421–430 of 623 posts
The GPL's conditions are triggered only by distribution . If you distribute modified code, or offer it as a networked service, you must make the source available under the same terms. Offering as a networked service is not distribution. That was why they had to make AGPL to put conditions on use in networked services.
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>Adding even more intellectual property nonsense isn't going to work. [citation needed] Where does your confidence come from? GPL itself was precisely the "intellectual property nonsense" adding which made FOSS (free as in freedom) software possible . The copyright law was awfully broken in the 1980s too. Adding "nonsense" then was the only solution that proved viable. Historically, nothing but adding "more IP nonsen…
> Where does your confidence come from? From the fact that copyright infringement is trivial and done at massive scales by pretty much everyone on a daily basis without people even realizing it. You infringe copyright every time you download a picture off of a website. You infringe copyright every time you share it with a friend. Everybody does stuff like this every single day. Nobody cares. It is natural . > GPL its…
The really interesting question to me is if this transcends copyright and unravels the whole concept of intellectual property. Because all of it is premised on an assumption that creativity is "hard". But LLMs are not just writing software, they are rapidly being engineered to operate completely generally as knowledge creation engines: solving math proofs, designing drugs, etc. So: once it's not "hard" any more, does…
Also copyright can protect something normally not eligible when the author chooses what information to include and exclude
> If source code can now be generated from a specification, the specification is where the essential intellectual content of a GPL project resides. Our foreparents fought for the right to implement works-a-like to corporate software packages, even if the so-called owners did not like it. We're ready to throw it all away, and let intellectual property owners get so much more control. The implications will not end up b…
Although I think the chance of that happening is effectively zero.
It should be noted that the Rust community is also guilty of something similar. That is, porting old GPL programs, typically written in C, to Rust and relicensing them as MIT.
Within a relatively short time frame, expect everything in your Linux distro other than the kernel to be MIT-licensed because everything that is FSF-maintained will be rewritten in Rust with the MIT license.
The kernel will then be next, though it'll take a longer timeframe.
The GPL just didn't win in the marketplace of ideas.
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You might wish that were true, but there are very strong arguments it's not. Training on copyleft licensed code is not a license violation. Any more than a person reading it is. In copyright terms, it's such an extreme transformative use that copyright no longer applies. It's fair use. But agreed that we're waiting for a court case to confirm that. Although really, the main questions for any court cases are not going…
A human reading a unit of work is not a “copy”. I’m pretty sure our legal systems agree that thought or sight is not copying something. Training an LLM inherently requires making a copy of the work. Even the initial act of loading it from the internet and copying it into memory to then train the LLM is a copy that can be governed by its license and copyright law
1. The freedom to run the program as you wish 2. The freedom to study how it works and modify it (which requires access to source code) 3. The freedom to redistribute copies to help others 4. The freedom to distribute modified versions, so the whole community benefits from your improvements
To my mind ... GenAI coding make all of these far more realizable, especially for "normal people", than CopyLeft ever has. Let's go through them ...
Want to run a program as you wish? Great! It's easier than ever to build a replacement. Proprietary or non-free software is just as vulnerable to reimplementation as Copyleft is.
Want to study a how a program works and to modify it? This is now much more achievable.
Want the freedom to redistribute copies to help others? Build your own version! It may not even be copyrightable if it's 100% generated (IANAL).
Want to distribute modified versions? yes! see previous.
I dunno; seems like generative coding can be as much a liberator as any kind of problem.
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> AI-output does not qualify for IP protections I beg to differ. AI-output did not entitle the person creating the prompt for IP protections, so far – but my objection is not directed towards the "so far", but towards your omission of "the person creating the prompt", because if an AI outputs copyrighted material from the training data, that material is still copyrighted. AI is not a magical copyright removal machine…
The U.S. Supreme Court just declined to hear a case, thus upholding a lower court precedent that LLM output are not copyrightable: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de... What this means in practice is that (currently), all output of an LLM is legally considered to not be copyrightable (to the extent that it's an original work). If it happens to regurgitate an existing copyrighted work, though…
I believe there are other cases where AI-generated works were found uncopyrightable but Thaler is not a good example* of them.
The four essential freedoms of the Free Software movement are ... 1. The freedom to run the program as you wish 2. The freedom to study how it works and modify it (which requires access to source code) 3. The freedom to redistribute copies to help others 4. The freedom to distribute modified versions, so the whole community benefits from your improvements To my mind ... GenAI coding make all of these far more realiza…
But I'll try nevertheless.
- >Want to run a program as you wish? Great! It's easier than ever to build a replacement.
Non-sequitur. Building a replacement does nothing for being able to run a program as you wish.
Nobody else is able to run your program as they wish unless you release it with a Copyleft license.
- >Want to study a how a program works and to modify it? This is now much more achievable.
Reverse engineering is more achievable.
Modifying a program, without having its source code, documentation, and a legal right to do so guaranteed by the license is (and always be) easier compared to not having those things.
- >Want the freedom to redistribute copies to help others? Build your own version! It may not even be copyrightable if it's 100% generated (IANAL).
So, that's not about redistributing copies. That's about building an alternative option.
I can download an Ubuntu image and get Libre Office on it with a click.
Go vibe-code me a Microsoft Excel running on Windows 11, please, and tell me it's easier.
- >Want to distribute modified versions? yes! see previous.
You're not even trying here.
One can't legally modify and redistribute copyrighted works without explicit permission to do so.
You keep saying "...but vibe coding allows anyone to create something else entirely instead and do whatever with it!" as if that is a substitute for checking out a repo, or simply downloading FOSS software to use as you wish.
- >I dunno; seems like generative coding can be as much a liberator as any kind of problem.
Now, that statement I fully agree with.
Generative coding is a liberator as much as any kind of problem is.
Headache, for example, is generally a problem. It's not a great liberator.
Neither is generative coding.
Now, you probably didn't intend to say what you wrote. And that's exactly why generative coding is not a panacea: the only way to say things that you mean to say is to write precisely what you mean to say.
Vibe-coding (like any vibe-writing) simply can't accomplish that, by design.
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Plots are broadly not copyrightable, “different plot” is less important than “different characters”.
I'm pretty sure the plot is copyrightable, otherwise you could just translate Harry Potter to a different language and change the names of the characters.
Translations are pretty much the textbook example of a derivative work in copyright.
Your jurisdiction may vary, of course, but it's pretty well established in mine (Canada) that "plot" is an idea, and can't be copyrighted, only the expression of the idea (e.g. the written novel) falls under copyright.