Stack Overflow has verbatim copied GPL code in some of its questions and answers. As presented by SO, that code is not under the GPL license (this also applies to other licenses - the BSD advertising clause and the original json will cause similar problems).

Arguably, the use of the code in the Stack Overflow question and answer is fair use.

The problem occurs not when someone reads the Q&A with the improperly licensed code but rather when they then copy that code verbatim into their own non GPL product and distribute that without adherence to the GPL.

It's the last step - some human distributing the improperly licensed software that is the violation of the GPL.

This same chain of what is allowed and what is not is equally applicable to LLMs. Providing examples from GPL licensed material to answer a question isn't a license violation. The human copying that code (from any source) and pasting it into their own software is a license violation.

---

Some while back I had a discussion with a Swiss developer about the indefinite article used before "hobbit" in a text game. They used "an hobbit" and in the discussion of fixing it, I quoted the first line of The Hobbit. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That cleared it up and my use of it in that (and this) discussion is fair use.

If someone listening to that conversation (or reading this one) thought that the bit that I quoted would be great on a T-shirt and them printed that up and distributed it - that would be a copyright violation.

Google's use of thumbnails for images was found to be fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com...

    The Ninth Circuit did, however, overturn the district court's decision that Google's thumbnail images were unauthorized and infringing copies of Perfect 10's original images. Google claimed that these images constituted fair use, and the circuit court agreed. This was because they were "highly transformative."

If I was to then take those thumbnails from a google image search and distribute that as an icon library, I would then be guilty of copyright infringement.

I believe that Stack Overflow, Google Images, and LLM models and their output constitutes an example of transformative fair use. What someone does with that output is where copyright infringement happens.

My claim isn't that AI vendors are blameless but rather that in the issue of copyright and license adherence it is the human in the process that is the one who has agency and needs to follow copyright (and for AI agents that were unleashed without oversight, it is the human that spun them up or unleashed them).