If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license?
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This case law exists in the U.S.
There are two cases (or arguably three if you include Sega v. SNK).
Here's what you really care about:
️ Any author of code is judged based on their own use of the existing code, so reverse-engineering of code used to be based on an engineer writing down, line by line, in plain English, what to do. Then a second person sat down and made up code, line-by-line to accomplish that task. Things have changed but the idea that you can't literally harvest existing code is still a thing.
️ You own the #AI made code but can't copyright it... so you can't profit from it in the same way.@VictimOfSimony @lcamtuf
C The fucking source code was used to train the LLM -
@tbortels @bgalehouse @lcamtuf @kevinr Well, yes but no. The point about spec is the level of detailing taken from the original work. If you write an original novel about a wild, big monkey found in a jungle, brought to New York, who escapes and so on, the King Kong author cannot claim any rights to that, sorry. If it were different, many narratives and movies would not exist today. That is inspiration, not derivation. Of course it is fair declaring inspiration, but call it with the right name.
@tbortels @bgalehouse @lcamtuf @kevinr Just to compare, all free libre office suites today are currently inspired to MS office, often with a very similar UX, but they are clearly separate work with their own license and MS cannot claim any rights about them. Do not confuse software with industrial artifacts and patents. Even out of US software is not patentable...
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@lcamtuf The current declination by the Supreme Court to overturn or review this ruling: https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/a-recent-entrance-to-paradise.pdf Which holds things created by AI are neither "derivative works" or "original works" and are not eligible for Copyright protection so no, you don't need to abide by the previous license. No one does. And if someone reverse engineers your code DMCA doesn't apply either (it isn't copyrighted).
@ChuckMcManis @lcamtuf say if Disney were to produce an entire movie with AI, could you share copies freely with your pals?
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But here's an interesting question:
If you do not execute the code - did you accept the license? Does simply reading it sufficiently to be able to write a spec bind you to that license? That seems a bit too much.
@tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr Copyright bound licenses work by exempting you from the blanket and default prohibition on copying.
So if you copy a work that has copyright restrictions according to copyright law, using the license is your only way of not infringing the law. It doesn’t matter if you ”accept” it or not.
If you are not copying, the license is irrelevant.
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@lcamtuf actual answer: of course you do, it’s prima facie a derivative work, same as if you had rewritten the program by hand.
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@tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr Copyright bound licenses work by exempting you from the blanket and default prohibition on copying.
So if you copy a work that has copyright restrictions according to copyright law, using the license is your only way of not infringing the law. It doesn’t matter if you ”accept” it or not.
If you are not copying, the license is irrelevant.
@ahltorp @tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr and indeed there are arguments that simply “reading” is not copying, same as reading a book, even if via a web site. But getting your AI to “read” it is probably a different matter.
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@ChuckMcManis @lcamtuf say if Disney were to produce an entire movie with AI, could you share copies freely with your pals?
@astolk @ChuckMcManis @lcamtuf I’d say yes, expect that I believe Disney have form for getting copyright law changed in their favour if needed. So Disney may be a bad example.
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@bgalehouse @kevinr @lcamtuf the ai machine was already trained on all the open source data ever, so it's not a clean room interpretation anyway
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@bgalehouse @kevinr @lcamtuf unless the training data is entirely clean of the original implementation, it's tests and documentation and any forks or other derivatives of it, it's still not a clean-room implementation. Research has shown that you can reconstruct entire book chapters with prompting because they were pulled into the training data.
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Assuming you used the original source code to derive the detailed spec, then yes, that too is a derivative work.
The "viral" nature of that sort of license has bothered me for a long time. It's always been simultaneously overly far reaching and impossible to realistically enforce.
@tbortels @bgalehouse @lcamtuf @kevinr the GPL is not problematic unless you want to use other people's work in a more restrictive way.. have you read proprietary software licenses?
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@ahltorp @tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr and indeed there are arguments that simply “reading” is not copying, same as reading a book, even if via a web site. But getting your AI to “read” it is probably a different matter.
@revk @ahltorp @tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr idk about AI but I've heard more than once that when people are actually implementing something as free software that is originally non free but was either leaked or is source available, they completely restrict themselves from even looking at the thing and only use what any user would know and do some reverse engineering, so I assumed it's actually legally unsafe to taint yourself with original code and let it potentially influence you
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If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf
If that works there's plenty of closed source code I'd like to open.. -
If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf
It is the problem of software patents. No need to have an AI : if an human writes a new software that does exactly the same thing than a free software, is it the same software? -
But here's an interesting question:
If you do not execute the code - did you accept the license? Does simply reading it sufficiently to be able to write a spec bind you to that license? That seems a bit too much.
@tbortels why would execution be needed to agree? You as a third party don't need to agree to the license, but if it's an open license to have the privilege to edit/reuse the code you have to agree to do it. By default the code is closed, the license opens it up for you, if you somehow don't agree to it you can't use the code at all because it's closed by default
(completely unrelated to the AI thing. fuck AI) -
If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf we will know
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If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf Bravo.
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If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf This story is one of Aislop's Fables.
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@revk @ahltorp @tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr idk about AI but I've heard more than once that when people are actually implementing something as free software that is originally non free but was either leaked or is source available, they completely restrict themselves from even looking at the thing and only use what any user would know and do some reverse engineering, so I assumed it's actually legally unsafe to taint yourself with original code and let it potentially influence you
@rustynail @ahltorp @tbortels @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr Hmm, there is another consequence to this.
If this is a derivative work, which I expect it is.
It causes issues when someone has, in fact, manually, coding an alternative to some copyright work (without reading original code, etc). As someone can suggest that it was done using AI as a derivative work. It no longer needs to actually follow the original code now to be accused of this.
Arrg!
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If you ask AI to rewrite the entirety of an open-source program, do you still need to abide by the original license? In philosophy, this problem is known as the Slop of Theseus
@lcamtuf The licence goes from «copyleft» to «sloppyleft».
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@tbortels if you do not accept the license, you do not have any right to use the code. It’s "all rights reserved" then. @lcamtuf @bgalehouse @kevinr
@lcamtuf @ArneBab @kevinr @bgalehouse
"Use" isn't part of the GPL. And "all rights reserved" means normal copyright law, not "you get no rights at all".
The GPL defines "modify" and "propagate" as the activities it burdens. If I modify the code, and propagate it, i have a legal burden under the license. Otherwise, I don't.
IANAL, but I don't think reading the code and re-implementing a work-alike without incorporating the original code is "modify" - it's "replace".
I understand that's where "clean rooms" come into play, but that always felt like splitting hairs and giving copyright too much power - it's about physical books, not ideas. The farther we move from the original intent, the weaker a strong copyright stance becomes.
I think you could make an argument that reading code to understand it's interfaces, explicitly rejecting accepting any license, then implementing compatible code is well within the normal copyright definition of "fair use", or should be if we aren't all copyright lawyers. More importantly, it's healthy for Society and the art. If I can read a book under copyright and write a detailed book report, I should be able to read provided source code and do the same. To the extent that we've strayed away from that, the legal system has failed and needs correction.
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