I want to report an illegal upload.
I am the original artist of the image posted by this person.
https://civitai.com/user/Satyam_SSJ10 <- Please block this account holder.
I have attached an image as proof, please check it out.
https://civitai.com/models/6304/noob-leyon
Currently, the offender has cleverly changed his name and still hasn't removed the post.
As the original author of the piece, I feel so violated. I can't stand by and let this happen.
It's not only hurting me, but others as well.
Please do not forgive this offender.
He is still mocking comments and deleting posts at will to suit his own convenience.
Please block him strictly.
8 Answers
Just in case you missed it, on the model website you can see a button with three dots (Up in the right. Next to the "heart" button).
There you have an option to report it.
Good luck, I hope that person gets banned from this community.
To make sure this is clear to anyone unaware, Civitai has already made it clear they will work with artists regarding models that target use of a specific artist's name, data/images, or "their" style. It is not appropriate to be dismissive of their concerns.
Illegal? Under what law? In what nation? In the US at least, styles are not copywritable. No law has been violated. Now, if civitai wants to make it a policy to not allow work trained on artist styles if requested not to, they certainly can. But there is no legal force compelling them to do so.
https://www.thelegalartist.com/blog/you-cant-copyright-style
"Why isn't style protected by copyright? Well for one thing, there's some case law telling us it isn't. In Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures, the court stated that style is merely one ingredient of expression and for there to be infringement, there has to be substantial similarity between the original work and the new, purportedly infringing, work. In Dave Grossman Designs v. Bortin, the court said that:
"The law of copyright is clear that only specific expressions of an idea may be copyrighted, that other parties may copy that idea, but that other parties may not copy that specific expression of the idea or portions thereof. For example, Picasso may be entitled to a copyright on his portrait of three women painted in his Cubist motif. Any artist, however, may paint a picture of any subject in the Cubist motif, including a portrait of three women, and not violate Picasso's copyright so long as the second artist does not substantially copy Picasso's specific expression of his idea.""
To be clear, I am sympathetic with you and your position, and support a policy that allows artists to request that their styles not be emulated. I also think it is super shitty how the guy responded to your reasonable request to take it down. But it is outright false to claim that it is illegal.
EDIT: To expand a little bit on this, I think unfortunately the toothpaste is out of the tube, the smoke is out of the fire, and the genie is out of the bottle.
If a human being looked at an artist's work and decided to slavishly emulate the style, then started posting their own work using that style without even mentioning the artist they are copying, the law is abundantly clear: this is perfectly legal. If AI training is taken to be analogous to this act, then it too is legal fair use. Is it shitty? Yes. But people are legally allowed to be shitheads in a lot of different ways, this being one of them.
But let us suppose this was not so. Even if it was illegal to train an AI on someone's art without consent, how would this possibly be enforced? If someone clearly trained an AI to emulate an artist's style, but claimed not to use any of the artist's work, how could you possibly prove they did? Perhaps - and of course this is ridiculous - but perhaps they themselves manually created a bunch of emulations of a style - established as perfectly legal fair use - and then trained on those. Obviously they didn't, but how could you prove it?
For better and probably for worse, AI models copying artist styles are here to stay. Banning them from any specific website will only cause them to show up on another website. And even worse, it incentivizes people to lie about it. It perversely increases the chances that people copy artist styles without even mentioning that they did so. I mean, take this case for example. Before the artist complaint, the copycat at least included the artist's name in the model. Afterwards? Scrubbed clean. Now the artist is STILL being copied but they aren't even getting credit for the copies! Some people will download the model just because they like the look of it and never know it was made based on a specific artist at all. This is bad for everyone.
Ultimately, it doesn't seem like any legal remedies are going to come, so it is up to communities to create and enforce their own social norms. I think it is very important to respect artist's work and intellectual property, but I am not sure what the best way to do this is given the reality of the situation and unenforceability of bans on AI training.
I hear you, One time someone view-sourced my page and stole a VERY complex regex function.
I tried scrubbing myself in the shower for days but didnt feel clean. The violation is real!
There's alot of letter of the law sh!t when it comes to AI and copyright.
I will say that you're absolutely right this debacle on content and ownership when it comes to a style of art is correct.
SD generally is a slippery slope and also a bit of a loophole. Trying to enforce rights in terms of a model producing a result that is similar to another artists is very difficult.
That all being said however,,, if you train a model exclusively on an artist.. and use that artists name.... that where things go over a line.
Respecting an artists right to not have their work used in a diffuser is always a good way to go about doing things IMHO.
Otherwise we're going to anger "powers that be" and get a whole lot more legal attention on SD & AI that we will not want to have.
I agree with all of wheelinghubcap's comment, but if it's true that civitai said themselves that they would support artists wanting models copying their style removed, it's really not a great look that a month after a complaint the model is still up and all they did if anything is ask the uploader (who allegedly also acted like an asshole about it) to remove the artist's name from the model's info.
Illegal? no, unethical? Sure, The distinction is important however. As far as the site rules go that's one thing. Supreme court has already ruled that art styles cannot be copyrighted. (and that's just American law) And while this is different to a degree, and you could argue the implication and difference and nuances all day. If I was the one making decisions like that I would argue this is just use of an art style, because that's what it is at the end of the day. The only difference is a computer does it not someones hand, He's not taking images you made and selling them. He's taking images you made, and they are referenced by the model to produce a similar result. much like real artist do in their mind, (you cannot tell me your art is not in itself influence by other artist styles) And from what I understand all he would have to do it remove any references to your name from the model not the art itself. So he would just change the tags from x to something arbitrary and create a new keyword. Something to consider
Also the image you have is low res and hard to read.