If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US.
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@jamie so windows 11 source code is public domain now?
What about AWS?@dolanor @jamie I really want to see someone train up a straw man LLM to generate nearly the same music "pirated" from the RIAA in the early 2000s.
Distribute the model through the usual channels. Everyone has all the music.
Show up to court, ask the RIAA to be specific. Fold the LLC. Call it a day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_group_efforts_against_file_sharing
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@kkarhan Yeah, this is very US-focused. I haven't worked with any lawyers outside the US and I'm not familiar with how copyright works outside the US at all.
However, if the company is in the US and they don't have a huge international presence, they probably aren't able to take legal action anyway.
@jamie @kkarhan
European/German law is similar:German UrhG Par2(2)
„[protected] works […] are only personal, inspired creations“ (quick, dirty translation)There is the special catch with the „inspired“ part. If it is not creative enough, it is not protected. This especially true for paintings („Gebrauchsgrafiken“), e.g. quickly drawn direction-pointing-arrows, texts like „this side up“ are not protected (unless very creatively designed).
IANAL though
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie This is just The Merchant of Venice, but with code instead of flesh.
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@jamie @kkarhan
European/German law is similar:German UrhG Par2(2)
„[protected] works […] are only personal, inspired creations“ (quick, dirty translation)There is the special catch with the „inspired“ part. If it is not creative enough, it is not protected. This especially true for paintings („Gebrauchsgrafiken“), e.g. quickly drawn direction-pointing-arrows, texts like „this side up“ are not protected (unless very creatively designed).
IANAL though
@vampirdaddy @jamie yeah, cuz in practice, you have "collecting societies" like #GEMA that literally will demand one to evidence there's no content being played that they represent or face huge [retroactive] fines and license payments.
OFC this is #NotLegalAdvice and @wbs_legal, a law firm spechalized in media, did a good writeup on this issue.
It's also the reason why one can buy 8-12hr #samplers with #BackgroundMusic that is "GEMA-free" for €120+ because even a small location will face €300+ in monthy (!) licensing fees if they choose to just play the local radio station (on top of TV/Radio licensing fees!)
- This is also why you get "digital signage screens" which are basically TVs without any tuner in them, because commercial users have to license per device instead of a flat per-household fee and the only way to not be affected by this is by being technically unable to recieve said programming...
- Similarly, this is why many commercial vehicles have no radio in them and why Rivian's amazon delivery vans only have an amplifier with bluetooth in them (so delivery drivers can listen to the navigation instructions on their issued handheld)...
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@xaetacore @jamie Why are you regurgitating corporate propaganda?
Yes, many businesses have a contract that state that the business holds the copyright for anything produced on company time, which is generally held to be valid.
When it comes to things outside of company time, businesses love claiming copyright whether or not it's done on company hardware - if the government was legitimate, they would express that such claims are not valid.@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @jamie@zomglol.wtf I was just saying what was on my last 2 contracts and i never report anything i wrote on company hardware because i think those rules are bs just as much as you do
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@max @fsinn @jamie That's not true. Media organisations and individual journalist make a share of their income from granting licenses for secondary use of their digital works, for copying them or for offering them in libraries. Copyright is one of the few bedrocks of income. It doesn‘t vanish through wishful thinking or ignoring it.
@christianschwaegerl @fsinn @jamie That's the classical model, yes, and it's unfortunate that they have to rely on such an external influence on their integrity and this needs to change.
And it slowly is, both legally (e.g. publicly financed journalism can be one solution to avoid this conflict of interest) as well as illegally (content is reused without permission for "AI" training, or simply shared online for free so that every human has access to the information)
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@jamie I *am* an IP lawyer and I (along with many others) have been saying it for a while, that if the position the “AI” co’s are taking with respect to the legality of scraping “publicly available” materials were true (that all “publicly available” materials are “public domain” free to be used as raw materials without consent required), then copyright ceases to exist and all their own materials will be free for everyone else to use the very first time they’re leaked. That’ll be fun for the co.
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It'll be interesting to see what happens when a company pisses off an employee to the point where that person creates a public repo containing all the company's AI-generated code. I guarantee what's AI-generated and what's human-written isn't called out anywhere in the code, meaning the entire codebase becomes public domain.
While the company may have recourse based on the employment agreement (which varies in enforceability by state), I doubt there'd be any on the basis of copyright.
@jamie thy open sourcing of windows 11
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie@zomglol.wtf Fantastic read – thanks for sharing!
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
Additionally, AI generated code can be a copyright infringement if the AI basically generated a copy of some copyrighted code. And if we consider that AI is trained on lots of GPLed code there is a high probability it will generate code that would need to be licensed accordingly.
There is no clean room implementation of anything with AI. The code is immediately tainted.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie@zomglol.wtf brb forking Windows
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie Maybe this would also be a problem for somebody that is publishing code with an Open Source license. If you don't have copyright on your vibe code, you can't license it, right?
Feels like it could lead to conflicts like the Google vs Oracle Java debacle. Nobody wants that. -
@katrinatransfem @fsinn @jamie If the material is acquired legally, they don't need a specific "license" to use it as training material. Copyright holders don't get to determine how their work is used after it's acquired, except to prevent its distribution.
Now, for the even larger than normal scumbags like Anthropic and Meta that torrented millions of books, that's certainly a problem. But Google, for instance, actually bought all the books they scanned.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@stroughtonsmith Is this relevant? I honestly don’t know a ton about this but I’m curious if you have thoughts on it…
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@stroughtonsmith Is this relevant? I honestly don’t know a ton about this but I’m curious if you have thoughts on it…
@Verxion I think this is probably right:
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@Verxion I think this is probably right:
@stroughtonsmith I think that’s fair. I seriously do and so I’m not disagreeing with you.
…the sad thing though (to me anyway) is that this means an indie dev is unlikely to be able to afford to retain ownership like a large corporation can.
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If you use AI-generated code, you currently cannot claim copyright on it in the US. If you fail to disclose/disclaim exactly which parts were not written by a human, you forfeit your copyright claim on *the entire codebase*.
This means copyright notices and even licenses folks are putting on their vibe-coded GitHub repos are unenforceable. The AI-generated code, and possibly the whole project, becomes public domain.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/LSB/PDF/LSB10922/LSB10922.8.pdf
@jamie I am afraid you are confusing registering copyright with the existence of copyright. They are not quite the same, and the differences are important.
Current law is that any human-created work is automatically copyrighted the moment it is created.
The link and screenshots you posted aren't about whether the human-written code mixed in with AI-written code is copyrighted—it is—they're about whether the copyright can be _registered_.
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@jamie I am afraid you are confusing registering copyright with the existence of copyright. They are not quite the same, and the differences are important.
Current law is that any human-created work is automatically copyrighted the moment it is created.
The link and screenshots you posted aren't about whether the human-written code mixed in with AI-written code is copyrighted—it is—they're about whether the copyright can be _registered_.
(1/2)@jamie A copyrighted work that isn't registered is still copyrighted. It's not "in the public domain."
Registration, in the U.S., allows for certain copyright enforcement actions that can't be taken for unregistered works. But whether or not a work is registered has no bearing on whether it is copyrighted vs. in the public domain.
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