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Say you read a bunch of code, say over years of developer career. What you write is influenced by all that. Will include similar patterns, similar code and iden

Say you read a bunch of code, say over years of developer career. What you write is influenced by all that. Will include similar patterns, similar code and identical snippets, knowingly or not. How large does snippet have to be before it's copyright? "x"? "x==1"? "if x==1\n print('x is one')"? [obviously, replace with actual common code like if not found return 404]. Do you want to be vulnerable to copyright litigation for code you write? Can you afford to respond to every lawsuit filed by disgruntled wingbat, large corp wanting to shut down open source / competing project?

devmor 4y ago
This is a logical fallacy. A human is not an algorithm. We do not have to extend rights regarding novel invention to an algorithm to protect them for people.
- robbrown451 4y ago
  Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. If it were true, people would very easily game it, by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work. Ultimately the algorithm is automating something a human could do. There is a lot of gray area to copyright law, but you can't get around that simply by offloading to an algorithm.
  - ranguna 4y ago
    > you can't get around that simply by offloading to an algorithm. You can ...? By simply saying existing fair usage rights are limited to be used by humans and not for-profit companies building for-profit products.
    - robbrown451 4y ago
      First of all, that isn't simple. How do you determine what is done by humans? If the human is using a computer and using copy and paste does that still qualify? No matter where you draw the line between "done by computers" and "done by a human simply using a computer as a tool," there will always be a lot of gray area. Also, if I spend a year creating my masterpiece, and some kid releases a copy of it for free and claims that that's ok just because it's "not for profit," there is still a problem.
  - bombolo 4y ago
    > Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. Uh? So if I design a self driving car which kills someone, it's the car that goes to jail? Legal precedent seems to indicate this is not the case at all. Because humans and machines are different, simply because humans aren't machines and viceversa.
    - bobbruno 4y ago
      Last I checked this was very much a gray area. I’d expect at least a long investigation into the amount of work and testing put into validating that the self-driving algorithm operates inside reasonable standards of safe driving. In fact, I expect that, as the industry progresses, the tests for minimal acceptable self-driving safety get more and more standardised. That doesn’t answer the question of who’s responsible when an accident happens and someone gets hurt or dies - but then, there was a time when animals would be judged and sentenced if they committed a crime under human law. That practice is no longer deemed valid, maybe we need to agree that, if the self-driving car was built with reasonable care, accidents can still happen and it’s no one’s fault.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/08/uber-got-off-the-hook-for-killing-a-pedestrian-with-its-self-driving-car/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/08/uber-got-off-the-hook... Well the "long" investigation let uber off the hook despite disabling emergency breaking and put the driver in jail. Which seems to put all the blame on the user and nothing on the makers of the AI.
      - still_grokking 4y ago
        This makes no sense. If you build a machine and sell it, and this machine kills someone even operated correctly you'll have a problem. A big problem… AI is a machine. So the case is actually quite simple. Regarding the sibling's Uber example: There the argumentation was that the machine was not operated correctly. So this is not a comparable case.
    - robbrown451 4y ago
  - nchi3 4y ago
    >by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work That's basically what copilot is...?
    - robbrown451 4y ago
      Ethical or not, Copilot is sophisticated software, which doesn't qualify as "trivial" by my definition.
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    > Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. it makes a lot of sense, for that reason and a lot of others people can create algorithms that do whatever they want, including copyright infringement and outright criminality, but algorithms can't create people or want anything for themselves
kmeisthax 4y ago
Copyright already worries about this sort of thing a great deal, and it's actually a lot more well thought-out than your average hacker is aware of. There are no hard and fast rules; but generally... the thing being sued over has to be creative enough to be copyrightable in the first place. Small snippets do not qualify for copyright protection alone.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. At least for copyright in the common law meaning. Oracle got copyright on API signatures… In civil law there is a bar to protection if the work lacks "substantial" creativity. But even this bar is extremely low. More or less everything besides maybe simple math formulas is protected.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    Oracle got a very thin copyright on API signatures. The "programmer convenience" ruling in Google v. Oracle basically precludes almost all copyright action on APIs alone.
    - still_grokking 4y ago
      No, they got absolute copyright on the API signatures. The court did not even question any copyright, it just assumed the APIs are copyrighted by Oracle. Than it looked for reasons why copying the APIs could possibly be fair use… By the skin of their teeth they found some very involved and case specific reasons why Google's use of the copyrighted APIs was, after all, fair use. https://www.bhfs.com/insights/alerts-articles/2021/supreme-court-copying-apis-in-software-can-be-fair-use https://www.bhfs.com/insights/alerts-articles/2021/supreme-c...
      - kmeisthax 4y ago
        The reason why SCOTUS bent over backwards to not talk about copyrightability was not because they assumed it was true for APIs, but because they didn't feel like they had all the facts. They basically said "we don't know if it's copyrightable, but if it is, here's a ruling that makes this case and anything similar to it go away". Oracle only has copyright over APIs in the Federal Circuit, because they were able to hoodwink the judge into applying patent logic[0] to a copyright case. In other circuits it's still up in the air. And in the Ninth Circuit[1] there's already loads of controlling precedent that would have resulted in Oracle's case being summarily dismissed, API copyright or no. The term "thin copyright" is a term of art. It refers to the kind of copyright protection you get from combining uncopyrightable elements in a creative way. For example, you can't own a particular chord progression. But, if you combine that with, say, a particular instrument, some audio engineering techniques, the subject matter of the lyrics, and so on... then you start getting something that requires creative effort and thus is copyrightable. Courts still have to take this into account when ruling on copyright claims as they do not want to give people a monopoly over just the chord, or just that instrument, etc. In the case of APIs, we're talking about a series of names, plus an arrangement of type signatures that go with them. Very much a thin copyright, as the legal profession in the US calls it. And when you have thin copyright, courts are going to be more liberal with handing out fair use exceptions. The "programmer convenience" argument that SCOTUS adopted means that copying an API to put in a different platform is OK. The Ninth Circuit says that copying an API to reimplement a platform that other people's code relies upon is also OK. There's very little room left to actually make a copyright claim on an API alone. In the case of Copilot, it's not merely copying APIs and filling them out with novel details. It is either generating wholly novel code, or regurgitating training data, the latter of which is just a regular 'ol infringement claim with no difficult legal questions to worry about. [0] The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the only court with subject-matter jurisdiction over patent claims. When you're the only person who can make hammers, everything looks like a nail. [1] The Ninth Circuit court of appeals has jurisdiction over California, which means it takes on the brunt of copyright cases.
jacobjjacob 4y ago
I am vulnerable to copyright litigation for code I write, if I copied it. This is already true of anyone who is writing code.

