On 24/07/26 at 11:03 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: > On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 10:45:15AM +0900, Simon Richter wrote: > > if the decision ends up being that it cannot [be copyrighted], we need > > to delete the corresponding copyright attributions (as far as they > > don't overlap with valid ones). > > This is not true, on at least a couple of levels. > > First, even if courts will confirm that LLM output cannot be copyrighted > (in the US…), that doesn't mean that a contribution labeled with > "Assisted-by:" is not copyrightable. For example, the submitted might > have reworked the contribution after generation, enough for the > contribution to be copyrightable. > > Second, "not copyrightable" doesn't equate "not DSFG free". For > instance, public domain data is not copyrightable, but we can (and do) > have and distribute them in Debian. (And: no, you don't need sui generis > database rights to be able to do this.)
Also, my understanding¹ is that, (1) If an entity A claims that a contribution from an entity B is not copyrightable, the burden of proof is on A, not on B. In most cases it would probably be difficult to prove that B did not rework the contribution and thus made it copyrightable. (2) If copyrighted material is combined with non-copyrightable material, the the specific non-copyrightable material does not pollute the rest of the work. And if it's modified later on, then (1) applies. So I find this discussion on copyrightability a bit rhetorical, and I'm not sure it has practical consequences. Lucas ¹ but please prove me wrong, IANAL
