Hacker News: kopecs

New comment by kopecs in "AWS outage shows internet users 'at mercy' of too few providers, experts say"

kopecs — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 20:17:32 +0000

Do you not think it a bit too hyperbolic to throw scare quotes around experts and imply the only people who can have opinions on systemic risk are software engineers? I don't think it is unreasonable for people who haven't run or worked for a hosting service to have opinions on the policy aspect or economic impact of hyperscalers.

New comment by kopecs in "Claude Code Unleashed"

kopecs — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:30:36 +0000

Assuming you're referring to Thaler v. Perlmutter, Thaler claimed to the copyright office that the image at issue was "autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine". So the question of "if you claim the LLM did it itself" is settled (shocker, cf. Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418), but that definitely did not settle "_I_ used the LLM to do it".

New comment by kopecs in "NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester"

kopecs — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 15:16:37 +0000

I think the suggestion is that the government use of that public data could be such as to create a chilling effect. That is, the upload and interaction of the user with the private company is almost irrelevant: it is just part of the antecedent to the government's conduct.

If you believe the government would only use that data for just purposes then you probably wouldn't then believe that there is a 1A issue. But if you think the government would use it to identify persons at a protest and then take adverse actions against them on the basis of their presence alone (which to be clear, seems distinguished from the immediate instance) you would probably think there is a 1A issue.

New comment by kopecs in "Judge denies creating “mass surveillance program” harming all ChatGPT users"

kopecs — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 22:43:37 +0000

AIUI Because if you have a zero data retention agreement you are necessarily not in the class of records at issue (since enterprise customers records are not affected, again AIUI per platinffs' original motion which might be because they don't think they're relevant for market harm or something).

So I think that this is more so an artefact of the parameters than an outcome of some mechanism of law.

New comment by kopecs in "Judge denies creating “mass surveillance program” harming all ChatGPT users"

kopecs — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 22:28:49 +0000

I don't think it is accurate to say that the data becomes the government's or they have to act as an informant (I think that implies a bit more of an active requirement than responding to a subpoena), but I agree with the gist.

New comment by kopecs in "Judge denies creating “mass surveillance program” harming all ChatGPT users"

kopecs — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 22:21:25 +0000

Do you think the 4th amendment enjoins courts from requiring the preservation of records as part of discovery? The court is just requiring OpenAI to maintain records it already maintains and segregate them. Even if one thinks that _is_ a government seizure, which it isn't---See Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465 (1921); cf. Walter v. United States, 447 U.S. 649, 656 (1980) (discussing the "state agency" requirement)---no search or seizure has even occurred. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy in the records you're sending to OpenAI (you know OpenAI has them!!; See, e.g., Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979)) and you don't have any possessory interest in the records. See, e.g., United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109 (1984).

New comment by kopecs in "The time bomb in the tax code that's fueling mass tech layoffs"

kopecs — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:34:37 +0000

Well, presumably the claim would be that a factor in their not having taxable income was the fact that they didn't have to amortize their development cost.

New comment by kopecs in "My AI skeptic friends are all nuts"

kopecs — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 21:51:51 +0000

> Meanwhile, software developers spot code fragments seemingly lifted from public repositories on Github and lose their shit. What about the licensing? If you’re a lawyer, I defer. But if you’re a software developer playing this card? Cut me a little slack as I ask you to shove this concern up your ass. No profession has demonstrated more contempt for intellectual property.

Seriously? Is this argument in all earnestly "No profession has been more contemptuous therefore we should keep on keeping on"? Should we as an industry not bother to try and improve our ethics? Why don't we all just make munitions for a living and wash our hands of guilt because "the industry was always like this".

Seems a bit ironic against the backdrop of <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tptacek>:

(although perhaps this is tongue-in-cheek given the last year)

New comment by kopecs in "Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House"

kopecs — Wed, 28 May 2025 19:14:11 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_(U.S._trademark_law)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

New comment by kopecs in "Jury Rules Against Palin in Libel Case Against the New York Times"

kopecs — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:23:37 +0000

There already was a verdict (for the Times) but it was thrown out on appeal. This is a re-do.

ETA: I looked up the docket [0] and in fact, this was the second appeal (See ECF 64). There was also an appeal on a prior MTD, hence the extreme delay.

[0]: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6081165/palin-v-the-new...

New comment by kopecs in "Full Text Search of US Court records"

kopecs — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 23:48:01 +0000

Probably https://free.law/

ETA: which is of course mentioned on the thread root. But RECAP users would be paying, in that case.

New comment by kopecs in "OpenAI releasing new open model in coming months, seeks community feedback"

kopecs — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 20:21:33 +0000

I would think it makes some amount of sense if you think they're vegetarian for some moral reason and you think you could court them to become customers.

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:19:45 +0000

Why do you think that? This obviously does not preclude copyright interests from existing in works which were generated using "AI" as a blanket rule; rather, this is about the fact that the applicant persistent in insisting that the author of the work was an "autonomous[] computer algorithm".

Do you think autonomous computer algorithms (to the extent we could suppose they exist, for the sake of argument) should have a statutory right to copyright?

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:14:11 +0000

What comparison do you think the parent comment is making? They just vaguely gesture at corporate personhood and say "what about that?"

My best reading of it is "can 'they' say that corporations can author works?" and excepting works for hire, no, "they" can't.

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:08:10 +0000

Yes, I agree. I don't think I am saying anything inconsistent with that.

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:07:43 +0000

Code is not purely functional. If it is, it is not copyrightable (at least in the US; probably true elsewhere but I am less sure) [0]. I would not expect most prompts to be purely functional.

[0]: https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:20:57 +0000

> What I can guarantee, is that the prompt itself would be copyright-able.

That's non-obvious to me. Even if the prompt is extremely long and precise, if it is somehow purely functional, it seems possible for it to not be (although in practice, I agree that most prompts could be).

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:10:31 +0000

In what way do you think corporate personhood is relevant here?

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 19:00:41 +0000

I don't think it takes that much imagination here. Not sure what good the first step is actually doing you. Might as well just AI-generate your racketeering demand letters without doing that part.

New comment by kopecs in "US appeals court rules AI generated art cannot be copyrighted"

kopecs — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 18:45:05 +0000

As a matter of law? Sure it does. Thaler said the image at issue was "autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine". He's been trying to walk that back for the last couple of years though. See Thaler v. Perlmutter, 1:22-cv01564-BAH (ECF #24), D.D.C. (Aug. 18, 2023).