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Please take this as genuine friendly curiosity and not an attack - why do you care? Why is there so often a highly upvoted comment about copyright on HN posts,

Please take this as genuine friendly curiosity and not an attack - why do you care? Why is there so often a highly upvoted comment about copyright on HN posts, whether or not they have anything to do with intellectual property? Every Launch HN, every Show HN, and a huge number of random posts like this one have a comment like this one. Why is this topic so interesting for what seems to be a majority of HN users? For me it feels like going to a car forum and seeing a post in every thread asking how the car is insured. There's nothing wrong with being into insurance, but it's not the type of thing you expect to be discussed at length on a car site, you know?

duncan-donuts 3y ago
Well I could sell the first infinite piece puzzle if the shape isn’t copyrighted
- rocketbop 3y ago
  Person ignorant here of copyright when it comes to mathematics. What do you need to do to copyright something? It doesn’t work the way art like music and writing does? Which is that copyright is automatic just by recording or writing something down in some way. The idea that a shape, even a very complex one, could be copyrightable is pretty wild to me.
  - karmakaze 3y ago
    Not a copyright but Apple patented "rectangle with rounded corners"[0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rectangle-with-rounded-corners https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...
    - Xorakios 3y ago
      for use on electronic devices designed for portable use over communication networks. even in 2012 sometimes articles wrote clickbait
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I care very much, and I'll explain why. Whether or not a particular invention is under copyright or patent, vs in the public domain, has huge implications on whether others are free to use and play with that invention in creations of their own. This is, after all, "Hacker" News. I would expect a lot of us would be interested in how freely we could hack on something without our creations subsequently being legally encumbered.
pseudo0 3y ago
It's "Hacker News", not "Consumer News". Lots of people come here looking for interesting projects to contribute to, modify, incorporate into hobby projects, or even use for commercial purposes. Some of those uses may be disallowed by copyright and licensing issues. It seems like an obvious question that needs to be asked before getting excited and wasting hours writing code that can't be used. Just from my own experience, I have gotten burned a couple of times, where a five minute check on copyright/licensing would have saved hours of wasted effort.
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]

duncan-donuts 3y ago

Well I could sell the first infinite piece puzzle if the shape isn’t copyrighted

rocketbop 3y ago
Person ignorant here of copyright when it comes to mathematics. What do you need to do to copyright something? It doesn’t work the way art like music and writing does? Which is that copyright is automatic just by recording or writing something down in some way. The idea that a shape, even a very complex one, could be copyrightable is pretty wild to me.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  Not a copyright but Apple patented "rectangle with rounded corners"[0]. [0] https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rectangle-with-rounded-corners https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...
  - Xorakios 3y ago
    for use on electronic devices designed for portable use over communication networks. even in 2012 sometimes articles wrote clickbait

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I care very much, and I'll explain why. Whether or not a particular invention is under copyright or patent, vs in the public domain, has huge implications on whether others are free to use and play with that invention in creations of their own. This is, after all, "Hacker" News. I would expect a lot of us would be interested in how freely we could hack on something without our creations subsequently being legally encumbered.

pseudo0 3y ago

It's "Hacker News", not "Consumer News". Lots of people come here looking for interesting projects to contribute to, modify, incorporate into hobby projects, or even use for commercial purposes. Some of those uses may be disallowed by copyright and licensing issues. It seems like an obvious question that needs to be asked before getting excited and wasting hours writing code that can't be used. Just from my own experience, I have gotten burned a couple of times, where a five minute check on copyright/licensing would have saved hours of wasted effort.

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]