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| ▲ | graemep 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The Thaler ruling addresses a different point. The ruling says that the LLM cannot be the author. It does not say that the human being using the LLM cannot be the author. The ruling was very clear that it did not address whether a human being was the copyright holder because Thaler waived that argument. the position with a monkey using your camera is similar, and you may or may not hold the copyright depending on what you did - was it pure accident or did you set things up. Opinions on the well known case are mixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... Where wildlife photographers deliberately set up a shot to be triggered automatically (e.g. by a bird flying through the focus) they do hold the copyright. | | |
| ▲ | panny 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Guidance on AI is unambiguous. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ AI generated code has no copyright. And if it DID somehow have copyright, it wouldn't be yours. It would belong to the code it was "trained" on. The code it algorithmically copied. You're trying to have your cake, and eat it too. You could maybe claim your prompts are copyrighted, but that's not what leaked. The AI generated code leaked. | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The linked document labeled "Part 2: Copyrightability", section V. "Conclusions" states the following: > the Copyright Office
concludes that existing legal doctrines are adequate and appropriate to resolve questions of
copyrightability. Copyright law has long adapted to new technology and can enable case-by-
case determinations as to whether AI-generated outputs reflect sufficient human contribution to
warrant copyright protection. As described above, in many circumstances these outputs will be
copyrightable in whole or in part—where AI is used as a tool, and where a human has been able
to determine the expressive elements they contain. Prompts alone, however, at this stage are
unlikely to satisfy those requirements. So the TL;DR basically implies pure slop within the current guidelines outlined in conclusions is NOT copyrightable. However collaboration with an AI copyrightability is determined on a case by case basis. I will preface this all with the standard IANAL, I could be wrong etc, but with the concluding language using "unlikely" copyrightable for slop it sounds less cut and dry than you imply. | | |
| ▲ | panny 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That's typical of this site. I hand you a huge volume of evidence explaining why AI generated work cannot be copyrighted. You search for one scrap of text that seems to support your position even when it does not. You have no idea how bad this leak is for Anthropic because with the copyright office, you have a DUTY TO DISCLOSE any AI generated work, and it is fully RETROACTIVE. And what is part of this leak? undercover.ts. https://archive.is/S1bKY Where Claude is specifically instructed to HIDE DISCLOSURE of AI generated work. That's grounds for the copyright office and courts to reject ANY copyright they MIGHT have had a right to. It is one of the WORST things they could have done with regard to copyright. https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/articles/when-registeri... | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I merely read the PDF articles you linked, then posted, verbatim, the primary relevant section I could find therein. Nowhere does it say that works involving humans in collaboration with AI can't be copyrighted. The conclusions linked merely state that copyright claims involving AI will be decided on a case by case basis. They MAY reject your claim, they may not. This is all new territory so it will get ironed out in time, however I don't think we've reached full legal consensus on the topic, even when limiting our scope to just US copyright law. I'm interpreting your most recent reply to me as an implication that I'm taking the conclusions you yourself linked out of context. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here, but the 3 linked PDF documents aren't "a mountain of evidence" supporting your argument. Maybe I missed something in one of those documents (very possible), but the conclusions are not how you imply. Whether or not a specific git commit message correctly sites Claude usage or not may further muddy the waters more than IP lawyers are comfortable with at this time (and therefore add inherent risk to current and future copyright claims of said works), but those waters were far from crystal clear in the first place. Again, IANAL, but from my limited layman perspective it does not appear the copyright office plans to, at this moment in time, concisely reject AI collaborated works from copyright. Your most recent link (Finnegan) is from an IP lawyer consortium that says it's better to include attribution and disclosure of AI to avoid current and future claim rejections. Sounds like basic cover-your-ass lawyer speak, but I could be wrong. Full disclosure: I primarily use AI (or rather agentic teams) as N sets of new eyeballs on the current problem at hand, to help debug or bounce ideas off of, so I don't really have much skin in this particular game involving direct code contributions spit out by LLMs. Those that have any risk aversion, should probably proceed with caution. I just find the upending of copyright (and many other) norms by GenAI morbidly fascinating. | |
