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by rswail 107 days ago
I think you need to read the report from the US Copyright office that specifically says that it's *not* (c) copyright of the operator.

It doesn't matter if the "change this variable name" instruction ends up with the same result as a human operator using a text editor.

There is a big difference between "change this variable name" and "refactor this code base to extract a singleton".

1 comments

You may as well be the MPAA right now throwing threats around sharing MP3s. We're past the point of caring and the laws will catch up with reality eventually. The US copyright office says things that get turned over in court all the time.
Tell me, how have laws “caught up with” “the [RIAA…] throwing threats around sharing MP3s?” So far as I know that’s still considered copyright infringement and the person doing it, if caught, can be liable for very substantial statutory damages.

It sounds like you really can’t handle being told “no, you can’t use an LLM for this” by someone else, even if they have every right to do so. You should probably talk to your therapist about that.

lol, ask the software industry whether or not their "past the point of caring" about the licenses on their software.

Whether it's an OSS license or a commercial license, both are dependent on copyright as the underlying IP Right.

The courts have so far (in the US) agreed with the Copyright office's reasoning.

Use an LLM as a tool, mostly OK.

Use it to create source from scratch, no copyright as the author isn't human.

Use it to modify existing software, the result is only copyright on whatever original remains.

The entire industry is right now encouraging LLM use all day everyday at big corps including mine. If your argument is the code we are producing isn't copyright of our employers you won't get very far. Call it the realpolitik of tech if you want.