[martin-t]

> The reason is that it is absolutely impossible to write any kind of program that is not a derivative of earlier programs.

And that's why copyright has exceptions for humans.

You're right copyright was the wrong tool for code but for the wrong reasons.

It shouldn't be binary. And the law should protect all work, not just creative. Either workers would come to a mutual agreement how much each contributed or the courts would decide based on estimates. Then there'd be rules about how much derivation is OK, how much requires progressively more compensation and how much the original author can plainly tell you what to do and not do with the derivative.

It's impossible to satisfy everyone but every person has a concept of fairness (it has been demonstrated even in toddlers). Many people probably even have an internally consistent theory of fairness. We should base laws on those.

> abusing the copyright laws and the patent laws have been the most significant blockers of technical progress during the last few decades

Can you give examples?

> copyrights on non-open-source programs are almost never owned by creators, but by their employers

Yes and that's another thing that's wrong with the system, employment is a form of abusive relationship because the parties are not equal. We should fix that instead of throwing out the whole system. Copyright which belongs to creators absolutely does give creators more leverage and negotiating power.

[Dylan16807]

> And that's why copyright has exceptions for humans.

Why would the exceptions be only for humans?

"Only human works can get copyright" makes plenty of sense. "Only humans can have fair use" doesn't make sense. Why would we disallow a monkey video having a clip of something as part of the monkey reviewing it? Why would we allow a human to caption something for accessibility but not a computer?

Grammar and idioms should be outside the realm of copyright entirely, not something you get an exception to use anyway.

> It's impossible to satisfy everyone but every person has a concept of fairness (it has been demonstrated even in toddlers). Many people probably even have an internally consistent theory of fairness. We should base laws on those.

A lot of people seem to default to thinking they should get permanent and total control over any idea they have, so I think it's a bad idea to rely on intuition here.

[martin-t]

> Why would the exceptions be only for humans?

For starters because you can't own humans. If it's possible to launder copyrighted work through something which can be owned, then rich people get an advantage because they can own more of it.

> so I think it's a bad idea to rely on intuition here

Yep, that's why I said we should only concern ourselves with those which are internally consistent. If people want to apply rules to others which they don't intend to or cannot follow themselves, they lose the right to be taken seriously.

[Dylan16807]

> For starters because you can't own humans. If it's possible to launder copyrighted work through something which can be owned, then rich people get an advantage because they can own more of it.

If it's actually 'laundering' then it's invalid to begin with.

If it's a proper new thing then how do rich people get an advantage? If anything AI code is cheap enough to even things out.

> Yep, that's why I said we should only concern ourselves with those which are internally consistent. If people want to apply rules to others which they don't intend to or cannot follow themselves, they lose the right to be taken seriously.

I think a lot of those people are consistent! The issue is they have way too little respect for the public domain and are overprioritizing property against freedom.

[martin-t]

> If it's actually 'laundering' then it's invalid to begin with.

It's laundering in any reasonable meaning of the word. Whether it's legal according to the letter of the law is being decided.

Please differentiate morality and legality as well as intent and letter of the law.

> If anything AI code is cheap enough to even things out.

1) Do you think people have and will have access to the same models as large corporations internally, especially those who train LLMs themselves? Nothing stopping Google from excluding its own source code from the publicly available models but including it for internal models.

2) It's not just about the code, it's about the whole pipeline from nothing to a finished product and revenue stream. Did you know half the price of a new car is marketing? How much you can spend on ads, legal, market research, sales reps, etc. In some areas, especially B2B, nobody will even talk to you if you're a single guy in a shed, companies want stability, predictability and long term support.

3) More crudely, if you wanted to influence product selection or government elections, how many tokens could you afford for LLMs to influence online discussions, how many residential IPs could you afford, how much data could you buy about users to target each one specifically? Rich people will clearly have an advantage there.

Basically, if the cost of code goes towards zero, other factors will play a larger role.

> I think a lot of those people are consistent!

