this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Programming

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[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Code has never been able to be copyrighted. You cant copyright a for loop. I cant create a car class that has properties like make, model, year and copywrite it. Thats never been a thing. Thats why projects are copyrighted. An entire piece of work.

Every single complete sentence in this quote is factually wrong, under both USA copyright law and international copyright law.

Copyright accrues the moment that some work is rendered into a fixed format, such as a sheet of paper but also includes a computer text file. Writing a "for" loop as a homework assignment does create copyright. Ten students writing their homework all create their own copyright, even if the result is coincidentally identical. This isn't even a point of serious doubt in the law: copyright is very much an exercise of provenance, not of bitwise comparisons.

From when a work is created, every transformation, edit, or addition must all occur within the parameters of some sort of license from the copyright owner, or else an infringement has occurred.

Two people may stand at the same position at the foot of Mt Whitney in California and set up their own camera, one after another, on the same tripod to take the same frame of the scenery. And under copyright law, each owns the copyright to their own photo. One may decide to sell their photo and copyright to an East Coast newspaper, while the other has theirs committed to canvas. The newspaper may not assert a copyright claim against the canvas owner, and the canvas owner cannot assert a claim against the newspaper.