alt Hacker News> Copyright is serving exactly nobody today
Except for nearly everyone who writes anything (including software) or other artistic pursuits to make a living. This includes a majority of people here on HN.
Replies
yeah I wouldn't be able to put food on the table if my employer didn't have exclusive license to the glue we use to stick together all that open source code we rely on. Which we now generate exclusively using AI, products of which are of unclear copyright status.
Modern IP law inhibits productivity more than it helps, imo. LLMs have fundamentally changed our line of work, and they have done so by completely ignoring the existing legal framework for IP. We should not defend the current implementation just because some people might suffer reduced earning potential.
I’ve written software all my life, copyright has never been relevant to my earnings at all, trade secrets have been to some extent. Frankly copyright was meant to enable more sharing and benefiting the public domain, instead it’s become a cancer…
People made a living juste fine before copyright stop spreading myths
Most hackers here are not relying on copyright to make their living. Either you work on open source but make your living off services on top of the code, or your code is a trade secret protected via contracts.
Not to mention that everyone using coding agents probably aren't even protected by copyright in the first place, at least in the US, since the courts are taking a pretty hard line on human authorship being required...