5 ms·

Quite a lot of companies use and release AI written code, are they all liable?

sarchertech 5mo ago
1. Almost definitely if discovered 2. Infringement in closed source code isn’t as likely to be discovered 3. OpenAI and Anthropic enterprise agreements agree to indemnify (pay for damages essentially) companies for copyright issues.
- theshrike79 5mo ago
  What would be "discovered" exactly? You can't patent a basic CRUD application. There has to be an analogy to music or something here - except that code is even less copyrightable than melodies. Yes, there might be some specific algorithms that are patented, but the average programmer won't be implementing any of those from scratch, they'll use libraries anyway.
  - sarchertech 5mo ago
    I’m not talking patents. Code is 100% copyrightable. Code being copyrightable is the entire basis for open source licenses.
    - theshrike79 5mo ago
      s/patent/copyright/ in my comment then. What part of a bog-standard HTTP API can be copyrighted? Parsing the POST request or processing it or shoving it to storage? I'm genuinely confused here and not just being an ass. There are unique algorithms for things like media compression etc, I understand copyrighting those. But for the vast majority of software, is there any realistic threat of hitting any copyrighted code that's so unique it has been copyrighted and can be determined as such? There are only so many ways you can do a specific common thing. I kinda think of it like music, without ever hearing a specific song you might hit the same chord progressions by accident because in reality there are only so many combinations you can make with notes that sound good.
      - sarchertech 5mo ago
        Unlike patents, independent creation is a valid defense to copyright infringement. Copyright is the literal expression of the idea. The identifier names, how the functions are broken up, which libraries are used etc… Given more than a dozen lines or so, 2 people aren’t going to write the exact same code to solve the same problem. It might be equivalent code, but it’s not going to be the exact same. def copyright_warning(times) do for _ <- 1..times do IO.puts("hey man this code is copyrighted. Don't copy it pretty please") end end That code is copyright protected. I don’t have to do anything. I automatically own the copyright once I create it. If you copy that you are infringing. You could do something similar if you wanted. But if you copy that directly, you are infringing on my copyright.
        theshrike79 5mo ago
        But isn't it literally impossible to determine whether I copied those 5 lines or wrote them myself? Especially in languages like Go where there's an Official Formatter that makes all code look identical as much as possible? There are a multitude of reasons why I'm not a lawyer and vague crap like this is a big part :D
        sarchertech 5mo ago
        It’s literally impossible to prove anything outside of a formal system. Courts would look at the preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial. Did you have access to my code? Is the copy long enough that it’s statistically very unlikely that could have came up with it exactly on your own? They’ll look at things like did you copy misspellings in variable names. Did you copy the missing period at the end of the output string etc…
nitwit005 5mo ago
Yep, and honestly it's going to come up with things other than lawsuits. I've worked at a company that was asked as part of a merger to scan for code copied from open source. That ended up being a major issue for the merger. People had copied various C headers around in odd places, and indeed stolen an odd bit of telnet code. We had to go clean it up.
- LtWorf 5mo ago
  Headers are normally fine. GPL license recognises that you might need them to read binary files.

1. Almost definitely if discovered 2. Infringement in closed source code isn’t as likely to be discovered 3. OpenAI and Anthropic enterprise agreements agree to indemnify (pay for damages essentially) companies for copyright issues.

theshrike79 5mo ago
What would be "discovered" exactly? You can't patent a basic CRUD application. There has to be an analogy to music or something here - except that code is even less copyrightable than melodies. Yes, there might be some specific algorithms that are patented, but the average programmer won't be implementing any of those from scratch, they'll use libraries anyway.
- sarchertech 5mo ago
  I’m not talking patents. Code is 100% copyrightable. Code being copyrightable is the entire basis for open source licenses.
  - theshrike79 5mo ago
    s/patent/copyright/ in my comment then. What part of a bog-standard HTTP API can be copyrighted? Parsing the POST request or processing it or shoving it to storage? I'm genuinely confused here and not just being an ass. There are unique algorithms for things like media compression etc, I understand copyrighting those. But for the vast majority of software, is there any realistic threat of hitting any copyrighted code that's so unique it has been copyrighted and can be determined as such? There are only so many ways you can do a specific common thing. I kinda think of it like music, without ever hearing a specific song you might hit the same chord progressions by accident because in reality there are only so many combinations you can make with notes that sound good.
    - sarchertech 5mo ago
      Unlike patents, independent creation is a valid defense to copyright infringement. Copyright is the literal expression of the idea. The identifier names, how the functions are broken up, which libraries are used etc… Given more than a dozen lines or so, 2 people aren’t going to write the exact same code to solve the same problem. It might be equivalent code, but it’s not going to be the exact same. def copyright_warning(times) do for _ <- 1..times do IO.puts("hey man this code is copyrighted. Don't copy it pretty please") end end That code is copyright protected. I don’t have to do anything. I automatically own the copyright once I create it. If you copy that you are infringing. You could do something similar if you wanted. But if you copy that directly, you are infringing on my copyright.
      - theshrike79 5mo ago
        But isn't it literally impossible to determine whether I copied those 5 lines or wrote them myself? Especially in languages like Go where there's an Official Formatter that makes all code look identical as much as possible? There are a multitude of reasons why I'm not a lawyer and vague crap like this is a big part :D
        sarchertech 5mo ago
        It’s literally impossible to prove anything outside of a formal system. Courts would look at the preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial. Did you have access to my code? Is the copy long enough that it’s statistically very unlikely that could have came up with it exactly on your own? They’ll look at things like did you copy misspellings in variable names. Did you copy the missing period at the end of the output string etc…

nitwit005 5mo ago

Yep, and honestly it's going to come up with things other than lawsuits. I've worked at a company that was asked as part of a merger to scan for code copied from open source. That ended up being a major issue for the merger. People had copied various C headers around in odd places, and indeed stolen an odd bit of telnet code. We had to go clean it up.

LtWorf 5mo ago
Headers are normally fine. GPL license recognises that you might need them to read binary files.