4 ms·

> In contrast when talking about training code generation models there are multiple comments mentioning this is not ok if licenses weren't respected. I think o

> In contrast when talking about training code generation models there are multiple comments mentioning this is not ok if licenses weren't respected. I think one of the differences is that people are seeing non-trivial amounts of copyrighted code being output by AI models. If a 262,144 pixel image has a few 2x2 squares copied directly, you can't tell. If a 300 line source file has 20 lines copied directly from a copyrighted source, well, that is more blatant.

andybak 4y ago
I personally feel the bar for copyrighting code should be considerably higher than 20 lines.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > I personally feel the bar for copyrighting code should be considerably higher than 20 lines. That highly depends on the lines of code. One of my (now abandoned) open source react components essentially does some smarter-than-it-probably-should state management in just a handful of LOCs. At least a few hundred people found the clever solution I came up with useful enough to integrate into their own projects. I've seen talented a graphics programmer hand optimize routines to gain significant speed boosts, speed boosts that helped save non-trivial amounts of system resources. And where do you draw the line? That same gfx programmer optimized maybe a dozen functions, each less than 20 lines, but all quite independent of each other. The sum total of his work gave us a huge performance boost over everyone else in the field at the time. And of course you also have super terse languages like APL, where non-trivial algorithms can easily be implemented in 20 LOC. But let's move to another medium, the written word, also one of the less controversial aspects of copyright (ignoring the USA's penchant for indefinite extension of copyright) Start with poems, plenty of artistically significant poems that come in under 20 lines, deserving of copyright for sure. https://tinhouse.com/miracles-by-lucy-corin/ https://tinhouse.com/miracles-by-lucy-corin/ There is a short story, around 22 lines. The problem is, it is complicated, which is why these are the types of things that get litigated all the time. Heck as a profession we cannot even agree on what a line of code is. A LOC in Java is, IMHO, worse less than a LOC in JavaScript, and if you jump to embedded C, wow that is super terse, unless you count the thousands of lines of #defines describing pinouts and such, but domain knowledge is needed to know that those aren't "real" lines of code.
  - PeterisP 4y ago
    I think that your code examples are not (and should not be) copyrightable. Quoting US copyright law (but the same principle is global) "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." - when a work combines an idea and its expression, copyright protects only the expression but not the idea itself, no matter how clever or valuable it is. Copyright does not prohibit others to freely copy the method/process/system/etc expressed in the copyrighted work. Also, there is a general rule of thumb (established in law and precedent) in copyrightability that functionally required aspects can not be copyrighted - in essence, if you create a new, optimized routine that's superior to everything else, then only the "arbitrary" free, creative parts of that code are copyrightable, but you absolutely can't get an exclusive right to that algorithm or technique. If the way you wrote it is the only way to write it, that can't be protected; and if not, others must be able to write stuff that's functionally the same (i.e. gets all the same performance boosts) and varies only in the functionally irrelevant parts. That's one of the reasons, for example, for recipe sites having all that fluff - because you can't get copyright protection on the functional part of the recipe, or some technique in another domain like architecture or computer science. Perhaps you can get a patent on that, but copyright is not applicable for that goal. So, going back to your examples: People reimplementing that "smarter-than-it-probably-should state management in just a handful of LOCs" is absolutely permitted by copyright law. If the same state management can be written in many different ways, then copying your code would be a violation and they would have to reimplement the same idea in different words, but copyright law definitely allows them to copy and reuse your idea without your permission, it doesn't protect the idea, only its specific expression. Hand-optimized graphics routines may fall into the area where there is only one possible expression for that idea which implements the same method with the same efficiency. If that happens to be the case, the routine is not eligible for copyright protection at all - you can't get a monopoly on a particular effective technique or method using copyright law; patent law covers the cases in which that can or can't be done. For APL implementations of algorithms - again, the key principle is that copyright definitely allows others to implement the same algorithm. If an obvious reimplementation of the same algorithm results in the same terse APL code, then that's simply evidence that this particular APL code is solely the "idea" (unprotectable), not "creative expression" which would be eligible for copyright protection.
wnkrshm 4y ago
As an artist you can spot parts though that have the same 'visual language' that are much larger than 2 pixels. E.g. how someone uses their brushes, how someone does texture on corrugated metal etc. Those are footprints as large as a matrix multiplication method - they just can't be that easily quantified, because we need an AI model to quantify them.

