5 ms·

It's more complex. Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. Are you laundering Windows? Clearly not okay. Are you trying to launder, or is it unin

It's more complex. Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. Are you laundering Windows? Clearly not okay. Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? Etc. There's a line somewhere, but it's somewhere, not at either edge, and it's a complex, odd-shaped line we haven't yet defined. I don't know where it is. However, it's not where you're putting it, and there isn't a slippery slope to "IP is over." If you use five lines of my code in a different system, IP hasn't ended.

gravypod 5y ago
> Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. If you copy a single character from a codebase that could could get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it, that could go to court. This is a hypothetical but this is entirely possible. There have been copyright cases fought over single sentences especially in the music industry. > Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter.
- noxer 5y ago
  The whole reply I post here is made from letters that I copied out of a Harry Potter PDF. Clearly that's not how copyright works.
  - Sebb767 5y ago
    I think you missed the part where he states: > that could could[sic] get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it Also, the letters in this case are not representative of the creative work itself. If you used the title font to write your post (hypothetically, I know HN does not allow this), you'd be in bad water already.
    - noxer 5y ago
      I could copy a whole sentence from the book and it would not matter at all. Or even 5 lines like the parent post said. >....you'd be in bad water already. Not true either, writing my message in harry potter font would do absolutely nothing. the internet is full of images which use these or similar looking fonts. Its called fan art or whatever, copyright laws are not applicable to this.
  - NullPrefix 5y ago
    Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440944
- eesmith 5y ago
  Exactly zero real-world situations will have no "substantial similarity" (that's the legal requirement - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity ) except for a single character. Please explain how it "is entirely possible". Bear in mind that there must be creativity in that choice of character to qualify for copyright protection. If only one character is correct, there's no creativity. A sentence in a song has far more discretion for creativity than a single character in a software program. As best as I can tell, you would need to construct some sort of super-APL where "a single character" had significantly more information content than any Unicode glyph, to exceed any de minimis standard applied to a programming language. (Think Prince's "Love Symbol".) > that could go to court I think you mean "that could be found infringing." Going to court is trivial, even if there is no infringement.
  - gravypod 5y ago
    > As best as I can tell, you would need to construct some sort of super-APL where "a single character" had significantly more information content than any Unicode glyph, to exceed any de minimis standard applied to a programming language. This used to be something cartographers did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street Even if you didn't have the street's name, if you copied the road on the map (no words, just the shape) they would know you stole their IP. I do not think there is literally a character that would satisfy this condition. The point of what I was saying was the "size" of the copying does not matter at all. The Substantial Similarity is explicitly about this phenomenon. For something to be substantially similar, from a software perspective, you could hypothetically see the modules and data structures contain roughly the same data types and that the flow of logic is the same. You could also point to a function and say "these are the same variable names". Substantial similarity is not the only component of a legal analysis of a copyright claim. Another important component of copyright is if someone had access to the material. If I had code on my laptop that I showed to no one, uploaded nowhere, and at some point I find