Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

thelig.ht

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 545 posts

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#131

Post by caconym_ »

henvic wrote: post #21

I really hope this weakens copyright. We can live without it.

Copyright doesn't just benefit huge corporations. For instance, without it, independent artists who rely on copying for distribution (authors, musicians, etc.) would find it much more difficult to make money off their work, mostly (IMO) because large corporate entities with large investments made in publication and distribution systems could simply take content and sell it themselves with zero obligation to the original creator(s). This process could be highly automated at scale, giving creators essentially zero chance to compete in the market.

It's a bad idea.

The thing about copyright law that needs reform is its bias toward the benefit of large corporate entities. Platforms' implementations of DMCA compliance allow "rights holders" to spam perjurious takedown requests en masse, garnishing the earnings of creators and legitimate rights holders in what can only be called (in addition to perjury) outright fraud. Companies like Github scrape the web for content, most of it copyrighted, and use it to construct new products for their own profit. Rare recitation events aside, I think their use case is legitimate fair use in the eyes of the law (and if you look at my comment history you'll see me vehemently arguing to that effect), but should it be? We don't seem to be asking that question, which is really disappointing--we're either complaining loudly and without substance, or blithely accepting the might-makes-right ethic as the central pillar of our IP law.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#132

Post by wtallis »

crazygringo wrote: post #111
jcelerier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your example is the very specific scenario where you're attempting to replicate an entire program, API, etc., to identical specifications. That's obviously not fair use. You're not dealing with little bits and pieces, you're dealing with an entire finished product. No - google's 9 lines of sorting algorithm (iirc) copied from Oracle's implementation were not considered fair use in the Google / Oracle debacle. Likew…

Sorry, but you're not recalling correctly. :) The Supreme Court decided Google v. Oracle was fair use. It was 3 months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... That's the highest form of precedent, the question has now been effectively settled (unless Congress ever changes the law). Edit: added a dummy hash to end of URL so HN parses it correctly (thanks @thewakalix below)

That Supreme Court ruling doesn't appear to address the claims of actual copied code (the rangeCheck function), only the more nebulous API copyright claims.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#134

Post by sillysaurusx »

hojjat12000 wrote: post #50
rvense wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised. I imagine all images on the internet are used to train image classifiers as well. It's a shitty future, but it's the one we have.

Researchers in our lab created a huge dataset of facial expressions from images on the web, annotated it and published the URLs to the images and the annotations for research but made sure to search only for images with proper licenses. I don't think that you are allowed to just go download any old image and train on it. I understand the many many people do it, but it's not legal (as far as I know, please correct me…

> I don't think that you are allowed to just go download any old image and train on it.

My understanding as a two-year student of ML is that you are allowed in the US to go download any old image, train on it, and then release the model as long as the outputs are "sufficiently transformative."

That last phrase is the key part, and has never been tested in court. It's entirely possible that either I'm mistaken here, or that the courts will soon say that I am mistaken here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FA_gt9w28o&ab_channel=guava...

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#135

Post by wmichelin »

monokh wrote: post #133

Slightly off topic: Is the git frontend [1] open source? If not, are there some very light self hosting ones like it? [1] https://thelig.ht/code/

I was also wondering this. I'm unfamiliar with linux kernel development but this reminds me of that.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#136

Post by jcelerier »

crazygringo wrote: post #111
jcelerier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your example is the very specific scenario where you're attempting to replicate an entire program, API, etc., to identical specifications. That's obviously not fair use. You're not dealing with little bits and pieces, you're dealing with an entire finished product. No - google's 9 lines of sorting algorithm (iirc) copied from Oracle's implementation were not considered fair use in the Google / Oracle debacle. Likew…

Sorry, but you're not recalling correctly. :) The Supreme Court decided Google v. Oracle was fair use. It was 3 months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... That's the highest form of precedent, the question has now been effectively settled (unless Congress ever changes the law). Edit: added a dummy hash to end of URL so HN parses it correctly (thanks @thewakalix below)

nope, those lines were specifically excluded from the prior judgment - and SC did not cast another judgment on them:

> With respect to Oracle’s claim for relief for copyright infringement, judgment is entered in favor of Google and against Oracle except as follows: the rangeCheck code in TimSort.java and ComparableTimSort.java, and the eight decompiled files (seven “Impl.java” files and one“ACL” file), as to which judgment for Oracle and against Google is entered in the amount of zero dollars (as per the parties’ stipulation).

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#137

Post by [deleted] »

wtallis wrote: post #132
crazygringo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you're not recalling correctly. :) The Supreme Court decided Google v. Oracle was fair use. It was 3 months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... That's the highest form of precedent, the question has now been effectively settled (unless Congress ever changes the law). Edit: added a dummy hash to end of URL so HN parses it correctly (thanks @thewakalix below)

That Supreme Court ruling doesn't appear to address the claims of actual copied code (the rangeCheck function), only the more nebulous API copyright claims.

[deleted]

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#138

Post by dathinab »

doytch wrote: post #106
crazygringo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what GP is saying. In general, you're absolutely allowed to learn programming techniques from anywhere . You can contribute software almost anywhere even if you've read Windows source code. Re-using everything you've learned, in your own creative creation, is part of fair use. Your example is the very specific scenario where you're attempting to replicate an entire program, API, etc., to identical specific…

This is true, but there's also a murkier middle option. I used to work for a company that made a lot of money from its software patents but I was in a division that worked heavily in open-source code. We were forbidden to contribute to the high-value patented code because it was impossible to know whether we were "tainted" by knowledge of GPL code.

No you are not, guaranteed (I think, not a lawyer).

At least from a copyright point of few.

TL;DR: Having right, and having a easy defense in a law suite are not the same.

BUT separating it makes defending any law-suite against them because of copyright and patent law much easier. It also prevents any employee from "copying GPL(or similar) code verbatim from memory"(1) (or even worse the clipboard) sure the employee "should" not do it but by separating them you can be more sure they don't, and in turn makes it easier to defent in curt especially wrt. "independent creation".

There is also patent law shenanigans.

(1): Which is what GitHub Copilot is sometimes doing IMHO.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#139

Post by saurik »

moyix wrote: post #124
saurik wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This model doesn't learn and abstract: it just pattern matches and replicates; that's why it was shown exactly replicating regions of code--long enough to not be "de minimis" and recognizable enough to include the comments--that happen to be popular... which would be fine, as long as the license on said code were also being replicated. It just isn't reasonable to try to pretend Copilot--or GPT-3 in general--is some k…

Have you used Copilot? I have not, but I have trained a GPT2 model on open source projects ( https://doesnotexist.codes/ ). It does not just pattern match and replicate. It can be cajoled into reproducing some memorized snippets, but this is not the norm; in my experience the vast majority of what it generates is novel. The exceptions are extremely popular snippets that are repeated many many times in the training da…

So, to verify, your claim is that GPT-3, when trained on a corpus of human text, isn't merely managing to string together a bunch of high-probability sequences of symbol constructs--which is how every article I have ever read on how it functions describes the technology--but is instead managing to build a model of the human world and the mechanism of narration required to describe it, with which it uses to write new prose... a claim you must make in order to then argue that GPT-3 works like a human engineer learning a model of computers, libraries, and engineering principals from which it can then write code, instead of merely using pattern recognition as I stated? As someone who spent years studying graduate linguistics and cognitive science (though admittedly 15-20 years ago, so I certainly haven't studied this model: I have only read about it occasionally in passing) I frankly think you are just trying to conflate levels of understanding, in order to make GPT-3 sound more magical than it is :/.
Post reply on HN