New 'Company' Claims It Uses Algorithms To Create Content Faster Than Creators Can, Making All Future Creations 'Infringing'
from the [algorithmically-generated-trollface] dept
Over the weekend, TorrentFreak covered the discovery of the latest thing in copyright enforcement: algorithmically-generated content created solely for the purpose of extracting infringement settlements and licensing fees.
That's the staggering notion being put forward by Qentis Corporation. The outfit, which claims a base in Russia, says that its business model is to use massive computing power to generate digital intellectual property on a never-seen-before scale and transfer the rights to its partners.What Qentis is proposing is the bulk algorithmic creation of content – music, text, images etc – on such a large scale that in a few years its clients will own the rights to just about anything people might care to create and upload.
"Our clients are private high net-worth individuals (HNWI), investment funds and corporations that act as pure investors," Qentis explains.
The creator of Qentis, Michael Marcovici, told TorrentFreak that his "company" had the potential power to generate content before actual creators can, resulting in a world where every new work is already infringing.
"Qentis aims to produce all possible combinations of text (and later on images and sound) and to copyright them," Qentis' Michael Marcovici told TorrentFreak.By 2020, supposedly every possible photograph will have been created and registered by Qentis. Text content generation is advancing at a faster rate.
"Concerning text we try this in chunks of 400 word articles in English, German and Spanish. That would mean that we will hold the copyright to any text produced from now on and that it becomes impossible for anyone to circumvent Qentis when writing a text."
Qentis -- as a concept -- is frightening. As an actual entity, it's an ultra-dry satirical device. Marcovici's website isn't the future of anything. The computing power needed to accomplish this is beyond the means of anyone. Brute force creation results in tons on unusable "content," something Marcovici readily admits.
"About the mathematics, this is mainly about working with n-grams, we don't work iteratively with misses because that would produce as you mention a LOT of misses, probably only 1 out of few million would be readable," the company's Michael Marcovici told us.Qentis is a piss-take on utilitarian content creation and over-broad content protection. It seeks to embody the worst aspects of automatically-generated content and copyright trolling. And it pretty much nails both, presenting a respectable corporate front that almost masks the insanity leaking in around the edges. A quasi-proof of concept page claims Qentis' software "wrote" Lady Gaga's "Applause" four years before she did. On its About page, it notes that it has already generated "97.42%" of all 400-words-or-less text in several languages before dropping this bombastic (and misspelling-laden) statement.
If you are planning to publish any text in these languages we must inform you that the chances are almost 100% that they are already part of the copyrighted inventory of the Qentis Corporation and that you are about to violate these and you will be held responsible for this.Another page claims this company will free online content providers from the hassle of creating content. Instead, all content roads will lead to Qentis, from which rights to its algorithmic creations will be distributed to a variety of middlemen ("high networth individuals"), who will then license the content.
Qentis does not issue permission to individuals to publish any of its texts or images, please do not try to inquire. Qentis grants writes for reproduction only two is selected group of publishers.
Whoa if true, but you'd have to ignore the computing power needed to brute force content creation that covers almost every conceivable combination of words -- especially given that the language keeps evolving and changing, adding massive new permutation and combinations. The claims Qentis/Marcovici make would be impossible in one language. Quentis claims to be doing this in several.
Then you'd have to ignore the fact that solely computer-generated content (i.e. content created without an actual creator) generally isn't copyrightable. From the USPTO:
Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.While it wouldn't take much to skirt this in real life (the presence of an editor or someone who tweaks algorithms before generating content), in the Qentis world where millions of pieces of content are being "created" every year, it would be impossible.
Furthermore, even if Qentis could create all those works and even if they were found to be copyrightable, Qentis would still run into a different problem: under the law, if someone truly comes up with the identical works independently, there's no infringement which would kind of break Qentis' entire business model (were it real). Independent invention, while not allowed in patent lawsuits, is a defense against copyright infringement. As Judge Learned Hand once famously wrote: "if by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, he would be an "author," and, if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's." In short, even if all the other impossible situations above were taken care of, others creating these works independently likely would not be infringing anyway.
But it's all a joke… or at least, yet another art project from Marcovici. At his personal website, it's listed along with other concepts like Bitcoin paper money, rats in a Skinner box entering trading orders, an underground package delivery system and advertising on paper money.
Marcovici's publicity bio that looks suspiciously like a Wikipedia page notes that he also owns the Domain Developers Fund, conveniently located out of reach of US regulators in the Cayman Islands. The website seems to be dead, but his personal site gives some details as to its purpose. The language used is decidedly more flowery than informative, but it appears to be (if it actually exists) a domain squatting business. While this is listed alongside other Marcovici projects (like Qentis), this one at least appears to have some basis in reality. Marcovici's email address (mike@qentis.com, according to the Qentis.com registry) is linked to at least 1,649 domain registries.
