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Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

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Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#431

Post by NewsaHackO »

jeppester wrote: post #389
NewsaHackO wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has had a complete 180 in terms of copyright protections. Before, nobody cared about downloading music, movies, TV shows, or pirating games. Now, when the copyright law is affecting them, they are gungho about protecting these billion-dollar companies' copyrights.

A more logical explanation would be that there are different opinions and those who complain are usually louder.

Yes, that's my point. They are different and contradictory opinions, which show hypocrisy.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#433

Post by gspr »

tiku wrote: post #430

So by this logic my auto complete function before Ai also wrote 50% of my code and is not made by me, because I didn't type it. What should matter is intent, the human that gives the orders.

> What should matter is intent, the human that gives the orders.

I'd like to hear more nuance with regards to this line of reasoning. Can you conceive of a model that contains highly non-trivial representations of IP owned by others than yourself? Can you conceive that you might "order" the model to "produce" that IP? What happens then?

Try this both for "open source code" as the IP, and "the novel I wrote", and "latest Hollywood movie". The model does not have to be a real model currently available. It's just a thought experiment.

Try also to elaborate on the sliding scale between "an AI model" and "a compression system".

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#434

Post by gspr »

varispeed wrote: post #132
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…

I find idea that the code could be copyrightable as weak. There are only so many ways to write a for loop. Similarly you can't copyright schematics (apart from exact visual representation as form of art). Code is just a schematic.

Let me get this straight: Since there are only so many ways to write a for loop, you doubt that for loops are copyrightable. From this you conclude that code, in general isn't copyrightable?

That's like saying "there's only so many ways to greet your neighbor, so any text that simply greets your neighbor isn't copyrightable – and therefore no text is copyrightable".

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#435

Post by NewsaHackO »

preisschild wrote: post #393
NewsaHackO wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has had a complete 180 in terms of copyright protections. Before, nobody cared about downloading music, movies, TV shows, or pirating games. Now, when the copyright law is affecting them, they are gungho about protecting these billion-dollar companies' copyrights.

Its not about "billion-dollar companies' copyrights", but also about voluntary copyleft free software. If I license my code under GPL I don't want other persons/companies just whitewash that code through LLMs and use it in their proprietary code.

I agree with this, and I think that it is an open question whether or not training on copyrighted material is considered transformative or not. However, someone said that thumbnails of full photos are considered transformative enough to allow fair use, and LLM training is (in my opinion) clearly more transformative than converting a picture to a thumbnail. But we will see how it plays out.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#436

Post by sobjornstad »

veber-alex wrote: post #346
atleastoptimal wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic was sued successfully for training on books, the law still applies to them https://www.npr.org/2025/09/05/g-s1-87367/anthropic-authors-... When I write fizzbuzz do I owe royalties to the inventor of fizzbuzz? Is my brain copyright thieving because I can write out the song lyrics from memory?

They got sued for downloading pirated books and not for using them for training. Huge difference.

Indeed, the court actually explicitly held that Anthropic had the right to train their AIs on books, so long as they paid for them.

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#439

Post by pjmlp »

tiku wrote: post #430

So by this logic my auto complete function before Ai also wrote 50% of my code and is not made by me, because I didn't type it. What should matter is intent, the human that gives the orders.

Well, have you actually read the license for the auto complete function?

Example,

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/VisualStudioExptT...

Re: Who owns the code Claude Code wrote?

#440

Post by perlgeek »

tiku wrote: post #430

So by this logic my auto complete function before Ai also wrote 50% of my code and is not made by me, because I didn't type it. What should matter is intent, the human that gives the orders.

The auto complete function doesn't really change what you write, so it doesn't remove the human creativity.
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