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Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

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Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#21

Post by kube-system »

pryelluw wrote: post #15
stronglikedan wrote: post #12

There are no novel UIs, so copying UIs is okay, and necessary. As for source code, I'm a stickler for the license. The modern set of licenses cover any scenario I can think of, relatively fairly. AI is merely a tool, so the craftsman still owns the output. If the output violates a license, then the craftsman should be held to account.

I’ve seen companies get sued and lose in court for copying UIs. So no, legally speaking, copying a UI is not something that companies ignore.

The look and feel of an interface could be covered under a design patent, which would be a different question than copyright, and a much higher bar to enforce (particularly, protection is far from automatic).

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#22

Post by dataviz1000 »

Did you agree to terms of use? Did you have to click a check box that you agree to terms of use before seeing or having access to the items you copied? Click wrap. If in the contract that you agreed to there is language that you agreed to not copy the work, then you likely are in breach of contract. If it is publicly available knowledge probably not breach of contract. I’m not a lawyer of course.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#23

Post by echoangle »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #22

Did you agree to terms of use? Did you have to click a check box that you agree to terms of use before seeing or having access to the items you copied? Click wrap. If in the contract that you agreed to there is language that you agreed to not copy the work, then you likely are in breach of contract. If it is publicly available knowledge probably not breach of contract. I’m not a lawyer of course.

Copyright applies even without the contract.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#24

Post by scosman »

aldousd666 wrote: post #17

Copyright doesn't cover the results of code, nor the methods used in the code, techniques and algorithms aren't covered by copyright. Period. Copyright applies to 'the work'. If you don't copy the source code, it's not covered.

They copied strings, and visual design. Both of which are work, both of which are covered by copyright.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#25

Post by metalcrow »

kmeisthax wrote: post #9

There's a couple of related issues being conflated here, and I'm not sure which one to bring up, mainly because I'm not sure in what direction the copying would be ruled to have gone. So I'll just mention all the cases. The first thing to note is that nonliteral copying can still be infringing. Actually, among copyright cases that actually go to trial, most of them are not bit-exact matches ("striking similarity" in…

> So if it turns out Dataroom's developers are all Claude fans, and Claude is copying Papermark code, then it's just a normal license violation. LLMs do not launder copyright.

That's an easy case, but a more interesting question to me is if there wasn't any direct source code access (similar to an open source example I can't remember the name of atm). If you give an LLM requirements matching the copyrighted products capabilities, and it doesn't have Internet access, and it spits out different code that accomplishes the same stuff papermarks product does, do you believe courts would allow that, and copyrighted could be laundered legally?

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#26

Post by echoangle »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #19
eqvinox wrote: post #3

"still"? It never was. If you copy a (copyrighted) UI in bulk, that's a copyright violation just like copying code in bulk. The legal metric is generally "sufficient height of creation", the actual interpretation depends on where you are.

It depends also what you mean with copy. The code has copyright but the rendered pixels don’t (other than if something like an image was created pixel by pixel). So if the code is different but the output looks the same it’s not copyright infringement (can still be trademark).

I think that’s dependent on jurisdiction. This comes up with fonts where what you said applies in the US but in Europe, the actual visual result of the software also counts and is protected (afaik).

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#27

Post by thomastjeffery »

glimshe wrote: post #8

Software copyrights are among humanity's worst inventions. We as a species are no better off because of it, and neither are the small creators that copyrights are supposed to protect. Software copyrights only exist to protect a renter model from big corporations. There's an argument to be made for patent protections, but many of those are questionable considering the number of trivial software-related patents (there…

Software is a particularly egregious case, but the problem is more general. Copyright itself is just a bad move all around.

Copyright demands that everyone pretend the value of someone's work is the product of that work, not the labor. Therefore, we should not expect people to earn wages for labor; and we should instead expect people to earn royalties from their "works" (the countable commodity). Absurd.

Copyright grants "artists" (in the broadest sense of the word) a monopoly over their "work", again the imagined product of their labor. In practice, this actually means a monopoly on the labor itself, because all art is derivative work, and the derivation of work is the specific thing that copyright monopolizes. Twice absurd.

LLMs, in the best case, are calling that bluff. The problem is that they are calling it poorly, and the bluff itself is incoherent to begin with. Even worse is that LLMs can be monopolized as copyrighted "works", which is a clear abuse of the system.

We should get rid of copyright and patents. Dismantle all the moats and publishing houses (including social media). Liberate derivative work. Value labor directly.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#28

Post by arjie »

The Corgi event doesn't seem particularly notable. There are similar features implemented in the most bog standard way that those features can be implemented using the pattern that AFAIK Github pioneered with a 'Danger Zone'. Both parties are using the same upstream components so it ends up looking the same.

I don't know when the extreme intellectual property viewpoint entered software engineering as a mainstream opinion because I have never before seen it expressed so strongly in this community (seeing as I wasn't around when Bill Gates famously asked for money first or whatever). To think that a past OpenOffice would have been considered unconscionably close to a copy of an old MS Office of the era twenty years ago.

In some way, The Corporations Won, because it turns out software engineers turned into IP maximalists. Thinking back to when I first installed Tux Kart decades ago I never could have imagined that we'd get to this stage. Really wild, man.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#29

Post by kube-system »

metalcrow wrote: post #25
kmeisthax wrote: post #9

There's a couple of related issues being conflated here, and I'm not sure which one to bring up, mainly because I'm not sure in what direction the copying would be ruled to have gone. So I'll just mention all the cases. The first thing to note is that nonliteral copying can still be infringing. Actually, among copyright cases that actually go to trial, most of them are not bit-exact matches ("striking similarity" in…

> So if it turns out Dataroom's developers are all Claude fans, and Claude is copying Papermark code, then it's just a normal license violation. LLMs do not launder copyright. That's an easy case, but a more interesting question to me is if there wasn't any direct source code access (similar to an open source example I can't remember the name of atm). If you give an LLM requirements matching the copyrighted products…

If, in fact, you copy computer software by spec and never had access to the code -- that's a clean room reimplementation and doesn't violate copyright. Copyright covers the human expression of software -- the text of the code itself. It can also cover non-code assets included in your software like graphics. Copyright does not cover the ideas, goals, designs, concepts, principles, etc of your software.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#30

Post by gpm »

pryelluw wrote: post #15
stronglikedan wrote: post #12

There are no novel UIs, so copying UIs is okay, and necessary. As for source code, I'm a stickler for the license. The modern set of licenses cover any scenario I can think of, relatively fairly. AI is merely a tool, so the craftsman still owns the output. If the output violates a license, then the craftsman should be held to account.

I’ve seen companies get sued and lose in court for copying UIs. So no, legally speaking, copying a UI is not something that companies ignore.

Can you point to cases so I can google them?
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