Interestingly, one of those is Fontsy.com (also listed on Marcovici's website), a site that gives away "free" fonts (many of which can only be licensed by their creators), providing the following warning to those who partake of its services.
The fonts which available on this website are their authors' property. If you want use any font from this website commercially, you should contact the author. Look at the redme-files for more informations. is there no readme-filme, open the font file. Under windows there are copyright informations.So, Marcovici (or at least the administrators of this website) have a pretty slippery grasp on intellectual property rights, something Qentis.com definitely shares.
Qentis.com's history as a domain dates all the way back to 2003, when it linked surfers to Marcovici's ebay store. By 2006, it had gone dormant. From there it became a platform for pushing his book on his ebay experiences, only morphing to its current form sometime this year.
So, this is Marcovici's stunted, but expansive, satire. A copyright-trolling automaton that will cleanse the world of creativity using brute force computing power and a team of outsourced rights enforcers. But behind all the copyright monopoly bluster, there are small hints at the message Marcovici is trying to send.
The same page where "Howard LaFarge" states that Qentis will become the "universal source of all web content," thus "freeing" corporations from their dependence on "expensive" creators, this paragraph appears.
what is left now to creatives is not anymore the repetitive low quality text they currently produce mainly from machines for SEO but to engage in real creativity at the level where context becomes more important than words.It's even more explicit on a page detailing an interview with a "Russian TV station" that likely never happened.
The first way is simply to create something new, something really new, not just the remix of parts that are already there, really creativity is when people grow out of the usual stuff, we have been written books for thousands of years, produced images for thousands of years, it’s time to make use of new technologies and the combination of technologies to create content in new ways. such new ways of content, combinations of acting, sound, text, smell and and more can never be reproduced in an automated way. Yes Qentis makes it useless to continue to write average texts because they already exist writing text has become an activity like harvesting potatoes, or washing the car, jobs we want to eliminate so that we can grow over this and focus on more intellectual activities.That's the statement of intent. I don't agree with all of it, especially since creativity is informed by predecessors and influences, but if Marcovici's Qentis "project" is meant to mock SEO-friendly filler and bots that compile web detritus into ebooks, then I can get behind the concept. There's nothing here that's based in mathematical reality, but using hyperbolic bullshit to take an (admittedly blunted) swipe at "brute force" content generation (millions of web pages generated with all the care and creativity of "harvesting potatoes") is a worthy windmill tilt. Unfortunately, Marcovici -- with his domain-name squatting and casual use of the IP of others (at Fontsy, but likely elsewhere as well) -- isn't the best medium for the message.
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Filed Under: content, copyright, hoax, michael marcovici
Companies: qentis
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Cost Effective?
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Re: Cost Effective?
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Re: Cost Effective?
While they won't produce anything great right away, they will no doubt very quickly create every possible Perl program.
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Re: Cost Effective?
A quick Google gives me a few sources that say there's over 1 million words in the English language.
Therefore, there are more than x possible 400 word combinations. 1 million to the 400th power.
x = 1,000,000^400
or
x = 1 * 10^400,000,000
There are 10^80 particles in the observable universe (which is already unimaginably huge). Well, 10^80 if you could convert everything to hydrogen atoms. So, if you could do that, and then use each atom to store a single 400 word creation, you would have gotten 0.0000002% of the way through the possibilities.
Yes, I know the claim is nonsense, or a joke. But maths is fun.
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Re: Re: Cost Effective?
1,000,000 == 10^6;
1,000,000^400 == (10^6)^400 == 10^(6*400) == 10^2400
Although still quite a bit smaller than 10^80, no where near 10^(4*10^8))
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Re: Re: Cost Effective?
Quantum Foam is so much better.. it's the stuff that dreams ARE made of
oh and if you think of a bit of data as the size of the Planck area (as Bekenstein proved with black holes et.al ) then all the info ever to be and ever was will definitely fit ;)
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On the other hand part of me would love to see this causing copyright to implode in the future as it starts causing economic issues. Because ordinary people already largely ignore it today.
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The flip side
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maybe we're seeing things differently
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Unforeseen consequences
By 2020, supposedly every possible photograph will have been created and registered by Qentis.
So the Qentis Company, by it's own admission, will have created all the child porn that had or ever will exist.
Bye bye Qentis Company and co-conspirators. Off to prison you go. Prepare your 7th planet.
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Well, were a company to do this, and try to claim copyright infringement even lacking any actual copying then they'd run into a big problem, because their program, by their own argument, would have just **infringed** on every possible copyright. And they would know, mathematically, that would be true, so *willful infringement* at $150,000 per instance...
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Ha! I was thinking the same thing. By their own logic, they're infringing lots of works that are already under copyright.
