- Copyrights are not patents, and providence matters. If you and I independently both come up with the same text, we both have a right to use it. If it could be proven in a court of law that by a 10^(-100,000) chance, we both wrote an identical novel, we'd both have copyrights to our work.
- Conversely, if you took my creative work, the fact that someone else came up with the same creative work isn't a defence
- If the code you borrowed went MIT->GPL->your code, things get very ambiguous. The copyright holder is the original author if the GPL code made no changes.
- For just one function, you might be able to get away with a fair use defence. There's a four-prong test, which is pretty fuzzy. You'd do well on some prongs ("the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole") and poorly on others ("the purpose and character of the use").
- For something like copilot inserting it, you do much better, since intent matters too.
- Yes, functions are copyrighted.
- Copyrights are not patents, and providence matters. If you and I independently both come up with the same text, we both have a right to use it. If it could be proven in a court of law that by a 10^(-100,000) chance, we both wrote an identical novel, we'd both have copyrights to our work.
- Conversely, if you took my creative work, the fact that someone else came up with the same creative work isn't a defence
- If the code you borrowed went MIT->GPL->your code, things get very ambiguous. The copyright holder is the original author if the GPL code made no changes.
- For just one function, you might be able to get away with a fair use defence. There's a four-prong test, which is pretty fuzzy. You'd do well on some prongs ("the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole") and poorly on others ("the purpose and character of the use").
- For something like copilot inserting it, you do much better, since intent matters too.