| ▲ | galaxyLogic 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > because with the copyright office, you have a DUTY TO DISCLOSE any AI generated work, I was not aware of that. WHo has that duty and when do they have it? | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Currently, the US copyright application process has an AI disclosure requirement for the determination of applicability of submitted works for protections under US copyright law. The copyright office still holds that human authorship is a core tenet of copyrightability, however, whether or not a submission meets the "de minimis" amount of AI-generated material to uphold a copyright claim is still being decided and refined by the courts and at the moment the distinction appears to fall on whether the AI was used "as a tool" or as "an author itself", with the former covered in certain cases and the latter not. The registration process makes it clear that failure to disclose submissions in large contribution authored by contractor or ai can result in a rejection of copyright claim now or retroactive on discovery. | | |
| ▲ | graemep a day ago | parent [-] | | You do not apply for copyright. In the US you can, optionally, register a copyright. You do not have to, but it can increase how much you get if you go to court. I do not know whether any other country even has copyright registration. Your main point that this is something the courts (or new legislation) will decide is, of course, correct. I am inclined to think this is only a problem for people who are vibe coding. The moment a human contributes to the code that bit is definitely covered by copyright, and unless you can clearly separate out human and AI contributed bits saying the AI written bits are not covered is not going to make a practical difference. | | |
| ▲ | drzaiusx11 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | My (limited) understanding was that without formal registration you cannot file any infringement suits against any works protected by said copyright. Then what's the point of the copyright other than getting to use that fancy 'c' superscript? | | |
| ▲ | galaxyLogic 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think you're wrong but I may be wrong too, so if you have a link that talks about this formal registration requirement it would be great. |
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| ▲ | panny 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You do, as the developer. Let's circle back to the original comment that started this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47594044 That comment is spot on. Claude adding a co-author to a commit is documentation to put a clear line between code you wrote and code claude generated which does not qualify for copyright protection. The damning thing about this leak is the inclusion of undercover.ts. That means Anthropic has now been caught red handed distributing a tool designed to circumvent copyright law. |
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| ▲ | graemep 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | can you tell me where exactly in the documents you link to it says that? |
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| ▲ | graemep 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It may be obvious to you, but it has lead to at least one protracted court case in the US: Thaler v. Perlmutter. > The question is whether anyone has or if whatever content generated by a LLM simply does not constitute a work and is thus outside the entire copyright law. Its is going to vary with copyright law. In the UK the question of computer generated works is addressed by copyright law and the answer is "the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken" Its also not a simple case of LLM generated vs human authored. How much work did the human do? What creative input was there? How detailed were the prompts? In jurisdictions where there are doubts about the question, I think code is a tricky one. If the argument that prompts are just instructions to generate code, therefore the code is not covered by copyright, then you could also argue that code is instructions to a compiler to generate code and the resulting binary is not covered by copyright. | | |
| ▲ | galaxyLogic 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The binary should be considered "derived work". Only the original copyright owner has the exclusive right to create or authorize derivative works. Means you are not allowed to compile code unless you have the license to do so. Right? | | |
| ▲ | graemep 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, so is LLM generated code a derivative work of the prompts? Does it matter how detailed the prompts are? How much the code conforms to what is already written (e.g. writing tests)? It looks like it will be decided on a case by case basis. It will also differ between countries, so if you are distributing software internationally what will be a constraint on treating the code as not copyrightable. | | |
| ▲ | galaxyLogic 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > is LLM generated code a derivative work of the prompts? Very good question I would think it is. You are just using a mechanical system to transform your prompt to something else, Right? But, a distiguishing factor may be that: 1. Output of the LLM for the same prompt can vary 2. So you don't really have "control" over what the
AI produces 3. Therefore you should not get a copyright to the output
of the LLM because you had very little to say about
how that transformation (from prompt to code) was made. |
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| ▲ | computerex 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | According to the law, if I use Claude to generate something, I hold the copyright granted Claude didn’t verbatim copy another project. | | | |
| ▲ | Aramgutang 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It is not "beyond obvious" that a cat cannot have copyright, given the lawsuit about a monkey holding copyright [1], and the way PETA tried to used that case as precedent to establish that any animal can hold copyright. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput... |
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