The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#81

Post by bdowling » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #79

zeroimpl wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I look at answers on Stack Overflow, the lack of copyright notices on the code makes me feel safe to copy it. Same goes for grabbing code from random person's blog. If they had put explicit copyright notices in the code snippets, I'd assume otherwise.

Your assumptions are likely wrong for those cases. In the case of a random blog, the code likely does not have an associated license, meaning it is copyrighted and any derivative use of it (i.e. copying it) is a violation of their copyright. In the case of stackoverflow, their ToS require people who post code to share it under a Creative Commons license [0]. Unfortunately, if the author of the post didn't realize tha…

> Where things work as intended on stackoverflow, you are required to provide attribution.

Most(*) small snippets of code (e.g., 1-10 lines) on Stack Overflow are probably not copyrightable, at least not under U.S. law. You don't need a license to copy and use something that's not copyrightable.

(*) But not all. As usual, it depends.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#82

Post by VenTatsu » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #8

> So if you use blank lines in any of your files, you are in blatant violation of AT&T's copyright claim Independent derivation of a work is defense against copyright infringement. Even if the copyright on these blank lines were to be valid, it would be reasonable to claim that your own use of blank lines was independent, not a derivative work copying from theirs. Patents do not require actual copying to infringe, bu…

Proof of direct copying may not be required, if AT&T can instead prove Access and Substantial Similarity.

For access it could be a little tricky, certainly every one that has posted a reply here has had access, and if this post is popular enough it could be argued anyone could or has had access (this happened in some music cases in the last few years).

For Substantial Similarity your definitely in trouble if you have exactly 3 blank lines and probably in trouble if you have 2 or 4 blank lines, but you may be fine if you have like 6 or 12 blank lines.

While I'm being a bit sarcastic about the number of lines being "substantially similar", the legal standard in the US is not if you actually copied something, but if the plaintiff can convince a judge/jury that it's more likely that you copied it than it is that you created it on your own.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#83

Post by bdowling » Mon, Aug 23, 2021, 10:45 PM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #70

bdowling wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're not supposed to append copyright years to a notice It shouldn't matter because the date of actual first publication would control, not what is on one particular notice.

The date of revisions extends the copyright beyond the original cutoff date.

A later date on a subsequent publication including revisions doesn't extend the copyright term of the original material.

Re: The /bin/true Command and Copyright (2009)

#84

Post by ziml77 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #69

On macos, /usr/bin/true is 118K, not counted the linked shared libSystem.dylib. I wonder what did they put in there? Doesn't seem to have --version or any GNU bells and whistles of that nature.

Based on a quick check of the disassembly, _exit is dynamically linked. It appears that because of that dynamic linkage, there's some information stored for dyld to use. That data seems to be split across a few sections which are loaded with padding.

It's also a fat binary. It contains both an X64 and AArch64 version.

#85

Post by ziml77 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

ziml77 wrote: post #84

smsm42 wrote: post #69

On macos, /usr/bin/true is 118K, not counted the linked shared libSystem.dylib. I wonder what did they put in there? Doesn't seem to have --version or any GNU bells and whistles of that nature.

Based on a quick check of the disassembly, _exit is dynamically linked. It appears that because of that dynamic linkage, there's some information stored for dyld to use. That data seems to be split across a few sections which are loaded with padding. It's also a fat binary. It contains both an X64 and AArch64 version.

I should add that it really is doing nothing other than calling exit:

    EntryPoint:
        push       rbp
        mov        rbp, rsp
        xor        edi, edi
        call       imp___stubs__exit  
    imp___stubs__exit:
        jmp        qword [_exit_ptr]

#86

Post by bdowling » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #40

bdowling wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes parties pay what seems like a lot of money to settle dubious claims because it's cheaper and less time-consuming than fighting them. That can be completely rational. But paying £100,000 for infringing one minute of silence is just ridiculous.

Well, he sold a lot of copies of that one minute of silence, so I think the real question is whether it was copyrightable. I mean, if the answer is "yes", then the following question is what reason there is to suspect that the government that made it copyrightable is anything more than a criminal racket.

> so I think the real question is whether it was copyrightable.

Whether a particular thing is copyrightable or not is a question of law and fact. The government will accept your $25 for a copyright registration on anything you submit, but they don’t check if it’s copyrightable or not, if you own it or not, etc. So, no one knows for sure whether that one minute of silence is copyrightable or not until someone challenges it in court. Until then, all we can say is probably not, based on prior cases.