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Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

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Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#211

Post by winstonwinston »

mattmanser wrote: post #168
atleastoptimal wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The attitude is derived from a general animus many have towards AI companies. They resent the efficacy of AI because it devalues individual expertise. I can't imagine it really justifiable to say that training off data is the same as "stealing", when that same claim, that learned information that a person could retain and reproduce constitutes copyright infringement is the subject of many dystopian narratives, like t…

Part of how AI works is that it's just really complicated compression, you can get AI to write out Harry Potter novels word for word with the right prompting. When it picks out a rare bit of code, it will be simply copying that code, illegally, and presenting it without attribution or any licenses which is in fact breaking the law but AI companies are too important for the law to apply to them. There's been instances…

> There's nothing anyone can do about it, but the suspicion is that the big companies have taken everyone's code on GitHub, without consent, and trained on it.

I asked agent X what is the source of training data it generated code from, it couldn’t say. Then I asked why the code implementation is exactly the same as the output of agent Y. It said they were trained on the same ‘high-quality library’, and still couldn’t say which one.

So I guess that’s fine because everyone is doing it.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#212

Post by mbesto »

senaevren wrote: post #172
freedomben wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting, I had no idea. That's probably going to be a very painful lesson learned by all the startups that have been pumping out AI code. I know of several just among my peer groups that will be shocked and dismayed by this. Thanks for sharing that!

That is exactly the gap the piece is aimed at. The M&A conversation is where this becomes concrete very fast, and most founders shipping AI-assisted code have not had it yet.

Eh, it does and it doesn't. PE investors actively are asking why more of the portfolio companies aren't generating codebases using Claude Code. You are right that lawyers are asking about code generated by LLMs but this is more of a CYA out of ignorance more than anything else (btw - many purchase agreements have funny representations like "your code is free of bugs" which is downright hilarious).

So these two things are squarely at odds with eachother...meaning, I don't know any PE acquirers who are actively terminating deals because the target acquisition's code is generating by an LLM even if the lawyers try to get a rep about it in the purchase agreement.

For the record, I still have yet to have an M&A lawyer explain to me unilaterally that AI generated code is an infringement...hence the question "who owns the code Claude Code writes" is still open.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#213

Post by gspr »

ako wrote: post #201
gspr wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I write code, what I write and how I write it is informed by having read countless source code files over my education and my career. Just as I ingest all that experience to fine-tune how my later code is written, so does the LLM from the code it's seen. You are presumably human. We have granted humans specific exemptions in copyright law. We have not granted that to LLMs. Why are we so eager to?

Because that allows us to create useful tools that we didn't have before. For me it feels like a carpenter going from a hand-saw to an electrical saw. Still requires the skills of a good carpenter, but faster and easier.

… so a bunch of people just decided that rights we granted to humans also apply to their tools? Without any discussion? This isn't how anything is supposed to work when it comes to common rules!

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#214

Post by blks »

vorticalbox wrote: post #175
estimator7292 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning, probably not. Copy/pasting at scale , yes

It is learning though. It’s not just copying the code. Code gets turned into tokens and then it learns the next most likely token. The issue that I see most people talk about it the scale at which is learnt. A human will learn from other people’s code but not from every persons code.

A human is not a commercial product. Here we have commercial product that was created by using a lot of various copyrighted and protected IP, without licensing agreements, without paying, without even citing it.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#215

Post by all2 »

rspeele wrote: post #162
CWuestefeld wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the ability for the agent to build it in the first place is based off of stolen IP. I honestly don't understand why the attitude that underlies this is so prevalent. When I write code, what I write and how I write it is informed by having read countless source code files over my education and my career. Just as I ingest all that experience to fine-tune how my later code is written, so does the LLM from the code i…

For another human being to look at my open source code, learn from it, get inspired by it, appreciate what I did, and let it influence their own creativity would bring me joy. That's why I open sourced it in the first place. Few people ever actually read open source code, but I'd like to think on the rare occasions they do, they share a connection with the author. I know when I read somebody else's code, for me to un…

We're moving into the 'industrial age of software'. You exact issue, of bespoke, well thought out and well-crafted code is one that craftsmen felt at the beginning of the industrial age. Now, parts are designed and churned out by machines that no one sees or cares about (generally speaking). This is where we are going with software, and production at a truly industrial scale has its place.

And so does well-crafted bespoke software.

The engineers who built the foundation for the industrial expansion of our forefathers went through the same exact thing we're going through now. They look at what existed, and use it to inform their efforts. This is what LLMs do.

I'm not attempting to moralize here, just comment on the parallels. Do I agree that a craftman's work is consumed by the juggernauts and no second thought is given? No. I think its a shame. But I also think the output will never match the artisans that practice now. By the very nature of the machines we employ, we cannot match the skill or thought that goes into bespoke code.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#216

Post by boh »

tensor wrote: post #136
nadermx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how the copyright industry was able to spin copyright infringment into the pejorative "stealing". If you still have the item, what was stolen? Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985): The Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized sale of phonorecords of copyrighted musical compositions does not constitute "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" goods under the National Stolen Property Act

I still find the idea that "learning" from code is "stealing" kind of ridiculous.

Yes I guess there's also no such thing as stealing in torrents since the computer "learns" the data and returns it in a transcoded fashion so it's technically not a reproduction. Yes LLMs can reproduce passages from copyrighted works verbatim but that's only because it "learned" it and it's just telling you what it "knows".

The mental calisthenics required to justify this stuff must be exhausting.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#217

Post by refulgentis »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #40

That's quite impressive approach from the companies' perspective. Let's first use claude code and then we'll think who the code belongs to. I think that the gold rush approach happening right now around me (my company EMs forcing me to work with claude as fast as possible) show really short-sight of all the management people. First - I lose my understanding of the code base by relying too much on claude code. Second…

I opened my popcorn for the unholy trinity of HN x law x AI, your comment was one of my faves, love the purple prose. :)

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#218

Post by blks »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #134
Arcuru wrote: post #115

Personally, I think that the human directing the agent owns the copyright for whatever is produced, but the ability for the agent to build it in the first place is based off of stolen IP. I'm concerned about the copyright 'washing' this enables though, especially in OSS, and I think the right thing for OSS devs to do is to try to publish resulting code with the strongest copyleft licensing that they are comfortable w…

but the ability for the agent to build it in the first place is based off of stolen IP. I honestly don't understand why the attitude that underlies this is so prevalent. When I write code, what I write and how I write it is informed by having read countless source code files over my education and my career. Just as I ingest all that experience to fine-tune how my later code is written, so does the LLM from the code i…

You’re confusing yourself with a commercial product. You’re not a product that was created by other human beings based on someone else’s IP.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#220

Post by nkrisc »

tensor wrote: post #136
nadermx wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how the copyright industry was able to spin copyright infringment into the pejorative "stealing". If you still have the item, what was stolen? Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985): The Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized sale of phonorecords of copyrighted musical compositions does not constitute "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" goods under the National Stolen Property Act

I still find the idea that "learning" from code is "stealing" kind of ridiculous.

I find it more ridiculous to equate the act of a human learning with for-profit AI training without recompense to the authors of the training material.
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