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Comment by jonhohle | Hacker News Reader

I went down a rabbit hole of copyright and one of the things that clicked along the way is that a vibe coded app is not copyrightable. If someone says their app is completely Built with AI, they’re also saying: here is a public domain program that you can repackage as you wish.

It’s not quite that simple - there may be minor things here and there that are copyrightable like the name. But anything purely prompt generated is fair game to be copied and reused.

It will be interesting to see this tested, but companies telling people AI is writing their software may be a liability in the not-to distant future.

(This is based on USCO opinions and congressional testimony: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/ . EULAs are different things, and may restrict rights otherwise granted by the law, etc., etc.)

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> But anything purely prompt generated is fair game to be copied and reused.

This isn't true.

While the "copyrightability" report[1] mostly deals with images (it was written before coding agents) it's quite clear how code generated by an AI driven by humans can be copyrightable:

> The Office finds that the compilation of these images and text throughout the Work contains sufficient creativity under Feist to be protected by copyright. Specifically, the Office finds the Work is the product of creative choices with respect to the selection of the images that make up the Work and the placement and arrangement of the images and text on each of the Work’s pages.

and

> Unlike prompts alone, these tools can enable the user to control the selection and placement of individual creative elements. Whether such modifications rise to the minimum standard of originality required under Feist will depend on a case-by-case determination. In those cases where they do, the output should be copyrightable

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

It depends how that selection is done. If an AI prompts a human with 10 layouts it generates and the human picks ones, it is not copyrightable.

If the human takes some number of individually generated components and composes them in some creative way, the composition is copyrightable but the individual components are not.

One existing precedent was the layout of a graphic novel consisting AI generated panels. The layout was done by a human and protected by copyright. The content of each individual panel was generated by AI and was not. https://www.copyright.gov/docs/zarya-of-the-dawn.pdf

Code is no different. If AI generates a library and GUI, neither are copyrightable. If a dev glues them together, the expressiveness of that work may be, but it also might be the logical application of attaching interfaces and not creative enough to meet the threshold.

The 2024 opinion reinforces that determination.

a professional software developer can simultaneously become completely dependent on a remote account each hour of each day, and lose the ability to copyright the work that the professional software developer makes, or attach a LICENSE.

So, what's not to like?

Welcome to PCB design only imagine spending an order of magnitude more on tooling.

This is actually my fear for SWEs, there is SO MUCH PRECEDENT for making the entire career path completely dependent on a single company selling a subscription at absolutely deranged prices.

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