andybak 4y ago

I personally feel the bar for copyrighting code should be considerably higher than 20 lines.

com2kid 4y ago
> I personally feel the bar for copyrighting code should be considerably higher than 20 lines. That highly depends on the lines of code. One of my (now abandoned) open source react components essentially does some smarter-than-it-probably-should state management in just a handful of LOCs. At least a few hundred people found the clever solution I came up with useful enough to integrate into their own projects. I've seen talented a graphics programmer hand optimize routines to gain significant speed boosts, speed boosts that helped save non-trivial amounts of system resources. And where do you draw the line? That same gfx programmer optimized maybe a dozen functions, each less than 20 lines, but all quite independent of each other. The sum total of his work gave us a huge performance boost over everyone else in the field at the time. And of course you also have super terse languages like APL, where non-trivial algorithms can easily be implemented in 20 LOC. But let's move to another medium, the written word, also one of the less controversial aspects of copyright (ignoring the USA's penchant for indefinite extension of copyright) Start with poems, plenty of artistically significant poems that come in under 20 lines, deserving of copyright for sure. https://tinhouse.com/miracles-by-lucy-corin/ https://tinhouse.com/miracles-by-lucy-corin/ There is a short story, around 22 lines. The problem is, it is complicated, which is why these are the types of things that get litigated all the time. Heck as a profession we cannot even agree on what a line of code is. A LOC in Java is, IMHO, worse less than a LOC in JavaScript, and if you jump to embedded C, wow that is super terse, unless you count the thousands of lines of #defines describing pinouts and such, but domain knowledge is needed to know that those aren't "real" lines of code.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  I think that your code examples are not (and should not be) copyrightable. Quoting US copyright law (but the same principle is global) "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." - when a work combines an idea and its expression, copyright protects only the expression but not the idea itself, no matter how clever or valuable it is. Copyright does not prohibit others to freely copy the method/process/system/etc expressed in the copyrighted work. Also, there is a general rule of thumb (established in law and precedent) in copyrightability that functionally required aspects can not be copyrighted - in essence, if you create a new, optimized routine that's superior to everything else, then only the "arbitrary" free, creative parts of that code are copyrightable, but you absolutely can't get an exclusive right to that algorithm or technique. If the way you wrote it is the only way to write it, that can't be protected; and if not, others must be able to write stuff that's functionally the same (i.e. gets all the same performance boosts) and varies only in the functionally irrelevant parts. That's one of the reasons, for example, for recipe sites having all that fluff - because you can't get copyright protection on the functional part of the recipe, or some technique in another domain like architecture or computer science. Perhaps you can get a patent on that, but copyright is not applicable for that goal. So, going back to your examples: People reimplementing that "smarter-than-it-probably-should state management in just a handful of LOCs" is absolutely permitted by copyright law. If the same state management can be written in many different ways, then copying your code would be a violation and they would have to reimplement the same idea in different words, but copyright law definitely allows them to copy and reuse your idea without your permission, it doesn't protect the idea, only its specific expression. Hand-optimized graphics routines may fall into the area where there is only one possible expression for that idea which implements the same method with the same efficiency. If that happens to be the case, the routine is not eligible for copyright protection at all - you can't get a monopoly on a particular effective technique or method using copyright law; patent law covers the cases in which that can or can't be done. For APL implementations of algorithms - again, the key principle is that copyright definitely allows others to implement the same algorithm. If an obvious reimplementation of the same algorithm results in the same terse APL code, then that's simply evidence that this particular APL code is solely the "idea" (unprotectable), not "creative expression" which would be eligible for copyright protection.

wnkrshm 4y ago

As an artist you can spot parts though that have the same 'visual language' that are much larger than 2 pixels. E.g. how someone uses their brushes, how someone does texture on corrugated metal etc. Those are footprints as large as a matrix multiplication method - they just can't be that easily quantified, because we need an AI model to quantify them.