> Once this line of reasoning gets applied to code, all hell will break loose.

The notion of “your work is too similar to mine so I get to take ownership of it from you” is a very recent invention that has done more harm than good to human creativity, and if AI is the instrument of that invention's demise, then I look forward to it.

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zephen 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> The notion of “your work is too similar to mine so I get to take ownership of it from you”

That notion only applies to patents and trademarks, and it seems highly unlikely that it would ever directly apply to copyright.

It may seem like the notion applies to copyrights, but it really doesn't. Independent creation is, and has always been, a solid defense to claims of copyright infringement.

That is why, when Phoenix Technologies reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS, they had two teams -- a team that took apart the original and documented the functional features (which have never been copyrightable) and a second team which took the description of the functional features and wrote new code.

The issue with songwriters has always been that, for civil laws, it's hard to prove a negative. How can you prove you never heard that song? Especially when it got a lot of radio airtime.

Now, how do you prove that your AI didn't ingest copyrighted code and then regurgitate it. Obviously, you can't.

> if AI is the instrument of that invention's demise, then I look forward to it.

Any court ruling that you would find beneficial for code copyright would mean that a human could have two windows open on their computer and cut and paste from one to the other and claim independent invention. That seems unlikely to be a good result, and also seems unlikely to come to pass.

	▲	yellowapple 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> That notion only applies to patents and trademarks You literally just gave an example above of that notion applying to copyright. There's no mere “seem like” at play here: the litigious music IP owners suing the pants off of musicians know full well that precisely zero musicians (least of all commercial ones) exist in a vacuum, and that's indeed the basis for the success of their litigiousness. Even if you can somehow prove you've never heard a particular song, You Live In A Society™ and that existing intellectual property's influence on society in turn influences subsequent creators. There is, in other words, no such thing as true “independent creation”. > Any court ruling that you would find beneficial for code copyright would mean that a human could have two windows open on their computer and cut and paste from one to the other and claim independent invention. Don't threaten me with a good time :)