another developer who is doing some code that is character for character identical to my work, I likely cannot do anything. The law is complex here, I am not a lawyer, but I think the important component here: The length of copying is not a factor at all. If for some reason your algorithm requires `magic_code.seed(20154)` and your code does this by doing `magic_code.seed(ord('人'))` and you find someone else doing the same thing you'd definitely want to investigate what's going on there. The entire copyright doctrine is created to help protect the creativity of an author. If there is something creative in your code that is copied, you likely have a copyright claim you could argue.
- murgindrag 5y ago
  >> Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. >The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. This is incorrect. The amount of material used is the third factor in a fair use test. There are other ways it comes up as well (e.g. damage calculations). >> Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? > I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter. In this context, this is incorrect as well. People seem to be misinterpreting laws pretty badly, so instead of explaining how to apply here, I'll give a simpler, analogous context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_... In this context, it depends on a lot of things, such as direct versus contributory infringement. This would likely be a contributory infringement case, where intent is almost a requirement. https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contributory-infringement.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contr... Keep in mind these are all factors. They matter, so they'll help swing a case one way or the other, but they're not something you can bank on in isolation. That's what will make for interesting case law.
  - gravypod 5y ago
    > This is incorrect. The amount of material used is the third factor in a fair use test. There are other ways it comes up as well (e.g. damage calculations). The 3rd factor of the fair use test deals with how substantial the copied material is in relation to the entire work. You can make a copy of 100% of the original work and have it still be fair use while in another situation copying 0.002% of an original work would not be fair use. The measurable amount (bytes, seconds, square inches) you are copying does not matter here. Instead the "importance" of what you are copying to your criticism is being defined in this prong. For instance: I am a movie buff and: 1. Make a copy of the entire movie of Citizen Kane 2. Remove the audio and replace it with a commentary track going over every framing/camera trick through the movie 3. Upload this to an educational youtube channel that teaches viewers how to shoot a movie I would likely be allowed to use fair use as a defense to a copyright claim. Here, if an expert could say all 100% of Citizen Kane's film, contained relevant film techniques that I was actively commenting on, I would have copied the correct amount for my usage. If I instead owned a movie review channel and I said "Citizen Kane is my favorite movie" and I displayed the entire movie after that I would likely not be using an appropriate amount of the film. It's also important to note that fair use is a very narrow defense that covers a very limited subset of uses. It is not a generally applicable, or even a guideline, for how to skirt around copyrights.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. It absolutely does for fair use analysis, see 17 USC § 107: “[…] In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—[…]the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole”
cjaybo 5y ago
> I don't know where it is. However, it's not where you're putting it How are these statements not contradictory? Do you know where the line is, or not?
- EvgeniyZh 5y ago
  I know that my pizza is not dark matter
- mrmanner 5y ago
  I don't know where my airpods are. However, they're not on the table in front of me.
jeremyjh 5y ago
My point is only that running the text through an ML algorithm changes nothing. If the 5 lines are fair use, you could have copy pasted the lines yourself. If its infringement, it doesn't matter which tools you used to put the infringing code in your file.

