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by nordsieck 1133 days ago
> Could a human also accidentally spit out the exact code while having it just learned and not memorized in good faith?

That's just copying with extra steps.

The way to do it legally is to have 1 person read the code, and then write up a document that describes functionally what the code does. Then, a second person implements software just from the notes.

That's the method Compaq used to re-implement the original PC BIOS from IBM.

2 comments

Indeed. Case closed. If an AI produces verbatim code owned by somebody else and you cannot prove that the AI hasn't been trained on that code, we shall treat the case in exact the same way as we would treat it when humans are involved.

Except that with AI we can more easily (in principle) provide provable provenance of training set and (again in principle) reproduce the model and prove whether it could create the copyrighted work also without having had access to the work in its training set

>The way to do it legally is to have 1 person read the code

wasn't it to have one person run tests of what happened when different things were done, and then write up a document describing the functionality?

In other words I think one person reading the code is still in violation?

> Typically, a clean-room design is done by having someone examine the system to be reimplemented and having this person write a specification. This specification is then reviewed by a lawyer to ensure that no copyrighted material is included. The specification is then implemented by a team with no connection to the original examiners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

yes, reading that description it seems pretty clear to me that they did not read the code but they had access to the working system and then

>by reverse engineering and then recreating it without infringing any of the copyrights associated with the original design.

reverse engineering is not 'reading the code'.