#paraphrases — Public Fediverse posts

32. A recent court ruling in #Japan also challenges my thesis in this thread.
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/a-man-was-given-a-suspended-jail-sentence-in-japan-for-posting-godzilla-spoilers-online/

"The court ruled that detailed plot summaries can replace watching a movie, thereby incurring cost to copyright holders."

Let's concede that some spoilers might cause some market harm. But if they are paraphrases that don't track the original expression too closely, then they are protected by the idea/expression dichotomy. So as with the cases mentioned in posts 30 and 31 above, this case might only show that some paraphrases fail the "substantial similarity" test, perhaps more paraphrases than we used to think. But it can't go further, and overturn the idea/expression dichotomy, without deep disruption to worldwide copyright law.

It might matter that the idea/expression dichotomy is international, through treaty, while the degree and kind of similarity needed before a paraphrase crosses the line varies significantly from country to country.

#Copyright #Paraphrases #Summaries

31. Another US federal judge has ruled (Oct 27) that AI-generated summaries might infringe the copyrights on the original works.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.606655/gov.uscourts.nysd.606655.716.0.pdf

Again, the AI company (in this case #OpenAI) has merely lost a motion to dismiss. The court has not yet ruled on the merits.

Again, I acknowledge that if this result survives, it would undermine my thesis in this thread.

My take is that it won't survive because it disregards the idea/expression distinction fundamental to copyright law. Or if it does survive, it will overturn the fundamentals of copyright law.

Here are some comments that support my take.

From @mmasnick:
https://matthewsag.com/copyright-winter-is-coming-to-wikipedia/

From @mmasnick:
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/11/18/book-reports-potentially-copyright-infringing-thanks-to-court-attacks-on-llms/

From @drewwilsonfl:
https://www.freezenet.ca/judge-rules-summaries-are-copyright-infringement-because-common-sense-is-over-rated/

#Copyright #Paraphrases #Summaries

30. A US federal district court just ruled that paraphrases or summaries by the #AI tool #Cohere might infringe publisher copyrights on the original full texts.
https://copyrightlately.com/court-rules-ai-news-summaries-may-infringe-copyright/

Here's the Nov 17 decision by the federal district court for the Southern District of NY.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69636122/59/advance-local-media-llc-v-cohere-inc/

PS: This could undermine my thesis in this thread. But it doesn't undermine it yet. As I pointed out in the second post, "If a paraphrase doesn't use the original expression or track it too closely, then it doesn't infringe. If it does track the original too closely, it might count as a derivative work." The question in this case is whether some Cohere summaries were too close to the originals. Cohere lost a motion to dismiss, and now the court will investigate the "substantial similarity" claims on the merits. If the publishers win, we'll learn more about where the line is, not that there is no line.

#AI #Copyright #Paraphrases #Summaries

If during the first act a mutable datum is constructed,
by the last act it should be duly modified.
(Following Chekhov out of context.)

Seriously: use immutable data as much as you can.

#ComputerProgramming
#Paraphrases
#QuasiFunctionalStyle
#UnsolicitedAdvice

What's in a name? that which we call as a method
By any other name would work as correctly.
(After WS.)

We say "comma-separated values", but we do
>>> ','.join(("foo", "bar", "baz"))
'foo,bar,baz'

Wherefore art thou Joiner—or Separator...

#ComputerProgramming
#Names
#Naming
#ObjectCentric
#ObjectOriented
#Paraphrases
#ProgrammingLanguages
#RJ
#Rose