devmor 4y ago

This is a logical fallacy. A human is not an algorithm. We do not have to extend rights regarding novel invention to an algorithm to protect them for people.

robbrown451 4y ago
Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. If it were true, people would very easily game it, by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work. Ultimately the algorithm is automating something a human could do. There is a lot of gray area to copyright law, but you can't get around that simply by offloading to an algorithm.
- ranguna 4y ago
  > you can't get around that simply by offloading to an algorithm. You can ...? By simply saying existing fair usage rights are limited to be used by humans and not for-profit companies building for-profit products.
  - robbrown451 4y ago
    First of all, that isn't simple. How do you determine what is done by humans? If the human is using a computer and using copy and paste does that still qualify? No matter where you draw the line between "done by computers" and "done by a human simply using a computer as a tool," there will always be a lot of gray area. Also, if I spend a year creating my masterpiece, and some kid releases a copy of it for free and claims that that's ok just because it's "not for profit," there is still a problem.
- bombolo 4y ago
  > Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. Uh? So if I design a self driving car which kills someone, it's the car that goes to jail? Legal precedent seems to indicate this is not the case at all. Because humans and machines are different, simply because humans aren't machines and viceversa.
  - bobbruno 4y ago
    Last I checked this was very much a gray area. I’d expect at least a long investigation into the amount of work and testing put into validating that the self-driving algorithm operates inside reasonable standards of safe driving. In fact, I expect that, as the industry progresses, the tests for minimal acceptable self-driving safety get more and more standardised. That doesn’t answer the question of who’s responsible when an accident happens and someone gets hurt or dies - but then, there was a time when animals would be judged and sentenced if they committed a crime under human law. That practice is no longer deemed valid, maybe we need to agree that, if the self-driving car was built with reasonable care, accidents can still happen and it’s no one’s fault.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/08/uber-got-off-the-hook-for-killing-a-pedestrian-with-its-self-driving-car/ https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/08/uber-got-off-the-hook... Well the "long" investigation let uber off the hook despite disabling emergency breaking and put the driver in jail. Which seems to put all the blame on the user and nothing on the makers of the AI.
    - still_grokking 4y ago
      This makes no sense. If you build a machine and sell it, and this machine kills someone even operated correctly you'll have a problem. A big problem… AI is a machine. So the case is actually quite simple. Regarding the sibling's Uber example: There the argumentation was that the machine was not operated correctly. So this is not a comparable case.
  - robbrown451 4y ago
- nchi3 4y ago
  >by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work That's basically what copilot is...?
  - robbrown451 4y ago
    Ethical or not, Copilot is sophisticated software, which doesn't qualify as "trivial" by my definition.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  > Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. it makes a lot of sense, for that reason and a lot of others people can create algorithms that do whatever they want, including copyright infringement and outright criminality, but algorithms can't create people or want anything for themselves

