Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

The Corgi event doesn't seem particularly notable. There are similar features implemented in the most bog standard way that those features can be implemented using the pattern that AFAIK Github pioneered with a 'Danger Zone'. Both parties are using the same upstream components so it ends up looking the same. I don't know when the extreme intellectual property viewpoint entered software engineering as a mainstream opinion because I have never before seen it expressed so strongly in this community (seeing as I wasn't around when Bill Gates famously asked for money first or whatever). To think that a past OpenOffice would have been considered unconscionably close to a copy of an old MS Office of the era twenty years ago. In some way, The Corporations Won, because it turns out software engineers turned into IP maximalists. Thinking back to when I first installed Tux Kart decades ago I never could have imagined that we'd get to this stage. Really wild, man.

OpenAI/et al. selling an IP laundering service under the name 'max subscription' may force the world to accept the perspective that Intellectual Property isn't a thing. The business model of extracting value from creators via rent seeking IP may not be viable in a world where LLMs can generate anything on demand. We might be transitioning to the Lockean view that for something to be ownable as property, it must be a scarce resource, and information is not a scarce resource. From that property rights perspective, the property that's created when new information is created is not the information itself, rather, it's the act of creation (claim to authorship) that's the scarce resource. I don't know what a world looks like where the only form of IP is non-transferable and owned by the original creator. Maybe that new form of IP creates less value over all, and maybe that's ok if the creator is getting 100% of the smaller pie instead of crumbs from media labels. Companies like Red Hat could be an example of a viable business model if IP laws follow the current winds. Companies like Corgi will need to rely on internal talent to ensure that their product is better than what someone looking at their product can vibe code a copy of, which from my perspective as a consumer, sounds like a better route than Corgi relying on an internal legal team to send a cease and desist letter.

"Now software developers are feeling what authors and artist felt". As an artist who got repeatedly told to stop making buggy whips and get into the absolutely tedious-sounding new field of "writing prompts" every time I expressed dismay and displeasure about image generation around here, every story about this sort of thing here is the sweetest schadenfreude I have tasted in my life. Especially when the general feeling in the markets I work in is that AI images are kinda tacky and empty and nasty, and people would rather pay another human to realize their ideas than try to refine image generation prompts for a couple hours and get something vaguely okay that makes people go "ew, AI".

Copyright doesn't cover instructions like recipes, protocols, or APIs; those require patents. Not looking at the source code has been used to make nuisance copyright lawsuits less likely (e.g. Phoenix and AMI implementations of IBM's BIOS) but it's still easy to prevail when a new work is created by rewriting some else's source code. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....) Neither copyright nor patent cover a user interface (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros....), so that can legally be copied outright.

Copyright doesn't cover the results of code, nor the methods used in the code, techniques and algorithms aren't covered by copyright. Period. Copyright applies to 'the work'. If you don't copy the source code, it's not covered.