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> So as of today, the Copyright system does not have a way for the output of a non-human produced set of files to contain the grant of permissions which the Ope

> So as of today, the Copyright system does not have a way for the output of a non-human produced set of files to contain the grant of permissions which the OpenBSD project needs to perform combination and redistribution. This seems extremely confused. The copyright system does not have a way to grant these permissions because the material is not covered under copyright! You can distribute it at will, not due to any sort of legal grant but simply because you have the ability and the law says nothing to stop you.

jagged-chisel 7mo ago
Eh … the argument will likely be things created by Thing at the behest of Author is owned by the Author. It’ll take a few cases going through the courts, or an Act of Congress to solidify this stuff.
- HappySweeney 7mo ago
  Haven't there already been a few cases, each of which found that mechanically-produced works are not copywritable?
  - senko 7mo ago
    no
  - majorchord 7mo ago
    yes https://copyrightalliance.org/current-ai-copyright-cases-part-1/ https://copyrightalliance.org/current-ai-copyright-cases-par...
- wongarsu 7mo ago
  Just like we settled on photographers havin copyright on the works created by their camera. The same arguments seem to apply The US Copyright Office has published a piece that argues otherwise, but a) unless they pass regulation their opinion doesn't really matter, and b) there is way too much money resting on the assumption code can be copyrighted despite AI involvement.
  - fragmede 7mo ago
    It's not settled. The monkey selfie copyright dispute ruled that a monkey that pressed the button to take a selfie, does not and cannot open the copyright to that photo, and neither does the photographer who's camera it was. How that extends to AI generated code is for the courts to decide, but there are some parallels to that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
    - charcircuit 7mo ago
      This filesystem driver was made by a human using AI, not a monkey.
    - wongarsu 7mo ago
      But with the monkey there are two levels of separation from the artist: the human makes the creative decision to hand the camera to a monkey, who presses the trigger, and the camera makes the picture. Compared to the single layer of separation of a photographer choosing framing and camera parameters, pressing the trigger and the camera taking the picture. Or the zero levels of separation when the artist paints the picture. A programmer writing code would be like the painter, and the programmer writing a prompt for Claude looks a lot like the photographer. The prompt is the creative work that makes it copyrightable, just like the artistic choices of the photographer make the photo copyrightable You could argue that the prompt is more like a technical description than a creative work. But then the same should probably be true of the code itself, and consequently copyright should not apply to code at all The copyright office's argument is that the AI is more like a freelancer than like a machine like a camera. Which you might equate to the monkey, who's also a bit freelancer like. But I have my doubts that holds up in court. Monkeys are a lot more sentient than AIs
    - KallDrexx 7mo ago
      The copyright office is pretty clear on this if you read: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell.... There is case law surrounding the fact that just because you commission a work to another entity doesn't give you co-authorship, the entity doing the work and making creative decisions is the entity that gets copyright. In order for you to have co-authorship of the commissioned work you have to be involved and pretty much giving instruction level detail to the real author. The opinion shows many cases that its not the case with how LLM prompts work. The monkey selfie case is relevant also because since it also solidifies that non-persons cannot claim copyright, that means the LLM cannot claim copyright, and therefore it does not have copyright that can be passed onto the LLM operator.
themafia 7mo ago
Just because you can distribute something doesn't mean you aren't violating someone else's copyright. You cannot assume that just because a language model popped out some code for you that it is clear of any other claims. This is just lazy copyright whitewashing.
plorg 7mo ago
This all relies, as the article points out, on everyone looking directly at code that both looks like and works like the only extant codebase for EXT4 and nonetheless concluding that in fact the computer conjured it from the aether. If I wrote a program that zipped up the Linux kernel source, unzipped it, and grepped -v for comments it would not then be magically transformed into unattributable public domain software.
- FeepingCreature 7mo ago
  Under the premise advanced in the quote, copyright is not being violated because there is none. Thus, the quote makes no sense as stated. It may be that, additionally, copyright is in fact being violated (I don't believe it myself), but if so that's a separate argument.
  - plorg 7mo ago
    The premise of the quote does not contain the assumption that there is no copyright to the code. In fact the various contributors do not advance an opinion about whether code written by an AI can be granted copyright. Rather they are saying that it is obviously derivative of code that is under copyright, that is only distributed under terms which, however many dry cleaners process it, will still conflict with the license under which they publish their software.
    - bigbadfeline 7mo ago
      > Rather they are saying that it is obviously derivative of code that is under copyright Derivatives are not subject to copyright, unless they are close to, and contain substantial verbatim copies from, the original. It's a virtual certainty that a vibe-coded Ext4 FS is none of the above. Redefining copyright as some weird patenting of similar ideas is absurd.
      - em-bee 7mo ago
        see my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557250
locknitpicker 7mo ago
> This seems extremely confused. The copyright system does not have a way to grant these permissions because the material is not covered under copyright! This opinion is simplistic. LLMs are trained with pre-existing content, and their output directly reflects their training corpus. This means LLMs can generate output that matches verbatim existing work. And that work can very well be subjected to copyright.
- rho_soul_kg_m3 7mo ago
  Language models are good at translation and retrieval. This also extends to computer languages. LLMs translate from GPL to other licenses the same way Google translate turns French to English, except that the source material is implicitly stored in the LLM.
  - em-bee 7mo ago
    this is disputed. see my comment here, especially the stackexchange links: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=47557250 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=47557250

jagged-chisel 7mo ago

Eh … the argument will likely be things created by Thing at the behest of Author is owned by the Author. It’ll take a few cases going through the courts, or an Act of Congress to solidify this stuff.