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1090748135619415929462984244733782862448264161996232692431832786189721331849119295216264234525201987 2239572917961570252731098708201771840636109797650775547990789062988421929895386098252280482051596968 5161359163819677188654260932456012129055390188630101790025253579991720001007960002653583680090529780 5880952350501630195475653911005312364560014847426035293551245843928918752768696279344088055617515694 3499454066778251408149006161059202564385045780133264935658360472424073824428122451315177575191648992 2636574372243227736807502762788304520650179276170094569916849725787968385173704999690096112051565505 0115561271491492515342105748966629547032786321505730828430221664970324396138635251626409516168005427 6234359963089216914461811874063953106654048857394348328774281674074953709935118687563599703901170218 2361674945862096985700626361208270671540815706657513728102702231092756491027675916052087830463241104 9364568754920967322982459184763427383790272448438018526977764941072715611580434690827459339991961414 2427414105991174260605564837637563145276113626586283833686211579936380208785376755453367899156942344 3395566631507008721353547025567031200413072549583450835743965382893607708097855057891296790735278005 4935621561090795845172954115972927479877527738560008204118558930004777748727761853813510493840581861 5986522116059603083564059418211897140378687262194814987276036536162988561748224130334854387853240247 5141941718301228107820972930353737280457437209522870362277636394529086980625842235514850757103961938 7449629866808188769662815778153079393179093143648340761738581819563002994422790754955061288818308430 0796486932321791587659180355652161571154029921202761556078731079374774668415283629877086994501520312 3186259420308569383894465706134623670423402682110295895495119708707654618662279629453645162075650935 1018906023773821539532776208676978589731966330308893304665169436185078350641568336944530051437491311 2988343672652385954049042734559287239495252271846174043678547546104743770197680255766058810380772707 0771794222197709038543858584409549211609985253890397465570394397308609093059696336076752996493841459 8185705963754561497355827813623833288906309004288017321424808663962671333528009232758350873059614118 7237814221014601986157473868550968960891891804413395585248228675411132126387936755676503403629700319 3002339782846531854723824423202801518968966041882297600081543761065225427016359565087543385114712321 4227266605403581781469090806576468950587661997186505665475715792896.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2014 @ 11:40am
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2014 @ 11:40am
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Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2014 @ 11:40am
But your reply's were funnie either way!
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Sep 29th, 2014 @ 11:40am
=> (clojure.math.numeric-tower/expt 256 1024)
10907481356194159294629842447337828624482641619962 . . . rest omitted . . .
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I got bored and worked it out as:
6.057878255625903915397895493134545504683543 × 10^14923080
Which I believe is slightly less than the claimed losses this fiscal year by the copyright industry.
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Still, the number would be astronomically immense (e.g. more than the photons in the universe), just not as astronomically immense.
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They're trying to force a crash by intentionally causing a stack overflow.
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All this Quentis needs to do now is get the City of London Police to start doing their gig on every piece of content on the internet.
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...bullsh**t
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is it "bullsheet" or "bullshaat" or ?
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is it "bullsheet" or "bullshaat" or ?
The correct answer is "all of the above".
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Even Falkvinge said this is "bullshit." When something that purports to destroy the "copyright monopoly" is called "bullshit" by Falkvinge, you know it's dumb.
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FTFY
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Of course, as you said, it wouldn't be a valid legal claim. However, if a valid legal claim were needed to make use of the law, Veoh wouldn't have gone bankrupt. Legal trolls only need a half-baked excuse to make a claim. An actual troll, able to employ the strategy referred to (or lampooned) by Qentis, would be able to come up with a half-baked excuse for absolutely any media whatsoever created after they started operating. In that sense, a program that purportedly generates every possible media file could be considered a "perpetual lawsuit machine". ("Perpetual legal motion machine"?)
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Sorry Quentis, it's not Copyrightable
I applaud them for their villainous scheme, but they failed copyright 101.
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Re: Sorry Quentis, it's not Copyrightable
/s
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Those resources would be better used generating Bitcoins...
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I'm pretty sure you have to pay $300 every time you want to register a copyright, to get the legal benefits.
Is this company paying the US Copyright Office $300 every single time they create a new work? I guarantee you they aren't.
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That's not their business plan.
That said, I think they've found a way to sucker some quick cash from a few wealthy folks.
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Re: That's not their business plan.
Obviously, every possible 256 x 256 pixel image is not interesting. But many of them are.
They might have a machine learning algorithm trained to recognize noise and non-noise. Non-noise images get further sub variations created.
From the non-noise, you could use trained recognizers to classify images. Images containing certain objects (say people, animals, plants, etc) could have more variations produced.
As another example, take a set of types of things (cars, dogs, etc) that might appear in a photograph, and create ways of generating simple representations of those. On a larger scale combine various combinations of types of elements into composite images.
For sounds, generate random chord sequences according to some basic rules. Over any given set of chords, generate every possible melody as any note from first chord, followed by any note from second chord, etc. Use rules to discard obvious junk. Use machine learning to identify things that are appealing based on the training set.
