Earlier quoted context omitted.
More interesting to me is the "derivative work" concept. If a human sits down with a novel, reads it cover to cover, then writes their own novel which broadly has the same characters following the same plot in the same setting, but with slight differences in names and word choice, is that new work a derivative of the first for copyright purposes? What if they do the same thing for code? What if an AI does either or b…
Copyright does not cover ideas, period. If you write your own novel and use your own word choices, even if you copy the plot structure exactly and the same character names while writing a new book, it’s not even considered a derivative work under the law, it’s a new work. Copyright covers copying the fixed work itself. You aren’t in violation of copyright unless you copy the words themselves. The flip side is that th…
What if I did something similar, but rather than a simple Ctrl-H replacement, I asked an LLM to rewrite each paragraph in different words? What if I did the rewrite myself, by hand? Is there a difference? If so, why? If not, why not?