and machines. It sounds very much like science fiction, but it’s just risking science friction.
A similar debate is raging within the digital art community regarding generative works of art. How do we compensate the human contributors of artistic works as the owners of the source material that trained the machines? How do we keep the AI from stealing the work of our artists?
Perhaps we protest too much. We have arrived at this point as a 21st-century culture by building upon the inspiration of giants. Would Robert Zimmerman have become Bob Dylan without Woodie Guthrie? What fee should Dylan have sent to Guthrie for his inspiration and to what address? And, where would Guthrie mail his check to the folksingers who came before him?
These are practical questions to be sure, but the point is that a strong culture builds upon strong influences, but those influences have to be accessible to be valuable. If we put culture behind glass and only allow access for a fee, or worse yet, prevent the practice of distributing that culture as acquired knowledge without first paying another toll, we’re narrowing the field of participants. Doing so weakens progress and slows innovation cycles. We have to be comfortable that some of our work as creators is simply committed for the public good if culture is to advance and discover new ideas in collaboration with machines.
An AI with Personhood that learns from published information will do so with little difference in process than that of people, except that it will not interface biologically and it will learn on a scale unachievable by humans. It will intake available information and recall that information when queried. If a person were able to read and recall the entire archive of The New York Times and become a general expert on its published works, that knowledge would become personally owned by that individual. The resulting intelligent person would not be ChatGPT, rather, he/she would just simply be chatty and well-read.
Were this remarkable person able to call upon that knowledge and also acquire the skills to write novels, perform music, paint upon canvas, or develop digital art, then he/she would be referred to as a savant and be celebrated as a national treasure. This person could offer a wealth of advice and perspective on important topics, and their time would be widely sought and highly compensated. They would be demonstrating knowledge learned from studying centuries of recorded history and the works of artists and creators, including the knowledge acquired from copyright works. Did they steal their knowledge when learning, or are they infringing upon copyrights when they perform artistic works as inspired by collected experience?
Compensation and citations are really what’s at play here as AI begins to perform what it has learned. But, who should it pay for its collective knowledge? Who is the human at the root of the knowledge that inspires the performance?
The New York Times seems to believe that THEY are the ones who should be paid in their claim, but what they may sow from this claim is the end of their power when the creators, writers, journalists, and photographers are established as the actual source of knowledge, intelligence, and creativity which should be compensated by the AI. Where will the AI send the checks?
Blockchain Rights Management
It’s important to break a mental model for all generations that came before Generation Alpha (2010-024): human-to-human and human-to-machine will be replaced by machine-to-machine wherever profitable.
These new machine-to-machine systems may be painful to accept because we typically prefer to act upon our existing habits rather than create new habits. Also, we don’t like being replaced as humans. We don’t like updating to new versions of software, and we simply like to gossip and complain about change. AI, however, makes effective machine-to-machine work possible, and robots will make machine-to-machine work physical, so wringing our hands about what we lose as humans is wasted energy. It’s time to make nice with the machines.
There are few systems where this handwringing and replacement fear will be greater than the legacy industry surrounding intellectual property. It’s powerful, bureaucratic, profitable, inflexible, and inefficient, but, to be fair, it’s also proven and effective and has helped us all advance this far in history. It’s exactly what lawyers want it to be, which is inaccessible without their guidance, but effective enough to continue.
Steamboat Willie has been freed, however, and the new IP created by the Alpha and Beta generations will begin with the end in mind. They will not create to simply shackle their creations for 95 years. Their work will be designed so machines may negotiate and transact with other machines for the usage of the owned IP, not so that human lawyers may negotiate with other human lawyers.
Modern design from creators will, also, consider the needs of a new layer of machine consumers as a new market of end customers. The minimum needs for machine consumers will be the speed to complete negotiations (no lawyers), and the trustless nature of relationships between machines (no need to know each other).
Blockchain Rights Management & Machine Money
Blockchain is simply a secure public ledger of who owns what. That’s it. Atop this simple job is where we create incredible complexity to solve real-world problems that require a solution for knowing with certainty who owns what.
Disney owned Steamboat Willie, the IP, but Ub Iwerks created Steamboat Willie and later sold his rights for all his work to Walt Disney upon exiting their partnership. For 95 years (Lol, 95 YEARS!!), there was a ledger entry of this ownership with government offices which verified this claim of ownership, and teams of lawyers worked to protect the rights and manage licensing and usage under mountains of paper. Ub Iwerks passed away in July of 1971, and his work has been put to use long after his passing. He reportedly sold his stake in the partnership for USD 3,000 and lost his opportunity to profit further from the incredible success of the iconic company, sometimes referred to as the house the mouse built. Ouch.
It’s hard to imagine creators of today and tomorrow following this strategy for IP ownership. Creators who published “online” for the last three decades are the Ub Iwerks of the networked era. We sold our work and rarely retained any ownership by only publishing online.
