3 ms·

Wait a second...EFF is on the side of: "it is ok to strip out my copyright string from my code"? How did they end up on that side?

dgellow 16d ago
> Copyright law still protects programmers when their work is unlawfully copied. They can still bring copyright infringement claims if someone uses a model to reproduce their code. Additionally, the plaintiffs’ contract claims against the AI companies are still in play. The specific holding here was narrow but important: that the absence of copyright information from a new work does not mean, by itself, that someone illegally removed it. I’m not sure I fully understand their argument. If you reproduce the copyrighted work, minus the copyright information, the result is exactly the same as just… removing the copyright information. At least in the case of something digital. Anyone can help clarify why it is seen as a win? I don't really buy the “small developers will be sued by large corporation for years and forced to settle”
- freejazz 16d ago
  > Anyone can help clarify why it is seen as a win? Because the EFF is generally not very pro-copyright and certainly, at a minimum, hates the DMCA. >I don't really buy the “small developers will be sued by large corporation for years and forced to settle” I (a copyright litigator) don't buy it either.
  - dmitrygr 16d ago
    > EFF is generally not very pro-copyright Did they forget that the entirely of GPL is built on the foundation of copyright?
    - freejazz 16d ago
      Wouldn't surprise me, seems to be the case for many of the users here as well.
      - dgellow 15d ago
        Yeah, the vast majority of people in FLOSS don’t understand that copyright is what enables FLOSS to exist in the first place
        hn_acker 15d ago
        Copyright currently is what allows FLOSS to exist. In a vanishingly unlikely hypothetical future copyright-free USA (the legal transition to which, I believe, would almost certainly violate the First Amendment by chilling speech), new laws could be passed to provide copyright-like protection only for FLOSS-licensed works.
        freejazz 15d ago
        So it'd just be copyright again? Fascinating.
        hn_acker 15d ago
        When you said > EFF is generally not very pro-copyright I thought you and the other replies downthread of your comment were referring to the current implementation of copyright, rather than the concept of copyright. From what I've read, EFF generally supports the concept of copyright. If I misinterpreted you, I apologize. In my reply to dgellow's comment, which included > copyright is what enables FLOSS to exist in the first place , I was simply arguing that the current implementation of copyright theoretically could be reduced overall in a way that would not weaken the legal power of FLOSS licenses.
        freejazz 13d ago
        It's not me with the monolithic view, that's for sure.
        hn_acker 12d ago
        Not sure what was monolithic about my view. Are you sure you haven't mistaken my hypothetical example for a normative suggestion? I was expecting a lawyer to be less prone than myself to such a mistake (but I suppose almost every court case involves a lawyer who has made a mistake of some sort haha). I still think you have misinterpreted EFF's stance on copyright, whether you meant copyright as a concept or copyright as implemented.
- 31ahg167 16d ago
  Because the EFF is no longer the organization that may have represented your values in 2000. Foundations go evil, co-opted and bought out. The entire article is a pro-AI shill piece from start to finish. The EFF now sells out open source.
hn_acker 16d ago
> "it is ok to strip out my copyright string from my code"? How did they end up on that side? The answer is, they didn't end up on that side. Copyright infringement does not involve merely using a copyrighted work. Copyright infringement involves copying part of a work's copyrightable expression into another Thing (for lack of a better word). In the US, if no part of the Thing is substantially similar [1] to any part of the original work's expression, then the Thing does not infringe on the original work's copyright. The EFF's "side" is that in such cases, there is no categorical obligation to add/include copyright management information (CMI) of the original work to the Thing, and it makes no legal sense to argue that the CMI was "removed" from the Thing. Not every LLM output contains expression substantially similar to any particular copyrightable expression in the training set. Whether LLM output infringes copyright can be different on a case-by-case basis. > "it is ok to strip out my copyright string from my code"? No, if part of the output (whether human output or LLM output) is substantially similar to (even an obfuscated or mangled version of) the copyrightable expression in your code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity
- Zsfe510asG 15d ago
  If they don't rely on the original works why do they incorporate them in the training corpus? But they do, so it is a derivative work. When the industry favored copyright, it made sure to do clean room implementations of software by competitors. Programmers who had even read a single line were disqualified. AI reads everything, so it is not a clean room implementation. The EFF knows this of course and still supports the industry (which is now of the side of theft, unless it is distilling).
  - hn_acker 15d ago
    > If they don't rely on the original works Neither my words nor EFF's words suggested anything like that. > so it is a derivative work. Just because one work is derived from or relies on another does not implicate copyright. Copyright is not use-right or rely-right (nor should copyright be expanded to be them). (Contracts such as EULAs can go beyond the scope of copyright and may include use-restrictions.) If there is no substantial similarity (including obfuscated or mangled similarity) between the derivative work and the original work, then the derivative work does not infringe copyright. > AI reads everything, so it is not a clean room implementation. Very true, but substantial similarity matters. If there is no substantial similarity between the output and the original work, then an output is not an "implementation" of the original work. When I say output or Thing, I mean the output of an LLM or a human, not the LLM itself. If (if) a particular LLM itself infringes copyright, not every output of the LLM necessarily infringes copyright. If a particular output of an LLM infringes copyright, the LLM itself does not necessarily infringe copyright. (Maybe someone could, with Herculean difficulty, demonstrate that the particular LLM might as well be incapable of producing non-infringing output?) There's no guarantee that a non-clean-room implementation always constitutes copyright infringement, especially considering that for software in particular the functional aspects are not always separatable from the creative expression. Theoretically, both clean-room and non-clean-room implementations of a very optimized program designed for non-entertainment purposes would be unavoidably substantially similar to the original work. (Related reading: the merger doctrine [1].) Substantial similarity is necessary, but not sufficient, to copyright infringement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...

