Comment by rickydroll
5 months ago
I wonder if Nano Banana spits out an image and I copy it by hand into a different medium like acrylics, chalk, or charcoal. Does a manual transcription suddenly render the image worthy of copyright?
This also raises the meta question: how much does an image need to change to acquire a new copyright? For example, if you change the Last Supper to include two fat Jesuses on either side of the single skinny Jesus, is that enough?
A human couldn't recreate it perfectly in a different medium, thus you are adding human creativity to it, thus copyrightable.
A photograph or a tracing made with an optical device is a mechanical reproduction of the original work, but it has its own copyright because there's a human in the loop.
A forger takes skill and creativity to make a copy of an existing work that is so good it cannot be distinguished from the original. By your assertion, the forgery should have its own independent copyright.
Why wouldn’t that be the case? Each performance of a song is uniquely copyrightable.