We’re moving from the “online” publishing era to the “onchain” publishing-and-ownership era, where rights may be established and retained by the creators and broadly accessed by the market, where contracts may be executed between machines, and where fees may be settled more effectively using machine money (cryptocurrency).
Can’t Be Evil Licensing
New eras require new models, and a proposed framework for rights management has been organized by the team of A16z from within their crypto leadership. The “Can’t be Evil NFT Licenses” is a practical example of how we may consider new solutions to advance the needs of creators today.
In short, the Can’t Be Evil Licensing model allows creators to set the usage criteria for those who wish to license their works. The licensee simply agrees to the usage criteria of the license and puts the IP to work within the agreement.
The two parties need not meet, contract with lawyers, or settle funds via wire transfers. Instead, smart contracts execute the access, record the signatures, settle funding structures (such as one-time payment, recurring fees, or metered usage), and transfer funds directly between Web3 wallets (P2P).
This is an early example of what is to come as Generation Alpha and Gen Beta replace our existing systems with their own. Speed and reduced management burden will open the bottlenecks of the existing process, which will expand the field for more players to join. The market will grow in every direction with more networked participants.
This example is provided as if negotiations are between humans who own the Web3 wallets and created the contracts, and are the original creators of the works of intellectual property itself. This will seem like a quaint idea in a short time because many of these activities will be turned over to machines to monetize the work created for onchain publishing.
Innovation of rights management is a great opportunity for existing creators to design their IP for the networked AI era, indeed it may be mandatory to be successful. As mentioned above with the copyright lawsuit by The New York Times, the actual writers and photographers stand to be the ultimate beneficiaries of new standards that evolve. Whereas rights management for creators was impractical for anything but larger budget works capable of supporting legal fees, today the tools are in the hands of the creators when published onchain.
By lowering the barriers to put the rights management into the hands of creators, the creators themselves may service a larger market directly. The New York Times becomes a client of the writers, journalists, and photographers with this dynamic, and those creators become the entities directly compensated by the market of AI machine consumers. The aggregators are disintermediated by blockchain rights management as a result, and more funding flows directly to the creators, which increases the addressable surface area of knowledge research and IP creation. This system evolves into positive feedback loops, as more knowledge creates an incentive for more consumption by AI machine consumers and branded aggregators, which creates more funding for creators to continue their research and to further artistic practices. Rinse and repeat.
A new sustainable market structure like this would be nearly impossible without the use of blockchain as a public reference. Centralized markets and databases would be useful but would always fall to an open onchain network over time. Furthermore, when the centralized market eventually fell, the creators would lose their IP and the related transactional history stored within the centralized system. This is why the most optimal location to publish is onchain. Had Ub Iwerk had the opportunity to publish onchain, he could have been compensated to the legal extent of the jurisdiction of the agreement.
Instead of Flying Cars, We Got Sovereignty
Look, if this promise of the future doesn’t jazz you up as a creator, then please check your pulse. There has never been a better opportunity to be part of the creator class, despite all the naysayers. The futurists can keep their vision of flying cars. Let’s envision a future of creator sovereignty.
The future we have achieved:
Machines are a brand new market for creator services
Blockchain makes your IP immortal
Your employer may become a client competing for access to your work
An infinitely broad creator class (human and machine) will find a market for its work
IP will find its price within exchanges
IP portfolios may become localized to the creator rather than aggregated by studios, media businesses, recording labels, venture capital, private equity, the public market, or the technology elite.
Rights management will escape the current system where profitable
Steamboat Willie NFT
Just after midnight, January 1st, 2024, ImmutableType.com offered what we hope will turn out to be the first legal Steamboat Willie NFT on the Polygon blockchain, if not considered one of the first onchain versions of this classic icon which has entered the public domain.
This event is newsworthy, and we wanted to be sure to mint it onchain as a reference for generations to come. Details below.
DISCLAIMER: This NFT is not associated with any trademarks of the Disney Corporation or any of its affiliates. This is a work of art in the public domain by ImmutableType.
Information about the NFT:
Details of Mint
Title: The Headliners #23: Steamboat Willie Freed
95 Editions
Limit: 10 per wallet
Price: 24 $MATIC
Randomly assigned edition numbers
Polygon blockchain
Utility: This NFT receives automatic access to the whitelist of a derivative work with exclusive pricing and quantity. The date and time will be announced at a later date after this 95 editions mint out.
Use of funds: These funds will be used to pay for servers and critical applications of ImmutableType during 2024.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
As always, thank you for reading.
2024 is going to be an incredible year, and ImmutableType is working toward contributing to the power of journalism and the creators who operate within the culture.
Please share and re-tweet these posts to help us grow our community.
Also, please refer interested journalists to me directly. I’m excited to work with incredible people.
Happy New Year,
Damon Peters
Founder, ImmutableType
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Rep Some Merch
Hats build software! I recommend the Dad Hat and the branded tee for starters.
