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You cannot copyright the alphabet, but you can copyright the way letters are put together.
Now, with AI the abstraction level goes from individual letters to functions, classes, and maybe even entire files.
You can't copyright those (when written using AI), but you __can__ copyright the way they are put together.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of your questions have seemingly trivial answers. Maybe I am missing something, but... > If "generated" code is not copyrightable, where do draw the line on what generated means? Do macros count? Does the output of the macro depend on ingesting someone else's code? > Does code that generates other code count? Does the output of the code depend on ingesting someone else's code? > Protobuf? Does your protobuf imple…
Interesting. > the complaint is not about code generation, it's about ingesting someone else's code, frequently for profit. Why do you think that is, and what complaint specifically? I was talking about this: > The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn't include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection There seems to be 0 mentioning of training there.…
> ...
> I have no idea where you got the idea that this was about training data. Neither the copyright office nor the appeals court even mention this.
In both the story and the comments, that's the prevailing complaint. FTFA:
> Their claim that it is a “complete rewrite” is irrelevant, since they had ample exposure to the originally licensed code (i.e. this is not a “clean room” implementation). Adding a fancy code generator into the mix does not somehow grant them any additional rights.
I mean, I know it's passe to read the story, but I still do it so my comments are on the story, not just the title taken out of context.
> But anyway, since we're here, let's entertain this. So you're saying that training data is the differentiator.
Well, that's the complaint in the story and in the comment section, so it makes sense to address that and that alone.
> OK. So in that case, would training on "your own data" make this ok with you?
Yes.
> Would training on "synthetic" data be ok?
If provenance of "synthetic data" does not depend on some upstream ingesting someone else's work, then yes.
> Would a model that sees no "proprietary" code be ok?
If the model does not depend on someone else's work, then Yes.
> Would a hypothetical model trained just on RL with nothing but a compiler and endless compute be ok?
Yes.
*Note: Let me clarify that "someone else's work" means someone who has not consented or licended their work for ingestion and subsequent reproduction under the terms that AI/LLM training does it. If someone licensed you their work to train a model, then have at it.
"If “AI-rewriting” is accepted as a valid way to change licenses, it represents the end of Copyleft. " Software in the AI era is not that important. Copyleft has already won, you can have new code in 40 seconds for $0.70 worth of tokens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. > the complaint is not about code generation, it's about ingesting someone else's code, frequently for profit. Why do you think that is, and what complaint specifically? I was talking about this: > The Copyright Office reviewed the decision in 2022 and determined that the image doesn't include “human authorship,” disqualifying it from copyright protection There seems to be 0 mentioning of training there.…
> There seems to be 0 mentioning of training there. In fact if you read the appeal's court case [1] they don't mention training either: > ... > I have no idea where you got the idea that this was about training data. Neither the copyright office nor the appeals court even mention this. In both the story and the comments, that's the prevailing complaint. FTFA: > Their claim that it is a “complete rewrite” is irrelevan…
> > To me it sounds like the AI-written work can not be coppywritten
I was only commenting on that.
> In traditional software law, a “clean room” rewrite requires two teams So, I dislike AI and wish it would disappear, BUT! The argument is strange here, because ... how can a2mark ensure that AI did NOT do a clean-room conforming rewrite? Because I think in theory AI can do precisely this; you just need to make sure that the model used does that too. And this can be verified, in theory. So I don't fully understand a…
In cases like this it is usually incumbent on the entity claiming the clean-room situation was pure to show their working. For instance how Compaq clean-room cloned the IBM BIOS chip¹ was well documented (the procedures used, records of comms by the teams involved) where some other manufacturers did face costly legal troubles from IBM.
So the question is “is the clean-room claim sufficiently backed up to stand legal tests?” [and moral tests, though the AI world generally doesn't care about failing those]
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[1] the one part of their PCs that was not essentially off-the-shelf, so once it could be reliably legally mimicked this created an open IBM PC clone market
Interesting to see how this plays out. Conceivably if running an LLM over text defeats copyright, it will destroy the book publishing industry, as I could run any ebook thru an LLM to make a new text, like the ~95% regurgitated Harry Potter.
Interesting to see how this plays out. Conceivably if running an LLM over text defeats copyright, it will destroy the book publishing industry, as I could run any ebook thru an LLM to make a new text, like the ~95% regurgitated Harry Potter.
In mind, if you feed code into an AI model then the output is clearly a derivative work, with all the licensing implications. This seems objectively reasonable?
Interesting to see how this plays out. Conceivably if running an LLM over text defeats copyright, it will destroy the book publishing industry, as I could run any ebook thru an LLM to make a new text, like the ~95% regurgitated Harry Potter.
Persumably there is already a law around why I cant just go borrow a book from my library, type out some 95% regurgitated varient on my laptop, and then try to publish it somewhere?
Edit: I looked it up and the thing that stops you from publishing a bootleg "Harold Potter and the Wizards Rock" is this legal framework around "The Abstractions Test".