Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

A spicy Hacker News thread asked a deceptively simple question: if nobody copied the actual code, are you still in legal trouble for making an app that looks and behaves almost the same? And wow, the comments did not keep it calm. The original post pointed to the so-called Corgi drama and broader fears that cheap, fast app-making tools are unleashing a wave of lookalike products, with designers and developers now getting the same "hey, that’s my work" panic that artists have been screaming about for years.

But the real show was the comment section civil war. One camp said: of course code isn’t the only thing that matters. If you copy the whole look and flow of a product, some users argued, that can still cross the line. Another camp rolled its eyes hard, saying modern apps all use the same common patterns anyway — the digital equivalent of everyone having a red "do not press" button in the scary corner. That led to the bigger existential freakout: have software people become full-on copyright hawks? One commenter lamented, "The Corporations Won," while others blasted software copyright itself as one of humanity’s worst ideas.

And then came the practical doomposting: even if you’re right, enforcement is a money pit. One commenter basically summed up the mood as: copyright is only as real as your legal budget. Another dropped a very un-glamorous reality check — if you want cash damages in the US, registration matters. So the vibe was equal parts legal anxiety, anti-corporate rage, and exhausted shrugs from people realizing that in tech, the hottest new feature may be lawyer mode.