this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2026
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Lots of anti-AI sentiments in here and I get that, but I'd like to discuss the implications here, cause this is actually somewhat revolutionary.
If I can just take any software and reverse-engineer it or recreate it to a precision that is practically indistinguishable from the original (not saying it really is in this case, but for the sake of discussion) and I then have copyright over that copy, doesn't that turn things on it's head? Doesn't that make software essentially worthless? Any software you sell someone, they can recreate and distribute for free, legally (presumably). I suppose we've yet to see if this will really turn out to be legal, but it's hard to argue how this is illegal, I would say - how is this different than a human closely studying Microsoft Word and "simply" writing their own version of the same program?
I'm not sure if this is good or bad honestly, but it sure is interesting. Anyone else have thoughts around how this affects the worth of software?
Yes. It makes software worthless. People doubt these things but it's done and set in stone already.