I think this is a bit too broad. There are actually three possible cases.

When there is similar code, the only defense possible to prove that you have not copied the original is to show that your process is a clean room re-implementation.

If the code is completely different, then clean room or not is indeed irrelevant. The only way the author can claim that you violated their copyright despite no apparent similarity is for them to have proof you followed some kind of mechanical process for generating the new code based on the old one, such as using an LLM with the old code as input prompt (TBD, completely unsettled: what if the old code is part of the training set, but was not part of the input?) - the burden of proof is on them to show that the dissimilarity is only apparent.

In realistic cases, you will have a mix of similar and dissimilar portions, and portions where the similarity is questionable. Each of these will need to be analyzed separately - and it's very likely that all the similar portions will need to be re-written again if you can't prove that they were not copied directly or from memory from the original, even if they represent a very small part of the work overall. Even if you wrote a 10k page book, if you copied one whole page verbatim from another book, you will be liable for that page, and the author may force you to take it out.

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Someone 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> When there is similar code, the only defense possible to prove that you have not copied the original is to show that your process is a clean room re-implementation.

Yes, but you do not have to prove that you haven’t copied the original; you have to prove you didn’t infringe copyright. For that there are other possible defenses, for example:

- fair use

- claiming the copied part doesn’t require creativity

- arguing that the copied code was written by AI (there’s jurisdiction that says AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted (https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/19/23838458/ai-generated-art...). It’s not impossible judges will make similar judgments for AI-generated programs)

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kube-system an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Courts have ruled that you can't assign copyrights to a machine, because only humans qualify for human rights. ** There is not currently a legal consensus on whether or not the humans using AI tools are creating derivative works when they use AI models to create things.

** this case is similar to an old case where a ~~photographer~~ PETA claimed a monkey owned a copyright to a photo, because they said a monkey took the photo completely on their own. The court said "okay well, it's public domain then because only humans can have copyrights"

Imagine you put a harry potter book in a copy machine. It is correct that the copy machine would not have a copyright to the output. But you would still be violating copyright by distributing the output.

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schlauerfox 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... Specifically he claimed he owned the copyright on a photo he didn't directly take. PETA weighed in trying to say the monkey owned the copyright.

	▲	kube-system 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Ah yeah you’re right I forgot it was PETA arguing that.

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pseudalopex an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> there’s jurisdiction that says AI-generated art can’t be copyrighted

The headline was misleading. The courts said what Thaler could have copyrighted was a complicated question they ignored because he said he was not the author.