PSA about copying code?

[nickjr]

Just like how people don't treat art the same way as words, so do they also not treat code the same. We all know that plagiarism with words is a big no-no, but art and code seem to be "okay" to redistribute to a lot of people. It's understandable that people think this way, but it doesn't make it any less wrong.

Code copyright is a very real thing in the real world, both for programming languages (of course) and markup languages (pretty sure BBCode falls under this heading, along with HTML/CSS of course). It's obviously harder to define the edges of the gray area when it comes to code copyright, but I think we can at least send out the general message that code should be treated the same way as words and art.

"But nickjr, it's not like it matters on a site like CS!"
You can apply that same argument to words and art on CS lol may as well toss "code is not exempt from the moral laws of copying" into the bucket of life lessons

I'm not thinking of anything super detailed; just some brief overview or summary or something that says that code isn't exempt from the moral laws of copying just because it's code (and a little bit saying that you can't really copyright simple applications of BBCode or else we'll all get reported for using the bold tag), because sometimes there are instances where someone blatantly copies someone's entire complex code and I think this may help to reduce the number of those instances

I poked my head in a few forums but didn't see a code PSA already while I did see several topics about art theft; please ship me a new pair of glasses if I missed such a PSA lol

Thoughts?

[ede]

I know that the roleplay forum has a thing about this:

Special formatting for reference sheets and roleplay topics, common names and images
We sometimes get reports complaining that someone has stolen their layout or "form". Unfortunately you cannot copyright your particular layout of bb code and font colors. We encourage everyone to design their own roleplay layouts, but there's nothing we can do if someone else's font color, alignment, size and placement of images looks suspiciously similar to the formatting of your own posts. It's quite possible that the same design may have been thought of independently and it's not worth getting upset about it.

viewtopic.php?f=65&t=1947371
I guess this goes for all code on CS?

[nickjr]

Haha oops, I missed that. Thanks for posting it ^^ Guess that's it then