[eschaton]

Yes, in fact, this is why people who do that are looked down upon.

They are in fact committing fraud if they do not attribute the code in their commit properly, because by committing it they’re claiming to have rights by virtue of authorship that they do not have. (Namely, the right to contribute that code to the project,.) They may also be committing copyright infringement, depending on the copyright and license status of some code they found via Google or Stack Overflow.

It’s always fascinating to me to see how many people on Hacker News have such extremely poor understanding of how intellectual property actually works, and how misrepresenting themselves or their work can actually have consequences.

[dml2135]

Are there any court cases you can point to that have clearly established that using LLM generated code can be a copyright violation? My understanding is that this is very far from being settled law.

[eschaton]

What cases can you cite that have determined it’s not?

It’s clear on its face that LLMs can and do store and reproduce copyrighted works; using a form of (somewhat) lossy data compression. And using a lossy stochastic or perceptual form of compression to reproduce a copyrighted work doesn’t somehow make it not storage or reproduction, otherwise sharing MP3 files wouldn’t be copyright infringement.

Anyone engaging in responsible risk management should assume that anything LLM-generated is infringing until determined otherwise by the courts, not the other way around.

[dml2135]

There are billion-dollar entities preparing to fight this very question out in court as we speak.

Your interpretation of the law is certainly plausible, but it is clearly not a settled question.

If you really are so confident, go bet on Kalshi and make some easy money: https://kalshi.com/markets/kxnytoai/new-york-times-wins-open...