[Gormo]

> Uh, that is exactly what a derivative work is.

No, it isn't. A derivative work isn't something based on extracting underlying ideas or patterns from another work, it's something that includes copyrighted portions of the other work.

An annotated edition of Hamlet is a derivative work. A Cliff's Notes summary of Hamlet is a derivative work.

Strange Brew and The Lion King are not derivative works of Hamlet simply because they include literary themes and plot points that originated in Hamlet. A list of word counts of popular works of literature that includes an entry for Hamlet is also not a derivative work. The Markov chain described above is not a derivative work.

> The obvious follow up here is whether an LLM is creating transformative derivations or not. A lot of folks argue that yes, an LLM spitting out statistically sampled code that matches existing code is not transformative and is (or might be) infringing the terms of the license it was released under.

And I would agree with them. An LLM that actually is outputting non-trivial code that matches a public project's code verbatim is engaging in copying, and not stochastic inference.

> I think it's a pretty obvious "somewhere in the middle" that is gonna make a bunch of lawyers a whole lot of money.

It's a shame that the same fundamental questions have to be relitigated over and over again just because the contextual formalities and modes of expression have changed. I wonder how many of the legal cases are going to be copies or derivative works of previous ones.

[Xirdus]

> Strange Brew and The Lion King are not derivative works of Hamlet simply because they include literary themes and plot points that originated in Hamlet.

But try to write your own story of a lion cub chased away by his uncle and living in a jungle until his childhood friend finds him and convinces him to reclaim his kingdom, and you'll quickly hear from Disney's lawyers how non-derivative it really is.

OSS devs aren't worried about Hamlet reinterpretations. They're worried about legally-distinct-but-functionally-identical software clones. Unlike Disney, they don't have millions in their pockets to fight the legal battle. You know who does have millions? The people they'd be fighting against, who are going to use every single of your arguments to claim their AI-generated reimplementation of Kefir is not bound by GPL (or even by BSD 3-clause in case of runtime). No share-alike, no attribution, no nothing. If they are right, then the OSS social contract is dead. Even if they're not right, but behave as if they're right because they have lawyers and OSS devs don't - the social contract is just as dead.

[Gormo]

> But try to write your own story of a lion cub chased away by his uncle and living in a jungle until his childhood friend finds him and convinces him to reclaim his kingdom, and you'll quickly hear from Disney's lawyers how non-derivative it really is.

I'd expect them to say "we don't like this, but since it's not actually a derivative work, we can't do anything about it". As long as you're not directly copying things like characters, dialogue, etc., it's not a derivative work.

That's why Armageddon is not a derivative work of Deep Impact, the Shark Attack series is not a derivative work of Jaws, the more famous Titanic is not a derivative work of 1979's S.O.S. Titanic, and the Harry Potter series is not a derivative work of Teen Witch.

Using the same story themes, plot points, and setting as another work does not implicate that other work's copyright. Only substantial copying of specifics does.

[Xirdus]

> As long as you're not directly copying things like characters, dialogue, etc., it's not a derivative work.

Define a character. Is another lion prince named Simba the same character? Is a lion prince named something else the same character? Is a human prince named Simba the same character? I'm no copyright expert, but from what I know about fanfics and fanart, the US courts ruled all of these violate copyright (you can win a book plagiarism lawsuit even if the other book has all names changed and every sentence went through thesaurus). The few cases where the obvious stand-in was ruled non-infringing were on the grounds of parody exception, not on the grounds of being non-derivative.

The many Titanic movies are not each other's derivatives because none of them are based on each other. They're all based on the historical events directly. Now, if the original Titanic was fictional like the famous Nautilus, then yes, the 1997 movie would be derivative, but not of the 1979 series.

Which part of Harry Potter is directly rips off Teen Witch the way Lion King directly rips off Hamlet? I'm not familiar with that movie.