logoalt Hacker News

not_a_bot_4shoyesterday at 8:16 PM3 repliesview on HN

No one is stealing anything here.

Cursor users are willfully providing it by using their product. Not unlike uploading a personal photo or video to social media -- that's not yours anymore. You gave all rights away when you put it on their servers.


Replies

hk__2yesterday at 8:28 PM

> Not unlike uploading a personal photo or video to social media -- that's not yours anymore. You gave all rights away when you put it on their servers.

99% of users are unaware of that, so it’s false to say they "are willfully providing it".

davebrenyesterday at 9:40 PM

Do you think that everyone using it and their employers are aware that they are giving their competition the ability to copy straight from their codebase when they ask it to replicate their product?

show 1 reply
themafiayesterday at 10:51 PM

> Not unlike uploading a personal photo or video to social media

I've granted them a limited license to use it.

> that's not yours anymore.

Not by any definition in the contract or in law is this true.

> You gave all rights away when you put it on their servers.

I gave away some rights. I also got something in return. Attention. And at the end of the day I'm completely entitled to turn around and sell copies of this work for profit. The only thing I can't do is sell an /exclusive/ license because that is no longer available.

None of this provides any implication for people who upload code to their own websites. Which these rapacious LLMs bots happily index, sometimes to the extent they actually crush the site, or create unusual costs for the owner.

Finally none of these LLM companies tell you where the source came from. Whether it is copyrighted, whether ownership rights are retained, or whether the code can be used publicly or not, and if so, which license it's covered by.

You're using the lens of social media contracts to understand something far larger and more important. It's lead you to some bizarre conclusions and huge oversites.

What if someone steals my work and then uploads it to facebook and claims it as their own? Do the rights no longer exist because it got uploaded to Meta?