Protecting software you wrote when copying is nearly free

A developer posted that GitHub has refused to remove cracked copies of his browser-based photo editor for a month. Replies were blunt. Client-side JavaScript was a hard thing to protect. One person said all he really owns is the brand name, customer list and trademark. Others told him to get an IP lawyer, register a trademark, or look at design rights. Some asked how he knows it was copied rather than independently rebuilt, and a few pushed back on the fact that the product is aimed at blocking ads. One commenter joked about the era of "AI clean rooming."

The sharper point is the LLM angle. A commenter described having an LLM write a rigorous end-to-end test suite for a tool and then regenerating the code, which makes copying a product trivial. The pattern: if behavior can be observed, it can be cloned, so code alone is a weak moat.

The PS5 jailbreak thread comes at the same problem from the other side. Commenters see piracy as a service problem, and think telling buyers they don't own their games invites cracking.