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

thelig.ht

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

#321

Post by temac »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #236
pubby wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't an AI reading copyrighted code, the issue is an AI regurgitating the lines of copyrighted code verbatim. To be clear, humans aren't allowed to do this either. And sure, nobody cares about your stupid binary tree, but do they care about GNU and the Linux kernel? Imagine someone trained an AI to specifically output Linux code, and used it to reproduce a working OS. Is that fair?

> the issue is an AI regurgitating the lines of copyrighted code verbatim. To be clear, humans aren't allowed to do this either. That's a little broad. There's a wide range of licenses for software that explicitly allow precisely this.

Tons of licences require at least attribution.

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

#322

Post by ricardobeat »

kuon wrote: post #127

I've given thousands of hours to open source projects, I really think open source is a pillar of modern society. So you would think I am all for something like copilot, but no. At first I thought this was a great feature, because easier access to code, but after some reflection, I am also very skeptical. I am able to make my code open source, because I can make a living out of it, and I have a lot of open source code…

> I am surprised you are able to DMCA a twitch stream because someone whistle india jones theme but in this case it is considered fair use

Why is it surprising? Indiana Jones is private IP. The code was published with an OSS license explicitly authorizing its use.

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

#323

Post by cush »

jcelerier wrote: post #61
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

> As a human, I am allowed to read copyrighted code and learn from it. Of course not. Reading some copyrighted code can have you entirely excluded from some jobs - you can't become a wine contributor if it can be shown you ever read Windows source code and most likely conversely. Likewise, you can't ever write GPL VST 2 audio plug-ins if you ever had access to the official Steinberg VST2 SDK. Etc etc... Did people fo…

I've you've ever read a book or interacted with any product, you've learned from copyrighted material.

You've extrapolated "some organizations don't allow you to contribute if you've learned from the code of their direct competitor" to "You're not allowed to learn from copyrighted code", which is absurd.

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

#324

Post by dahart »

chrisseaton wrote: post #312
dahart wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They never say it was because of a law - you imagined that out of nothing. @jcelerier flatly contradicted the statement that copyright doesn’t prevent you from reading something. You’re right that @jceleier didn’t say their example was law, that’s because the example is a straw man in the context of what @lacker wrote.

Are you editing your comments out after they're been replied to? That's really poor form.

I did not edit my comments above after reading your replies, why do you ask? What do you think I changed that affected how the thread reads?

And, who says improving or clarifying a comment is poor form? What is the edit button for, and why is it available once replies have been posted?

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

#325

Post by dang »

blibble wrote: post #89
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

there's a nice example here of it reproducing carmack's famous inverse square root function from Quake 3 (sans GPL, of course) https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 this is clearly copyright infringement, and if it isn't: it should be

Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 - July 2021 (625 comments)

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #313
nilshauk wrote: post #249

I used to admire GitHub for being a fully bootstrapped company and free to pursue a path in the world they believed in as a company. Since the Microsoft acquisition it’s becoming painfully obvious how unhealthily centralized the dev world has become, and they seem to strive to become ever more entrenched in the name of maximizing shareholder value. I only have a small amount of open source projects on GH but I intend…

What does this have to do with Copilot?

[deleted]

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

#327

Post by mdpye »

IncRnd wrote: post #273
mdpye wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually true, in the UK at least the legal definition of theft includes the deprivation of the owner of the property in question. The copyright lobby hedge the term as "copyright theft" (i.e. not actual theft) in order to shift the societal understanding. Whish appears to have worked. This is not a value judgement on copyright infringement. Just that technically it doesn't meet the legal definition of theft. c…

Yes! Thank you. I should have clarified that I meant within the US.

Oh, then today I learned! I didn't realise they were different. Just looked it up in a "plain English dictionary of law" and the distinction seems subtle but important. Rather than "with the intention of depriving the owner", the US one says "with the intention of converting it to their use", which seems broad enough to cover exploiting a copy, rather than the original (or only, in the physical realm...)

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

#328

Post by noobermin »

rcxdude wrote: post #282
throwaway_egbs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just when I thought tweetstorms couldn't get any worse, here's one where every tweet is a quote-tweet of the author. I don't even understand how I'm supposed to read this. > Copyright has concluded that reading by robots doesn’t count. Infringement is for humans only; when computers do it, it’s fair use. Surely there's a limit to this. If I use a machine to produce something that just happens to exactly match a copyr…

That quote is basically entirely nonsensical. 'copyright' hasn't decided anything (nor has any legislative body nor the courts). All that's happened is that OpenAI has put forward an argument that using large quantities of media scraped from the internet as training data is fair use. This argument for the most part does not rely on the human vs machine distinction (in fact it leans on the idea that the process is not…

This argument is very convenient for OpenAI.

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

#329

Post by wyldfire »

What a cool court case this would make. Is copilot's model sufficiently abstracted from the code it has read? Judges and juries learning about how the GitHub team avoided overfitting? Are humans who have read open source code producing derivative works?

Won't be long until we see an infringement case. /me grabs popcorn

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

#330

Post by temac »

_ofdw wrote: post #155

Feels like everyone is missing the point: Copilot will ultimately serve to weaken the arguments in support of software patents and copyright. That can only be a good thing for society (though perhaps not for rent seekers).

Not really unless you force the source code of proprietary software to be published. If you don't, copyleft has a role to play.
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