Andrei's Google Talk

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:21:38 -0400, klickverbot <see at klickverbot.at> wrote:

> On 9/21/10 3:55 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> People seem to think that an accusation is proof. If someone says you
>> stole their code, because you read it, it's not always true. It's just
>> much easier to prove you didn't steal it if you didn't read it.
>
> And how exactly are you going to prove that you didn't read it?

Huh?  Look, this isn't an issue of being deceitful, it's an issue of the  
defensible strength of "yes, I read it, but I didn't copy anything" vs.  
"no I didn't read it, so I couldn't have copied anything."  If you don't  
believe the person, then it's up to you to prove they're lying.

With copyright law, it's perfectly lawful to come up with the same thing  
independently, and there is no violation.  It's even possible to read  
code, understand the ideas, and write your own code to implement the ideas  
(commonly done via a clean-room implementation).  Ideas are not  
copyrightable, the media is what's copyrighted.

-Steve