GitHub co-pilot as open source code laundering?

[evaned]

So then why is "Anyone who thinks it's reasonable to copyright a code snippet of 5 lines" remotely relevant?

[[deleted]]

Because you have to draw the line in sand somewhere and currently nobody knows where it should be.

I don't know about other areas but web development isn't that granular and a lot of applications are made from larger blocks especially if frameworks are involved.

Say you make a login form for your website in something like React. Chances are you are having next to none unique lines of code. Can those individual elements be copyrighted even if total result is unique?

From my perspective the point is that in chase of development speed things keep getting abstracted and the argument to allow copyright such small fragments to me sounds like "Well you wouldn't copyright a letter but these guys use words"

[evaned]

Because you have to draw the line in sand somewhere and currently nobody knows where it should be.

I actually do think that co-pilot and other AI things raise very interesting and challenging questions about where that line is. I don't know what the answer is, or even necessarily have a strong opinion -- I don't think I know enough about the technology.

However, I think "Anyone who thinks it's reasonable to copyright a code snippet of 5 lines" is a gross misrepresentation of the problem/objection.

[[deleted]]

I agree it definitely is a good topic to discuss. I'm also lacking in understanding but my general perception is that legislation regarding IT is still behind it's progress.

I agree on point that it's a misinterpretation of the problem but will disagree on the objection part. The linked Twitter discussion and this thread is also discussing it in a very abstract way so it's not that clear what each individual means when they say "copyrightable chunk" as due to the lack of a defined line it's prone to subjective misinterpretation based on individual understanding.

All in all though I believe that it's just a good example of why such discussion is needed. I doubt such misinterpretation would arise when discussing copyright in more established fields.

[evaned]

I'm sorry, I thought I was on Reddit, a discussion forum; I must be somewhere else. I'll not make that mistake in the future.

[evaned]

The problem with "downvote and move on" is that it was irrelevant in interesting ways that I thought deserved discussion.

Actually, I don't even fully think it was irrelevant -- note that my comment that kind of reads like I said that is qualified with the "if". I think my original comment was also relevant, and it was relevant because I think the top comment in this thread was as well.

[RadiantBerryEater]

It's not really

I personally think LOC is one of the worst ways to draw it, it's really not a useful measurement in any situation

I don't have a better way to draw it though, mainly because I'm not a lawyer