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Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

writings.hongminhee.org

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Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#41

Post by atomicnumber3 »

logicprog wrote: post #21
sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

> Blanchard's account is that he never looked at the existing source code directly. He fed only the API and the test suite to Claude and asked it to reimplement the library from scratch This feels sort of like saying "I just blindly threw paint at that canvas on the wall and it came out in the shape of Mickey Mouse, and so it can't be copyright infringement because it was created without the use of my knowledge of Mi…

I just don't see how it's relevant whether he did look or didn't. In my opinion, it's not just legally valid to make a re-implementation of something if you've seen the code as long as it doesn't copy expressive elements. I think it's also ethically fine as well to use source code as a reference for re-implementing something as long as it doesn't turn into an exact translation.

It's actually not legally fine, or at least it's extremely dangerous. Projects that re-implement APIs presented by extremely litigious companies specifically do not allow people who, for instance, have seen the proprietary source code to then work on the project.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#42

Post by righthand »

I think what is happening is the collapse of the “greater good”. Open source is dependent upon providing information for the greater good and general benefit of its readers. However now that no one is reading anything, its purpose is for the great good of the most clever or most convincing or richest harvester.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#44

Post by anonymous_sorry »

largbae wrote: post #38

This is only worth arguing about because software has value. Putting this in context of a world where the cost of writing code is trending to 0, there are two obvious futures: 1. The cost continues to trend to 0, and _all_ software loses value and becomes immediately replaceable. In this world, proprietary, copyleft and permissive licenses do not matter, as I can simply have my AI reimplement whatever I want and not…

There was a recent ruling that LLM output is inherently public domain (presumably unless it infringes some existing copyright). In which case it's not possible to use them to "reimplement everything we can as copyleft".

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#45

Post by intrasight »

dwroberts wrote: post #8

One of the things that irks me about this whole thing is, if it’s so clean room and distinct, why make the changes to the existing project? Why not make an entirely new library? The answer to that, I think, is that the authors wanted to squat an existing successful project and gain a platform from it. Hence we have news cycle discussing it. Nobody cares about a new library using AI, but squash an existing one with th…

I agree. But you can't copyright goodwill and reputation. Trademark does provide some protection there, right?

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#46

Post by sarchertech »

ordu wrote: post #26
stebalien wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyleft is a mirror of copyright, not a way to fight copyright. It grants rights to the consumer where copyright grants rights to the creator. Importantly, it gives the end-user the right to modify the software running on their devices. Unfortunately, there are cases where you simply can't just "re-implement" something. E.g., because doing so requires access to restricted tools, keys, or proprietary specifications.

These are words of Stallman: "So, I looked for a way to stop that from happening. The method I came up with is called “copyleft.” It's called copyleft because it's sort of like taking copyright and flipping it over. [Laughter] Legally, copyleft works based on copyright. We use the existing copyright law, but we use it to achieve a very different goal." https://writings.hongminhee.org/2026/03/legal-vs-legitimate/

That’s not a rebuttal of the OP’s point. None of that says anything about fighting copyright. It literally says he flipped it which is wha the OP said when they said it’s a mirror.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#47

Post by thomastjeffery »

ordu wrote: post #3

I believe it is a narrow view of the situation. If we take a look into the history, into the reasons for inventing GPL, we'll see that it was an attempt to fight copyrights with copyrights. The very name 'copyleft' is trying to convey the idea. What AI are eroding is copyright. You can re-implement not just a GPL program, but to reverse engineer and re-implement a closed source program too, people have demonstrated i…

While I personally agree with you, Richard Stallman (the creator of the GPL) does not. He has always advocated in favor of strong copyright protection, because the foundation of the GPL is the monopoly power granted by copyright. The problem that the GPL is intended to solve is proprietary software.

Generative models (AI) are not really eroding copyright. They are calling its bluff. The very notion of intellectual property depends on a property line: some arbitrary boundary where the property begins and ends. Generative models blur that line, making it impractical to distinguish which property belongs to whom.

