this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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Fill me in a bit. Are you under the impression that artists are particularly okay with/enjoy people imitating their art style?
Are we pretending this is new & their opinion matters in some new way it hasn't before?
There might be an argument to demand licensing royalties on intellectual property. Is that too capitalist? Maybe it's fine if we work that into the word fascism somehow, wear it out a bit more to hit that sweet spot. Ooh.
No. We're acting as if their opinion always mattered just as much as it does now.
While your style is not, can not, and should not be your intellectual property, you should have the right to say "I don't want you to imitate my exact style" and people should respect that.
So not at all: got it.
You do.
"That's just like your opinion, man." meme goes here.
The argument seems to amount to "stop using/imitating my work to express yourself in ways I don't like", which is futile & senseless.
So, to recap, your position is this:
Artists do not deserve the respect that would allow them to be creative unfettered. Gotcha.
How does "respect" "allow" an artist "unfettered creativity"? How exactly is instructing others how to treat/imitate their work & expecting their wishes to be fulfilled promoting "unfettered creativity"? Seems like the opposite. Can you break that down into logic?
Are you suggesting artists are fragile beings whose creativity only exists at the mercy of our "respect" and the slightest disrespect breaks them? That seems rather self-important.
I submit that artists don't need our respect to be creative: the suggestion is belittling to artists.
The real point is the article fails to argue well.
I'm suggesting that disrespecting an artists wishes causes them unnecessary struggles which in turn unnecessarily makes it more difficult for them to do their work.
I didn't say they needed respect to be creative. I said they needed respect to be creative unfettered.
Respectfully, I don't see what unfettered here is adding. I clarified by editing the earlier comment to request to explain the logic.
Do you know what the word unfettered means?
Edit to add: Why are you arguing for disrespecting people's wishes?
To answer your question, it's more about arguing for basic freedoms consistently than about arguing for disrespect.
When approaching these ethical questions, I think it's best to focus on the individual & moral reciprocity: should someone be able to express themselves in a way that offends me? As long as it obeys the harm principle, the answer is yes. Accordingly, anyone should be free to express themselves with imagery in the style of Ghibli (using tools such as AI) even if it offends the studio's founder, since it results in no actual harm.
Since morality should be based on universal principles that don't depend on contingent facts of an agent (such as their characteristics), I find it clarifies questions to approach technology with their non-technological equivalents. Would it be wrong to train a person to learn Ghibli art style so they could produce similar works in that style on demand? The harm of that is unclear, and I would think it's fine.
I don't see a general duty for a free society to fulfill a wish unless it's more of a claim right than a wish. In particular, criticism is a basic part of art: a duty not to criticize artists (who wish not to be criticized) would be unjust. While an artist should get credit (and all due intellectual property rights) for their work, once it's out in the wild it takes on a life of its own: people are free to criticize it, parody it, & make fair use of it. Some wishes don't need to be fulfilled.
You really just wrote 4 paragraphs to say "I wanna make other people upset for my own personal gain at little to no benefit to the world at large"
Not at all: logical ethical principles (golden rule, harm principle, freedom of the individual) & basic individual liberties in a free society. Such a society where people are free to express themselves without doing actual harm is a benefit to the world "at large". The alternative would be bleak.
Okay, fine. I'll do big words with you.
Let's talk about the difference between Ethics and Morals. Ethics are what you individually follow, it's your Ethos. Morals are what a society follows.
It may be morally correct to say that "people should be allowed to do as they please" while also ethically correct to say "you shouldn't disrespect people's wishes."
You're right, that it is moral for someone to imitate art. At least, in our culture. But that's because most people follow the ethos that they can do and take as they please. I personally hold myself to a higher standard than that, and I hope you can do the same some day.
Edit to add: Fuck the golden rule. Follow the Platinum rule.
The "platinum rule"
While the golden rule has flaws, too, (why someone came up with categorical imperative), at least it's reciprocal.
The platinum rule is to treat others as they would want. One way to treat others is to let them do as they want. People would want that, so according to the platinum rule, we should. Can we oppose them? People wouldn't want that, so we shouldn't.
The platinum rule obligates actions followers may disagree with (eg, someone wants treatment others think is wrong). To address that, a follower may want to be treated in ways that don't create unwanted obligations. If we disagree about the right way to be treated, then we give them unwanted obligations. Thus, we shouldn't disagree.
In effect, the platinum rule prohibits dissent, which is unjust. This platinum looks more like pyrite.
In particular, the platinum rule obligates the artist to let & not oppose someone who wants to express themselves with derivative art. Expressing oneself with derived art is not even an act done to or treatment of the artist, so arguing for respecting the artist with the platinum rule is questionable.
Anyhow, in a discussion about democratic values (contention of the linked article), no position on whether an artist should be respected matters, because it clarifies nothing in the defense of democratic values. "Respecting wishes" isn't a democratic value and neither is being a good person. Individual liberties such as freedom of expression are democratic values. Defending that democratic value means allowing whatever regardless of whether we should respect artists. That's why I wrote it doesn't matter & such arguments are "futile & senseless".
It's also why I don't state my position on it: it's a red herring that doesn't defend democratic values, which I'm arguing to do while the linked article argues an undemocratic message (exercise of free expression is wrong) that purports to be prodemocratic. Even if I agree with (I could!), it's beside the point.
I think it's worth pointing out that respect doesn't mean fulfilling someone's wishes or treating them however they want. While that would be nice, satisfying nonobligatory expectations is not a duty, and not doing it is neither right nor wrong. Respect means treating someone fairly, justly, which includes accepting their freedom not to appease every expectation. Claiming we should always respect people's wishes is bizarre and indicates lack of experience or failure to imagine how that obviously goes wrong. We can't satisfy everyone, nor are we here to. This just seems like basic sense.
I'm just gonna chalk this up to you not understanding my points literally at all and stop having this conversation. You are insufferable to talk to and outright refuse to see my point at all.
As an artist, when people imitate me, I take it as flattery.
When a machine imitates me, I take it as an insult to life itself.
This is an absolutely rational take.
Individual, noncommercial imitation is flattery.
LLM ripoff is exactly that.
I might be flattered that someone bothered to make a machine do that. Massaging software to do that also takes skill?
When GitHub Copilot lifts my opensource code, I'm not offended. I only cringe a bit when it's bad code I regret committing.
I respect your position, and I appreciate people who are willing to share their creativity in an inspiring way like that.
However, others don't see it as flattery. Particularly in eastern cultures, it is seen as mockery or plagiarism. You can choose to disagree about why they don't want you to imitate their style, but you should always respect the request.
If eastern cultures don't like imitation, why are there a million identical isekai light novels with an average joe who dies, reincarnates in a slightly altered Dungeons and Dragons world, and gets a harem of women with huge breasts whose personalities are taken straight from TVtropes?
Because humans suck?
Fair.