U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containing AI-generated material

Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by pclmulqdq on Thursday March 16, 2023 @10:33PM (#35192181)

I think the open question is whether software is in the realm of patents or of copyrights. It's not unreasonable to suggest the former, since software is kind of like a widget that does stuff, except virtualizing the "widget" part to run on a generic widget of sorts. Copyrights traditionally applied to works that you would consider "artistic" rather than "inventions."

What you're suggesting, about a minimal work, is litigated endlessly with respect to music copyrights (since a lot of pop music is very similar, arguments about plagiarism get crazy), but is part of the law already.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by brookst on Thursday March 16, 2023 @10:41PM (#35192245)

Aren’t dry, non-fiction books copyrightable? I don’t think “creative” necessarily means “artistic”, just making something where there was nothing. It’s hard for me to see a software program as a whole as uncreative in the same way logarithm tables are.

I agree it’s a complex are with no easy answer. But I really think that software, like words and notes and numbers, scales from the generic and unprotectable to the highly creative and protectable. I guess I’m saying we shouldn’t invalidate copyright based on the medium being software, any more than we would for the medium being audio.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by randombits0 on Thursday March 16, 2023 @10:53PM (#35192361)

The expression can be as dry as a desert. Is the result an act of creativity? The bar is pretty low.

Say you had a book that listed the price of eggs over 100 years. You introduced each chapter, perhaps describing the egg market at the time, etc.

The book is copyrightable though lists of egg prices aren’t. Maps are another fun case for copyright.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by randombits0 on Thursday March 16, 2023 @10:47PM (#35192304)

It’s neither, it doesn’t fit. Chip masks are another whole branch of IP law. As strange as it sounds, they are a bit like two sides of the same coin.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by theGnuMe on Thursday March 16, 2023 @10:49PM (#35192322)

Software alone is not patentable. You get around that by patenting a system.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by pclmulqdq on Thursday March 16, 2023 @11:05PM (#35192465)

That is the state of the law today, where software gets copyrighted and can't be patented, but the debate about this is more about what ought to be the case.

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Re:U.S. Copyright Office issues statement on works containin... by theGnuMe on Thursday March 16, 2023 @11:16PM (#35192549)

Good luck changing it!

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