Ironically, these models are made by giant monopolistic corporations whose wealth is quite literally a market valuation (stock price) of their copyrights! If generative models ever become good enough to reimplement CUDA, what value will NVIDIA have left?

The reality is that generative models are nowhere near good enough to actually call the bluff. Copyright is still the winning hand, and that is likely to continue, particularly while IP holders are the primary authors of law.

---

This whole situation is missing the forest for the trees. Intellectual Property is bullshit. A system predicated on monopoly power can only result in consolidated wealth driving the consolidation of power; which is precisely what has happened. The words "starving artist" ring every bit as familiar today as any time in history. Copyright has utterly failed the very goals it was explicitly written with.

It isn't the GPL that needs changing. So long as a system of copyright rules the land, copyleft is the best way to participate. What we really need is a cohesive political movement against monopoly power; one that isn't conveniently ignorant of copyright as its most significant source.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#48

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

> Blanchard's account is that he never looked at the existing source code directly. He fed only the API and the test suite to Claude and asked it to reimplement the library from scratch This feels sort of like saying "I just blindly threw paint at that canvas on the wall and it came out in the shape of Mickey Mouse, and so it can't be copyright infringement because it was created without the use of my knowledge of Mi…

Isn't this a red herring? An API definition is fair use under Google v. Oracle, but the test suite is definitely copyrightable code!

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#49

Post by ordu »

davidw wrote: post #20
ordu wrote: post #3

I believe it is a narrow view of the situation. If we take a look into the history, into the reasons for inventing GPL, we'll see that it was an attempt to fight copyrights with copyrights. The very name 'copyleft' is trying to convey the idea. What AI are eroding is copyright. You can re-implement not just a GPL program, but to reverse engineer and re-implement a closed source program too, people have demonstrated i…

> LLM as the main weapon LLM's - to date - seem to require massive capital expenditures to have the highest quality ones, which is a monumental shift in power towards mega corporations and away from the world of open source where you could do innovative work on your own computer running Linux or FreeBSD or some other open OS. I don't think that's an exciting idea for the Free Software Foundation. Perhaps with time we…

> LLM's - to date - seem to require massive capital expenditures to have the highest quality ones, which is a monumental shift in power towards mega corporations and away from the world of open source

Yeah, a bit of a conundrum. But I don't think that fighting for copyright now can bring any benefits for FOSS. GNU should bring Stallman back and see whether he can come with any new ideas and a new strategy. Alternatively they could try without Stallman. But the point is: they should stop and think again. Maybe they will find a way forward, maybe they won't but it means that either they could continue their fight for a freedom meaningfully, or they could just stop fighting and find some other things to do. Both options are better then fighting for copyright.

> There's also an ethical/moral question that these things have been trained on millions of hours of people's volunteer work and the benefits of that are going to accrue to the mega corporations.

I want a clarify this statement a bit. The thing with LLM relying on work of others are not against GPU philosophy as I understand it: algorithms have to be free. Nothing wrong with training LLMs on them or on programs implementing them. Nothing wrong with using these LLMs to write new (free) programs. What is wrong are corporations reaping all the benefits now and locking down new algorithms later.

I think it is important, because copyright is deemed to be an ethical thing by many (I think for most people it is just a deduction: abiding the law is ethical, therefore copyright is ethical), but not for GNU.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#50

Post by pklausler »

Aurornis wrote: post #31
sharkjacobs wrote: post #4

> Blanchard's account is that he never looked at the existing source code directly. He fed only the API and the test suite to Claude and asked it to reimplement the library from scratch This feels sort of like saying "I just blindly threw paint at that canvas on the wall and it came out in the shape of Mickey Mouse, and so it can't be copyright infringement because it was created without the use of my knowledge of Mi…

Can anyone find the actual quote where Blanchard said this? My understanding was that his claim was that Claude was not looking at the existing source code while writing it.

Conveniently ignoring the likelihood that Claude had been trained on the freely accessible source code.
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