Only if they're consistently applying the rules to others but not themselves. Otherwise "permanent and total control over any idea they have" means they could never base anything on other people's ideas.

[Dylan16807]

It's silly to say a human writing a piece of software is laundering their knowledge of existing software, even if they're trying to make a competitor to a specific thing. Legally and morally.

It's just a silly to say it's laundering when a machine does it.

[adrian_b]

>> abusing the copyright laws and the patent laws have been the most significant blockers of technical progress during the last few decades > Can you give examples?

This is a subject so vast that giving examples requires a book-length text. IIRC at least one or two books have actually been written about this, but I am too lazy to search now for their titles.

I am more familiar with what happened in cryptography, where many algorithms have begun to be used only after the 20 years or more required for their patents to expire, while as long as patents remained valid, inferior solutions were used, wasting energy and computing time.

Regarding copyrights, I know best my own activity, but I am pretty certain that this anecdotal experience is representative for many programmers.

During the first decades of computer programming, until the seventies, there have been a lot of discussions about software reuse as the main factor that can improve programming productivity, and about which features of the programming languages and of the available programming tools can increase the amount of reuse, like modularity.

However all those discussions were naive, because later the amount of reuse has remained much lower than predicted, but the causes were not technical, but the copyright laws. Open-source programs have become the main weapon against the copyright laws, which enable the reuse of software nowadays.

However the value of software reuse has never been understood by the management of many companies. In decades of working as a programmer, I have wasted a lot of time with writing programs in such a manner so that whoever was my employer could claim the copyright for them.

There were plenty of opportunities when I could have used open-source programs, but I could not use them as there was someone who insisted that the product must contain "software IP" owned by the company. Therefore I had to waste time by rewriting something equivalent with what I could have used instantaneously, but different enough to be copyrightable.

There were also other cases that were even more annoying, when I had to waste time by rewriting programs that I had already written in the past, but in a different way so that there will be no copyright infringement. Some times the old programs were written when being employed elsewhere, other times they were programs written for myself, during my own time and on my own computers. In such cases, I could not use my own programs, as the employer would then claim copyright on them, so I would lose ownership and I would not be able to use them in the future, for my own needs.

There are many projects where I have wasted more time avoiding copyrights than solving problems. I believe that there must be many others who must have had similar experiences.

So I welcome the copyright-washing AI coding assistants, which can be employed successfully in such cases in order to avoid the wasteful duplication of work.

[martin-t]

It all boils down to some people thinking they should be able to use other people's work for free.

> patents

Patents, unlike copyright, are not automatic. Which indicates that the people who expended their limited lifetime to invent the algorithms explicitly did not want you using them, at least not unless you came to an agreement with them first.

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re rewriting:

There's your real problem. Copyright should belong to the people doing the actual work, not owners/employers who perform no useful work.

If that was the case, the person who did the original work would have no reason to prevent you from using it, as long as he could also benefit from the fruits of your combined labor. For him, the work was already done, it would be extra reward. For you, it would be profitable as long as his reward was less than the cost of you doing it from scratch. You'd most likely meet somewhere in the middle.

Same situation when rewriting your own work.

As often happens, a system was put in place for good. Rich people found a way to exploit it. Now, instead of trying to fix the system, you're arguing to remove it entirely, not realizing you'll be worse off in the end. LLM want to replace all programmers by using their work against them. This is not for your benefit, it's for theirs.

As I often say, what should be protected isn't creativity or expression but work. People should benefit from their work and it should not be used against them. It should also not be possible for someone to benefit without doing useful work.

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Would you work for a company which develops software to detect homosexuals using public cameras and eye tracking? What about a company discovering and selling Android exploits to governments? Does it matter which governments? What about a company which tracks employee movements and productivity to such a level they have to pee in bottles to meet quotas?

The world is full of these examples but at least you had the choice of not helping them. Now you don't.

The people who own them are some of the most anti-social people on the planet and you think they should be able to use our work as they wish...