Who Owns the Code Claude Wrote?
AI-generated code copyright explained for builders.
legallayer.substack.com
legallayer.substack.com
That's generally the normal thing for permie/contract work in the UK too, although some contracts allow you to escape the 'they own what you dreamed up in the shower' thing; if for example you're on a retainer with royalties contract (not very common nowadays) as opposed to a normal paid-hourly contract.
Same in Germany.
Another aspect of the original post that's very relevant for the *BSDs is that an LLM trained on GPL and other copyleft code can end up reproducing that code - even if not verbatim, close enough to be legally problematic.Who Owns the Code Claude Wrote?
AI-generated code copyright explained for builders.
Things get a lot more dicey when you're not contracted to write code (not a programming/coding job) but still end up writing code anyway (devops, puppet, ansible, shell scripts, custom tools, etc.)
As you say, it could (and often will) constitute a licensing breach. But it's not, in legal terms, "stealing". That's a completely different area of law. I understand why people use the word "stealing" here in a figurative and rhetorical manner. I'm sure Theo de Raadt takes a very dim view of much of AI firms' behavior even if he points out that it is not, in fact, "stealing". I didn't interpret it as him defending them in the slightest.
Not so fast, young man.
But it hasn't. To my knowledge, there has been no law or court decision that speaks on how the copyright of the output of an LLM relates to its input. Matter-of-fact, I don't even think it's clear who holds the copyright of the output of an LLM (claims notwithstanding, anyone can make claims or write "Copyright XXX" into the code or checkin message).
At the moment, AI firms generally state that they do not stake any claim of their own on the output of their models. I wouldn't bet against future legislation to firm this position up* and ensure AI firms don't change their mind later, producing an enormous legal mess given all the works that AI-created or assisted content ends up in.
You're comparing two very different things. A person is not a program. A program that directly uses data for a model and then uses that data to generate output is simply stealing. The program has no analytical ability or comprehension ability like you. It's simply processing the works of people to generate something. This is called theft.
It is direct theft. There is no comparison to piracy that's not even the slightly the same. You can use as many words to refute that as you like but it doesn't change the fact that "AI" is a theft bot.
"Theft" and "stealing" are legal terms. And in law, this is neither theft nor stealing. You can argue it should be ... but it isn't. I wouldn't normally push the point, but you're replying to a thread that literally concerns the legal status of the code produced by Claude. There are huge uncertainties that need to be navigated about this legal situation, particularly when it comes to intellectual property and licensing. Experts are being paid big money to provide whatever clarity is possible, though ultimately it's going to need some court cases and probably some legislation before it's really clear what's going on. But one thing that absolutely everybody with any relevant expertise agrees is that there's no way it is "stealing".
That's great that everybody agrees. It's is stealing and it's unethical as well. So I think I will agree to disagree with the "absolutely everybody" that you are posting on behalf of. If you could pass the message on to absolutely everybody that there is a singular person who disagrees with absolutely everybody I would appreciate it.
Like I said, lots of people make the mistake of mixing up the law on theft and the law on intellectual property infringement. It's very common, and some people even conflate them deliberately to make the latter sound as scary or clearcut as the former. It's a useful rhetorical device, as the "piracy is theft" campaign showed - and more recently with content creators complaining that AI firms have "stolen" their property.
A program is an extension of a person. Clearly, I can not sue a program in court. But I can sue the person who wrote the program, or who sold it, or who uses it. But in all cases, the basic causal relationship of "what made the crime happen" is the program.
Nonsense. Example: I write a program that analyzes the pressure in my home water system, and how often the pumps have to run, with the outside temperature, the water level in the well, and the phase of Aquarius. I will find certain results (irrigation uses a lot of water, it takes longer to pump water further uphill). I control the input data, which I have carefully collected over the last few years. To calculate the positions of Jupiter and Aquarius, I use well-known public domain formulas from an astronomy textbook.
