On 25th July the AI working group and the Board of CEPIC attended an exclusive information webinar on the Robert Kneschke v.LAION case.
This case, filed in the Hambourg Court, was brought by photographer Robert Kneschke against the AI training database LAION. Photographer Kneschke had asked LAION to remove his photographs. Instead he received a threatening negating letter and an invoice amounting to 900, - € for lawyers fees. This is how LAION had chosen to react to a legitimate request based on Art. 60 d of the German Copyright Act. LAION, "a non-profit organization with members from all over the world, aiming to make large-scale machine learning models, datasets and related code available to the general public" nevertheless claims that the free training of data occurs on the basis of the now EU-wide exception for research organisations (art.44 b of German Copyright Act). They also say that no reproduction of Roberst's disputed images in the sense of copyright law has taken place.
Sebastian Deubelli (from the (law firm representing R.Kneschke) disputes both claims.
The case is relevant beyond the borders of Germany for many reasons.
Meeting Attendants:
Sebastian Deubelli, Juliette Bimbaud, Sylvie Fodor, Sergi Grigno, Florian Koempel, Mark Milstein, Paul Seheult, Emily Shelley, Anna Skurczynska, Valérie Théveniaud-Violette, Christina Vaughan, Stephan Werder, Nancy Wolff
RECORDING
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/HB0rtuqd3M8FsLANTK7giY01GABCjUzNM5k-jNOVFELSVxKxO1dxP-6dwavp1S-0.bdNZ2QvWVm27i0d-?startTime=1690294085000
Passcode: cnR11vD.