[sarchertech]

Unlike patents, independent creation is a valid defense to copyright infringement.

Copyright is the literal expression of the idea. The identifier names, how the functions are broken up, which libraries are used etc…

Given more than a dozen lines or so, 2 people aren’t going to write the exact same code to solve the same problem. It might be equivalent code, but it’s not going to be the exact same.

  def copyright_warning(times) do
    for _ <- 1..times do
      IO.puts("hey man this code is copyrighted. Don't copy it pretty please")
    end
  end

That code is copyright protected. I don’t have to do anything. I automatically own the copyright once I create it.

If you copy that you are infringing.

You could do something similar if you wanted. But if you copy that directly, you are infringing on my copyright.

[theshrike79]

But isn't it literally impossible to determine whether I copied those 5 lines or wrote them myself?

Especially in languages like Go where there's an Official Formatter that makes all code look identical as much as possible?

There are a multitude of reasons why I'm not a lawyer and vague crap like this is a big part :D

[sarchertech]

It’s literally impossible to prove anything outside of a formal system.

Courts would look at the preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial.

Did you have access to my code? Is the copy long enough that it’s statistically very unlikely that could have came up with it exactly on your own?

They’ll look at things like did you copy misspellings in variable names. Did you copy the missing period at the end of the output string etc…