All they need is to 'create' something similar enough to an artist in order to shake them down.
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Copyright covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. It would be monumentally unlikely for two authors to independently come up with the same idea and express it in the nearly identical way that would be needed to be a copyright violation.
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http://www.neustel.com/cinfringement.aspx
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Yes, as stated in the article... above.
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A better use of Qentis technology
I propose another important use of your valuable technology.
Generate every possible patent. A patent application doesn't have to make sense. It just needs to be in a particular form with obscure terminology, impenetrable language and very simple vector drawings.
Please don't generate patent applications faster than the USPTO can accept them. Just make sure that the USPTO is unable to process any other patent applications.
As a side effort you could form a betting pool on how many of your generated patent applications will be granted.
Good luck!
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Copyright status irrelevant
Sounds like a slam-dunk right? Eh, not so much. Remember that in order for a DMCA claim to be legal it requires that the one filing it 'swear under penalty of perjury', something that as far as I know computers can't do, and yet computer generated DMCA claims are still treated as valid.
The current legal system is set up in such a way that even if you are sure that you're not infringing, it's still safer to fold, rather than be forced to spend ridiculous amounts defending yourself, so while this 'plan' may have other problems, the legal status of the 'copyrights' isn't really one of them.
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Re: Copyright status irrelevant
If computers can SWEAR to an automated bogus DMCA takedown, then computers can also CREATE automated bogus content.
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to this 1000,s of software patents that are vague and broad and pointless are granted ,
A Patent troll can buy them and use them to extract money from companys ,using the treat of high legal fees.
Most patents are granted ,
companys have a choice ,pay say 50k or go to court and pay legal fees,of a million dollars plus,
to fight and invalidate a patent .
Even microsoft has paid money on patents which were later
shown to be invalid .
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The importance of publishing!
It needs to be plausible that any big content, big copyright maximalist people could have possibly seen / heard / read Qentis's 'valuable' work and then copied it.
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Damn shame it isn't a real threat. It would end a lot of the BS we see now dealing with copyright and the flagrant misuse of the court system. I would love to see this sort of scheme break copyright totally.
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On the other hand...
Wikipedia reckons a vocabulary size of 5000 covers 95% of word use. While the combinations of that set over 400 word articles is still prohibitive, the number of grammatically feasible sentences will be much, much lower. If a suitable set of subject-specific CFGs were created (cf. SCIGen), it may be feasible to come up with a non-trivial subset of all possible articles in a particular field.
If this were possible (and I really don't know how large the set would be) and the articles were all published online, what would the legal situation be?
Specifically, if someone (human) who subsequently (and independently) wrote an identical 400 word article, could we rely on the USCO's comments in the monkey selfie case to negate any copyright interest the author may have (at least in the autogenerated copy)?
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Have you created this picture yet?
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One need only look at the returns currently available in the US for a 5 minute clip of people fucking.
Now that the Prenda financials are public record, it really is hard to pretend there isn't money in doing it. This seems little different than the statement made by Hans in the depo that caused me chills, I paraphrase, We take these worthless copyrights and put value into them. It is like what caused the housing bubble, using crap to get cash... the trick is to get out before the bubble bursts.
As we see more of these 'bright' ideas enter the market, there is a chance that finally there will have to be change to copyright... lets just hope that the people talk louder than the bribes.
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Monkeys
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It's mine
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A hilarious quote from quentis. WTF does this have to with anything? Do we need an acronym here (and should it not be PHNWI?) Does he think this statement makes everything OK?
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Could such an idea be used in reverse?
Ergo, you wouldn't be quoting Disney but a segment of Quentis extensive library of open-access material.
Chak-Thoom!
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Is it possible to challenge a copyright...
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Brian Eno might disagree.
Even if he just kept hitting "randomize" until something that sounded pleasant came out, Mr. Eno could still copywrite the song.
If you disagree, you'll have to be ready to determine how much input is required by the human element before automated content creation is copywritable.
Not that I necessarily agree with Brian. Rather, copyright is too powerful a legal device to apply to wprks that are completely human, let alone autpmated processes, but in a wprld where there were reasonable copywrite terms, such a distinction might have to be made.
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Re: Brian Eno might disagree.
And sorry about my dropped Ps for Os.
Bleh.
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Might be the best thing to happen to copyright.
Before this incredible corporations-and-lawyers-get-rich scheme started and copyright was only for the protection of creators for a very limited time, there were very few legal proceedings - compared to today - dealing with copyright infringement.
Now it is as much a daily occurrence as weather and almost NEVER has anything to do with protecting creators or their works.
Yes I realize that lawyers will need to buy smaller yachts and that politicians world wide will receive smaller graft checks thereafter, but hey, I think we can all live with that.
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