kmeisthax 4y ago

Copyright already worries about this sort of thing a great deal, and it's actually a lot more well thought-out than your average hacker is aware of. There are no hard and fast rules; but generally... the thing being sued over has to be creative enough to be copyrightable in the first place. Small snippets do not qualify for copyright protection alone.

still_grokking 4y ago
I'm not sure this is true. At least for copyright in the common law meaning. Oracle got copyright on API signatures… In civil law there is a bar to protection if the work lacks "substantial" creativity. But even this bar is extremely low. More or less everything besides maybe simple math formulas is protected.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Oracle got a very thin copyright on API signatures. The "programmer convenience" ruling in Google v. Oracle basically precludes almost all copyright action on APIs alone.
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    No, they got absolute copyright on the API signatures. The court did not even question any copyright, it just assumed the APIs are copyrighted by Oracle. Than it looked for reasons why copying the APIs could possibly be fair use… By the skin of their teeth they found some very involved and case specific reasons why Google's use of the copyrighted APIs was, after all, fair use. https://www.bhfs.com/insights/alerts-articles/2021/supreme-court-copying-apis-in-software-can-be-fair-use https://www.bhfs.com/insights/alerts-articles/2021/supreme-c...
    - kmeisthax 4y ago
      The reason why SCOTUS bent over backwards to not talk about copyrightability was not because they assumed it was true for APIs, but because they didn't feel like they had all the facts. They basically said "we don't know if it's copyrightable, but if it is, here's a ruling that makes this case and anything similar to it go away". Oracle only has copyright over APIs in the Federal Circuit, because they were able to hoodwink the judge into applying patent logic[0] to a copyright case. In other circuits it's still up in the air. And in the Ninth Circuit[1] there's already loads of controlling precedent that would have resulted in Oracle's case being summarily dismissed, API copyright or no. The term "thin copyright" is a term of art. It refers to the kind of copyright protection you get from combining uncopyrightable elements in a creative way. For example, you can't own a particular chord progression. But, if you combine that with, say, a particular instrument, some audio engineering techniques, the subject matter of the lyrics, and so on... then you start getting something that requires creative effort and thus is copyrightable. Courts still have to take this into account when ruling on copyright claims as they do not want to give people a monopoly over just the chord, or just that instrument, etc. In the case of APIs, we're talking about a series of names, plus an arrangement of type signatures that go with them. Very much a thin copyright, as the legal profession in the US calls it. And when you have thin copyright, courts are going to be more liberal with handing out fair use exceptions. The "programmer convenience" argument that SCOTUS adopted means that copying an API to put in a different platform is OK. The Ninth Circuit says that copying an API to reimplement a platform that other people's code relies upon is also OK. There's very little room left to actually make a copyright claim on an API alone. In the case of Copilot, it's not merely copying APIs and filling them out with novel details. It is either generating wholly novel code, or regurgitating training data, the latter of which is just a regular 'ol infringement claim with no difficult legal questions to worry about. [0] The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the only court with subject-matter jurisdiction over patent claims. When you're the only person who can make hammers, everything looks like a nail. [1] The Ninth Circuit court of appeals has jurisdiction over California, which means it takes on the brunt of copyright cases.

jacobjjacob 4y ago

I am vulnerable to copyright litigation for code I write, if I copied it. This is already true of anyone who is writing code.