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Animats • today at 6:59 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

The article is just restating US copyright law for people who don't know it. The title indicates a recent change in policy, and there hasn't been one.

Now, this is US law. Much of the world does have "sweat of the brow" copyright. But the US does not. See "Feist vs. Rural Telephone". There must be human creativity because the US constitution reads "(Congress shall have the power) To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." That limits the power of Congress to change this.

So a lot of things are uncopyrightable in the US. Feist is the big case, and it was about telephone directories. No copyright. Useful objects are not copyrightable, which is why there are third party auto parts. Facts are not copyrightable, nor are databases of facts. Nor are pictures of public domain art. Nor is automotive sheet metal, despite lobbying by automakers.

That's what leads to AI-generated content not being copyrightable. Model weights don't seem to be copyrightable either.


Replies

dpark • today at 7:55 PM

> Useful objects are not copyrightable

It cannot be this clean cut or Google v Oracle would have been trivial to decide.

A telephone directory can be copyright protected, too. The facts within it cannot. Exactly like recipes. A particular presentation of a recipe is absolutely copyright protected. But this doesn’t mean no one can publish the same recipe in their own presentation

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