gravypod 5y ago

> Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. If you copy a single character from a codebase that could could get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it, that could go to court. This is a hypothetical but this is entirely possible. There have been copyright cases fought over single sentences especially in the music industry. > Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter.

noxer 5y ago
The whole reply I post here is made from letters that I copied out of a Harry Potter PDF. Clearly that's not how copyright works.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  I think you missed the part where he states: > that could could[sic] get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it Also, the letters in this case are not representative of the creative work itself. If you used the title font to write your post (hypothetically, I know HN does not allow this), you'd be in bad water already.
  - noxer 5y ago
    I could copy a whole sentence from the book and it would not matter at all. Or even 5 lines like the parent post said. >....you'd be in bad water already. Not true either, writing my message in harry potter font would do absolutely nothing. the internet is full of images which use these or similar looking fonts. Its called fan art or whatever, copyright laws are not applicable to this.
- NullPrefix 5y ago
  Programmers generate every possible melody in MIDI to prevent lawsuits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22440944
eesmith 5y ago
Exactly zero real-world situations will have no "substantial similarity" (that's the legal requirement - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity ) except for a single character. Please explain how it "is entirely possible". Bear in mind that there must be creativity in that choice of character to qualify for copyright protection. If only one character is correct, there's no creativity. A sentence in a song has far more discretion for creativity than a single character in a software program. As best as I can tell, you would need to construct some sort of super-APL where "a single character" had significantly more information content than any Unicode glyph, to exceed any de minimis standard applied to a programming language. (Think Prince's "Love Symbol".) > that could go to court I think you mean "that could be found infringing." Going to court is trivial, even if there is no infringement.
- gravypod 5y ago
  > As best as I can tell, you would need to construct some sort of super-APL where "a single character" had significantly more information content than any Unicode glyph, to exceed any de minimis standard applied to a programming language. This used to be something cartographers did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street Even if you didn't have the street's name, if you copied the road on the map (no words, just the shape) they would know you stole their IP. I do not think there is literally a character that would satisfy this condition. The point of what I was saying was the "size" of the copying does not matter at all. The Substantial Similarity is explicitly about this phenomenon. For something to be substantially similar, from a software perspective, you could hypothetically see the modules and data structures contain roughly the same data types and that the flow of logic is the same. You could also point to a function and say "these are the same variable names". Substantial similarity is not the only component of a legal analysis of a copyright claim. Another important component of copyright is if someone had access to the material. If I had code on my laptop that I showed to no one, uploaded nowhere, and at some point I find another developer who is doing some code that is character for character identical to my work, I likely cannot do anything. The law is complex here, I am not a lawyer, but I think the important component here: The length of copying is not a factor at all. If for some reason your algorithm requires `magic_code.seed(20154)` and your code does this by doing `magic_code.seed(ord('人'))` and you find someone else doing the same thing you'd definitely want to investigate what's going on there. The entire copyright doctrine is created to help protect the creativity of an author. If there is something creative in your code that is copied, you likely have a copyright claim you could argue.
murgindrag 5y ago
>> Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. >The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. This is incorrect. The amount of material used is the third factor in a fair use test. There are other ways it comes up as well (e.g. damage calculations). >> Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? > I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter. In this context, this is incorrect as well. People seem to be misinterpreting laws pretty badly, so instead of explaining how to apply here, I'll give a simpler, analogous context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_... In this context, it depends on a lot of things, such as direct versus contributory infringement. This would likely be a contributory infringement case, where intent is almost a requirement. https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contributory-infringement.html https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/what-is-contr... Keep in mind these are all factors. They matter, so they'll help swing a case one way or the other, but they're not something you can bank on in isolation. That's what will make for interesting case law.
- gravypod 5y ago
  > This is incorrect. The amount of material used is the third factor in a fair use test. There are other ways it comes up as well (e.g. damage calculations). The 3rd factor of the fair use test deals with how substantial the copied material is in relation to the entire work. You can make a copy of 100% of the original work and have it still be fair use while in another situation copying 0.002% of an original work would not be fair use. The measurable amount (bytes, seconds, square inches) you are copying does not matter here. Instead the "importance" of what you are copying to your criticism is being defined in this prong. For instance: I am a movie buff and: 1. Make a copy of the entire movie of Citizen Kane 2. Remove the audio and replace it with a commentary track going over every framing/camera trick through the movie 3. Upload this to an educational youtube channel that teaches viewers how to shoot a movie I would likely be allowed to use fair use as a defense to a copyright claim. Here, if an expert could say all 100% of Citizen Kane's film, contained relevant film techniques that I was actively commenting on, I would have copied the correct amount for my usage. If I instead owned a movie review channel and I said "Citizen Kane is my favorite movie" and I displayed the entire movie after that I would likely not be using an appropriate amount of the film. It's also important to note that fair use is a very narrow defense that covers a very limited subset of uses. It is not a generally applicable, or even a guideline, for how to skirt around copyrights.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. It absolutely does for fair use analysis, see 17 USC § 107: “[…] In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—[…]the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole”

cjaybo 5y ago

> I don't know where it is. However, it's not where you're putting it How are these statements not contradictory? Do you know where the line is, or not?

EvgeniyZh 5y ago
I know that my pizza is not dark matter
mrmanner 5y ago
I don't know where my airpods are. However, they're not on the table in front of me.

jeremyjh 5y ago

My point is only that running the text through an ML algorithm changes nothing. If the 5 lines are fair use, you could have copy pasted the lines yourself. If its infringement, it doesn't matter which tools you used to put the infringing code in your file.