The Jurisprudential Blitzscaling through Ghibli
The reason Altman is spearheading Ghibli memes is to override the most important debate around IP since the free internet debate of the 90s.
Right now, crawlers are quite likely in violation of IP laws. Taking non-public content is even more crass. This does not mean that it is morally bad to crawl. After all, the laws could be morally wrong.
However, what is clear is that the way AI companies operate has a deep disregard for copyright. Now, generating new images is not a copyright violation. Crawling however likely is.
The issue is that Altman is following a strategy just like Kalanick in the Uber expansion. And it is under a thin veneer of these friendly Ghibli memes. They are not testing the waters, they are draining the sea, before there is any social or legal consensus on the issue.
Now, regarding IP, there are three major paradigms to justify IP legally:
Intellectual property rights exist because you are putting work into them (that’s the most traditional rights-based interpretation, inspired by property theory of Locke)
Property is an expression of one’s self, and so is intellectual property. This is a Hegelian view, and Hegel generally has not found much relevance in jurisprudence.
Broadly, we’ve seen the following these arguments in the popular debate:
The first is obvious: Miyazaki and his team spent millions of hours on the work. This work has generated some property rights.
The second claims something like “an artistic style is something so personal, that forging it is akin to stealing some part of that person’s expression”. Note that this is different from the “this lacks authenticity” because (unless there is a case of contractual fraud) being inauthentic is not an issue that concerns rights and duties; it is in the category character flaws but is jurisprudentially irrelevant.
Now, about the sudden explosion of Ghibli memes, my suspicion is that this is a well-calculated campaign that directly exposes all the critical parts. After all, they could have picked 1920s Disney which most of which has expired copyright.
Ghibli was literally millions of hours → overrides any labour theory of property arguments (Lockean).
It uses a very specific and recognisable style → overrides any Hegelian-style arguments.
Miyazaki himself hated AI → overrides anything related to the auteur (also Hegelian)
Ghiblification of every meme is a legal blitzscaling campaign, not a cute grassroots trend.
