Oracle v Google concluded that APIs could not be protected by either copyright or copyleft. It seemed to me at the time that most here supported that decision. Has anything changed?
Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
461–470 of 623 posts
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the bigger question is how would you even tell if a work was generated by an LLM? There's a ton of code being written out there; the folks who generated it are going to claim they authored it for copyright purposes, and those who want to use it are going to claim it was LLM-generated. So what happens?
That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
Can you expand on that, please? Which other laws are infringed if you use someone else's closed source code?
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#463> 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…
We should be removing IP law entirely, not strengthening it to cover entire classes of problem even when implemented entirely differently. Same for anyone trying to claim "colorful monster creatures" as innately Pokemon IP. Just because someone climbed a mountain first doesn't mean they own it forever. Nobody should be honouring any of these claims. Nor should we be treating AI models themselves as respected IP. They…
The problem here is that large companies can do whatever they want and regular people cannot. Don't worry, they won't be allowing you the same rights as these companies.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#464I've been thinking about the erosion of copyright as well. It's basically making software worthless.
Already, the IP protections which exist for software suck. Patents are expensive and you can't even use them for software most of the time anyway. Copyright doesn't protect innovative ideas or architectures; if someone can just copy your code, mix it with a bunch of other code (no functionality changes) and then use it as their own; then copyright provides no protection at all...
If this is the case, then why should anyone bother to write any quality software at all? It has no value since anyone can just appropriate any essential functionality that they didn't create for themselves. What's to prevent an employee from taking their employer's source code, rewriting it with an LLM (same functionally) and generate a clone of their company's software to use as their own to compete against their employer?
Without any IP protections, anyone who writes software becomes a complete loser. There's 0 benefit. One software developer would be doing all the work and then some marketing expert or someone with good social connections could just steal their work and sell it for billions... The software developer gets NOTHING.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
Can you expand on that, please? Which other laws are infringed if you use someone else's closed source code?
You used an illegal leak to train your llm
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#466I think the missing thing here is that the license violation already happened. Most of the big models trained on data in a manner that violated terms of service. We'll need a court case but I think it's extremely reasonable to consider any model trained on GPL code to be infected with open licensing requirements.
Is the LLM acting as my agent? If the LLM has been exposed to the source code then have I been exposed to the source code? So in that case is a "clean room" implementation possible?
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO the bigger question is how would you even tell if a work was generated by an LLM? There's a ton of code being written out there; the folks who generated it are going to claim they authored it for copyright purposes, and those who want to use it are going to claim it was LLM-generated. So what happens?
That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
I'm not sure I understand. I'm not talking about stolen/leaked code here. I'm saying: imagine you claim you're the author of some piece of code. You may or may not have written it with an LLM, but even if so, assume you have the full rights to all the inputs. You post it publicly on GitHub. You don't attach a license, or perhaps you attach a restrictive license that doesn't permit much beyond viewing. Someone comes across your code, finds it brilliant, and wants to use it. If that code was non-copyrightable (such as generated via an LLM), then they're fine doing it without your permission, no? But if that code was copyrightable, then they're not permitted to do so, correct?
So now consider two questions:
1. You actually didn't use an LLM, but they believe & claim you did. Who has the burden of proof to show that you actually own the copyright, and how do they do so?
2. They write new code that you feel is based on yours. They claim they washed it through an LLM, but you don't believe so. Who has the burden of proof here and how do they do so?
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand on that, please? Which other laws are infringed if you use someone else's closed source code?
You used an illegal leak to train your llm
What makes the leak illegal other than copyright?
The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
> You infringe copyright every time you download a picture off of a website. You infringe copyright every time you share it with a friend.
respectfully yoy have no idea what you are talking about here.
Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
#470> The dispute drew responses from two prominent figures in the open source world. Sure, but neither of those is an IP Lawyer. The actual IP Lawyer who turned up and tried to engage, Richard Fontana, had his issue closed: https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/334 Richard's point was this (quoted below): --- FWIW, that case is not really relevant to what we are/were talking about here. The question is whether you a…
I don't think Fontana's reasoning holds up. I think it is more like photography. The case law is that a camera can't own a copyright, but a human can, even though all the pixels were produced by the camera with very little involvement at the pixel level by the human.
Actually yes, Fontana's reasoning does hold up, and the USSC seems to agree:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de...
Prompting generally does not constitute authorship under US law.