HappySweeney 7mo ago
Haven't there already been a few cases, each of which found that mechanically-produced works are not copywritable?
- senko 7mo ago
  no
- majorchord 7mo ago
  yes https://copyrightalliance.org/current-ai-copyright-cases-part-1/ https://copyrightalliance.org/current-ai-copyright-cases-par...
wongarsu 7mo ago
Just like we settled on photographers havin copyright on the works created by their camera. The same arguments seem to apply The US Copyright Office has published a piece that argues otherwise, but a) unless they pass regulation their opinion doesn't really matter, and b) there is way too much money resting on the assumption code can be copyrighted despite AI involvement.
- fragmede 7mo ago
  It's not settled. The monkey selfie copyright dispute ruled that a monkey that pressed the button to take a selfie, does not and cannot open the copyright to that photo, and neither does the photographer who's camera it was. How that extends to AI generated code is for the courts to decide, but there are some parallels to that case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...
  - charcircuit 7mo ago
    This filesystem driver was made by a human using AI, not a monkey.
  - wongarsu 7mo ago
    But with the monkey there are two levels of separation from the artist: the human makes the creative decision to hand the camera to a monkey, who presses the trigger, and the camera makes the picture. Compared to the single layer of separation of a photographer choosing framing and camera parameters, pressing the trigger and the camera taking the picture. Or the zero levels of separation when the artist paints the picture. A programmer writing code would be like the painter, and the programmer writing a prompt for Claude looks a lot like the photographer. The prompt is the creative work that makes it copyrightable, just like the artistic choices of the photographer make the photo copyrightable You could argue that the prompt is more like a technical description than a creative work. But then the same should probably be true of the code itself, and consequently copyright should not apply to code at all The copyright office's argument is that the AI is more like a freelancer than like a machine like a camera. Which you might equate to the monkey, who's also a bit freelancer like. But I have my doubts that holds up in court. Monkeys are a lot more sentient than AIs
  - KallDrexx 7mo ago
    The copyright office is pretty clear on this if you read: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell.... There is case law surrounding the fact that just because you commission a work to another entity doesn't give you co-authorship, the entity doing the work and making creative decisions is the entity that gets copyright. In order for you to have co-authorship of the commissioned work you have to be involved and pretty much giving instruction level detail to the real author. The opinion shows many cases that its not the case with how LLM prompts work. The monkey selfie case is relevant also because since it also solidifies that non-persons cannot claim copyright, that means the LLM cannot claim copyright, and therefore it does not have copyright that can be passed onto the LLM operator.

themafia 7mo ago

Just because you can distribute something doesn't mean you aren't violating someone else's copyright. You cannot assume that just because a language model popped out some code for you that it is clear of any other claims. This is just lazy copyright whitewashing.

plorg 7mo ago

This all relies, as the article points out, on everyone looking directly at code that both looks like and works like the only extant codebase for EXT4 and nonetheless concluding that in fact the computer conjured it from the aether. If I wrote a program that zipped up the Linux kernel source, unzipped it, and grepped -v for comments it would not then be magically transformed into unattributable public domain software.

FeepingCreature 7mo ago
Under the premise advanced in the quote, copyright is not being violated because there is none. Thus, the quote makes no sense as stated. It may be that, additionally, copyright is in fact being violated (I don't believe it myself), but if so that's a separate argument.
- plorg 7mo ago
  The premise of the quote does not contain the assumption that there is no copyright to the code. In fact the various contributors do not advance an opinion about whether code written by an AI can be granted copyright. Rather they are saying that it is obviously derivative of code that is under copyright, that is only distributed under terms which, however many dry cleaners process it, will still conflict with the license under which they publish their software.
  - bigbadfeline 7mo ago
    > Rather they are saying that it is obviously derivative of code that is under copyright Derivatives are not subject to copyright, unless they are close to, and contain substantial verbatim copies from, the original. It's a virtual certainty that a vibe-coded Ext4 FS is none of the above. Redefining copyright as some weird patenting of similar ideas is absurd.
    - em-bee 7mo ago
      see my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47557250

locknitpicker 7mo ago

> This seems extremely confused. The copyright system does not have a way to grant these permissions because the material is not covered under copyright! This opinion is simplistic. LLMs are trained with pre-existing content, and their output directly reflects their training corpus. This means LLMs can generate output that matches verbatim existing work. And that work can very well be subjected to copyright.

rho_soul_kg_m3 7mo ago
Language models are good at translation and retrieval. This also extends to computer languages. LLMs translate from GPL to other licenses the same way Google translate turns French to English, except that the source material is implicitly stored in the LLM.
- em-bee 7mo ago
  this is disputed. see my comment here, especially the stackexchange links: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=47557250 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=47557250