Comment by dgellow
16 days ago
> Code is bytes of text on disk
Not at all, code is the implementation of an idea. The support/encoding is irrelevant. A human creation is protected by copyright. In the case of prompting an LLM, the human creation is the prompt, the LLM does author the implementation. But it’s not known what happens to the ownership of the LLM generated code
That is not at all how copyright works. If the encoding is irrelevant then virtually all code on GitHub is violating copyright as there are vanishingly small numbers of actually novel ideas.
You’re mixing up concepts. Copyright covers human creations, not ideas. The novelty aspect isn’t too relevant. If you write an article with ideas that aren’t novel it is still considered something you created and will be covered by copyright. You have ownership of your creation.
"Code is bytes of text on disk"....
...organized in a very specific fashion with a great deal of creativity and attention to that specific organization.
I can't copyright the alphabet, but I can copyright certain arrangements of it, subject to a variety of rules.
You’re thinking of a patent, not copyright. And no, it’s very unlikely that you can patent that concept…