> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? My (extremely amateur) under

> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? My (extremely amateur) understanding is that what is meant by "learn from it" is one of the hinge points of the legal question. If a programmer reads licensed code and reproduces it verbatim or near-verbatim in a project with a conflicting license, that becomes a legal problem in certain circumstances. If a programmer reads the same code and gets an idea to implement something different, that's less troublesome (or at least, if it is troublesome it's in a different area; if the idea was related to a patentable process, then other questions arise, but I'm even less qualified to speak to that area of law). There's nothing special about copy/paste buttons that make them the only way you can infringe copyright. Fair use doesn't automatically kick in just because someone uses what they took/copied as part of a larger artifact; it's a really complicated legal line.