dgellow 16d ago

> Copyright law still protects programmers when their work is unlawfully copied. They can still bring copyright infringement claims if someone uses a model to reproduce their code. Additionally, the plaintiffs’ contract claims against the AI companies are still in play. The specific holding here was narrow but important: that the absence of copyright information from a new work does not mean, by itself, that someone illegally removed it. I’m not sure I fully understand their argument. If you reproduce the copyrighted work, minus the copyright information, the result is exactly the same as just… removing the copyright information. At least in the case of something digital. Anyone can help clarify why it is seen as a win? I don't really buy the “small developers will be sued by large corporation for years and forced to settle”

freejazz 16d ago
> Anyone can help clarify why it is seen as a win? Because the EFF is generally not very pro-copyright and certainly, at a minimum, hates the DMCA. >I don't really buy the “small developers will be sued by large corporation for years and forced to settle” I (a copyright litigator) don't buy it either.
- dmitrygr 16d ago
  > EFF is generally not very pro-copyright Did they forget that the entirely of GPL is built on the foundation of copyright?
  - freejazz 16d ago
    Wouldn't surprise me, seems to be the case for many of the users here as well.
    - dgellow 15d ago
      Yeah, the vast majority of people in FLOSS don’t understand that copyright is what enables FLOSS to exist in the first place
      - hn_acker 15d ago
        Copyright currently is what allows FLOSS to exist. In a vanishingly unlikely hypothetical future copyright-free USA (the legal transition to which, I believe, would almost certainly violate the First Amendment by chilling speech), new laws could be passed to provide copyright-like protection only for FLOSS-licensed works.
        freejazz 15d ago
        So it'd just be copyright again? Fascinating.
        hn_acker 15d ago
        When you said > EFF is generally not very pro-copyright I thought you and the other replies downthread of your comment were referring to the current implementation of copyright, rather than the concept of copyright. From what I've read, EFF generally supports the concept of copyright. If I misinterpreted you, I apologize. In my reply to dgellow's comment, which included > copyright is what enables FLOSS to exist in the first place , I was simply arguing that the current implementation of copyright theoretically could be reduced overall in a way that would not weaken the legal power of FLOSS licenses.
        freejazz 13d ago
        It's not me with the monolithic view, that's for sure.
        hn_acker 12d ago
        Not sure what was monolithic about my view. Are you sure you haven't mistaken my hypothetical example for a normative suggestion? I was expecting a lawyer to be less prone than myself to such a mistake (but I suppose almost every court case involves a lawyer who has made a mistake of some sort haha). I still think you have misinterpreted EFF's stance on copyright, whether you meant copyright as a concept or copyright as implemented.
31ahg167 16d ago
Because the EFF is no longer the organization that may have represented your values in 2000. Foundations go evil, co-opted and bought out. The entire article is a pro-AI shill piece from start to finish. The EFF now sells out open source.

hn_acker 16d ago

> "it is ok to strip out my copyright string from my code"? How did they end up on that side? The answer is, they didn't end up on that side. Copyright infringement does not involve merely using a copyrighted work. Copyright infringement involves copying part of a work's copyrightable expression into another Thing (for lack of a better word). In the US, if no part of the Thing is substantially similar [1] to any part of the original work's expression, then the Thing does not infringe on the original work's copyright. The EFF's "side" is that in such cases, there is no categorical obligation to add/include copyright management information (CMI) of the original work to the Thing, and it makes no legal sense to argue that the CMI was "removed" from the Thing. Not every LLM output contains expression substantially similar to any particular copyrightable expression in the training set. Whether LLM output infringes copyright can be different on a case-by-case basis. > "it is ok to strip out my copyright string from my code"? No, if part of the output (whether human output or LLM output) is substantially similar to (even an obfuscated or mangled version of) the copyrightable expression in your code. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substantial_similarity

Zsfe510asG 15d ago
If they don't rely on the original works why do they incorporate them in the training corpus? But they do, so it is a derivative work. When the industry favored copyright, it made sure to do clean room implementations of software by competitors. Programmers who had even read a single line were disqualified. AI reads everything, so it is not a clean room implementation. The EFF knows this of course and still supports the industry (which is now of the side of theft, unless it is distilling).
- hn_acker 15d ago
  > If they don't rely on the original works Neither my words nor EFF's words suggested anything like that. > so it is a derivative work. Just because one work is derived from or relies on another does not implicate copyright. Copyright is not use-right or rely-right (nor should copyright be expanded to be them). (Contracts such as EULAs can go beyond the scope of copyright and may include use-restrictions.) If there is no substantial similarity (including obfuscated or mangled similarity) between the derivative work and the original work, then the derivative work does not infringe copyright. > AI reads everything, so it is not a clean room implementation. Very true, but substantial similarity matters. If there is no substantial similarity between the output and the original work, then an output is not an "implementation" of the original work. When I say output or Thing, I mean the output of an LLM or a human, not the LLM itself. If (if) a particular LLM itself infringes copyright, not every output of the LLM necessarily infringes copyright. If a particular output of an LLM infringes copyright, the LLM itself does not necessarily infringe copyright. (Maybe someone could, with Herculean difficulty, demonstrate that the particular LLM might as well be incapable of producing non-infringing output?) There's no guarantee that a non-clean-room implementation always constitutes copyright infringement, especially considering that for software in particular the functional aspects are not always separatable from the creative expression. Theoretically, both clean-room and non-clean-room implementations of a very optimized program designed for non-entertainment purposes would be unavoidably substantially similar to the original work. (Related reading: the merger doctrine [1].) Substantial similarity is necessary, but not sufficient, to copyright infringement. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...