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

511–520 of 545 posts

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

#511

Post by CRConrad »

mdpye wrote: post #327
IncRnd wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

Oh Idunno, it "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is"...

> 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

...or rather, on the meaning of "converting". I've always theought of that as "changing", i.e. "it used to be one thing, and now it's something else". But copying IP only adds a use of it, it doesn't fundamentally change it in this sense: it is still available for the original proprietor's use. Is that really "converted"?

At least for the ordinary-English uuage of the word, I think it could be argued that it isn't. But then maybe this isn't just English; maybe the word "converting" also has some term-of-trade definition in that dictionary?

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

#512

Post by tluyben2 »

johnday wrote: post #300
jefftk wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have a lot of open source code that I love to share for things like education or private stuff, but if you want to use it for something real, you need to hire me. If you can suck all the code without even I noticing it, that's not fair Co-pilot aside, that's already how it works today. If you make something open source, I can use your code to power my business, and I'm under no obligation to hire you. It's great wh…

It sounds like the person you're responding to already releases their code under a non-commercial license. The problem with Copilot is that it may allow commercial enterprises to avoid such a license by copying the code verbatim from their repositories, possibly without any party involved knowing that it's happened.

But this is only for snippets right? Which I think is the issue: it has never been tested in court. Basically if you put:

     /* web user management */
And copilot comes up with complete user management lifted out of another repo with all pages, db structures and logic but the copyrights stripped then yes. But, as I understand it, that is not what it does. You will need to slowly tell it every tiny part of how user mamagement is to be implemented and for those snippets it copies code. But when you are done, there might be snippets from 100s of different repositories potentially. I think it is hard to show that breaks copyright as many people already come up with roughly the same stuff 1000s times/day all over the world.

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

#513

Post by CRConrad »

native_samples wrote: post #507
mdpye wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

The US definition seems more robust, as otherwise, I could somehow steal something you built (e.g. a farm) and then generously allow you to continue using it, perhaps for a fee. You would therefore not be deprived of it but I would still be the new owner or user. It seems unlikely this distinction would ever matter in a real court though.

Nah, not the same thing: You'd be deprived of the free use of the farm that you had before. With IP, you wouldn't.

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

#514

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

hedora wrote: post #367
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about attribution. The only reason I use MIT, is so some knucklehead doesn't try to sue me, because they cheezed up my code.

I wonder if the license is still binding in the other direction though. Moving forward, by publishing the code on the Internet you know you’re training an AI to copy it. What if you published a subtle proof of concept that takes out nuclear plants, and then some knucklehead deployed it because Copilot suggested it?

This is an interesting thought.

I could see certain...agencies doing something like seeding the tech scene with insecure hashing algorithms, and them becoming a part of the Canon, due to consumption by uncritical ML training algorithms.

We get back to the old "data quality" conundrum. We need to have a way to rate the quality of our data, which then opens the door to corruption and gaming.

The circle of life, I guess...

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

#515

Post by pbhjpbhj »

dheera wrote: post #362
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course not. Reading some copyrighted code can have you entirely excluded from some jobs That's not a law. That's a cautionary decision made by those companies or projects to make it more difficult for competitors to argue that code was copied. Those projects could hire people familiar with competitor code and assign them to competing projects if they wanted. The contributors could, in theory, write new code with…

> then you'd want to forbid contributors from using CoPilot I mean, if you used CoPilot on one computer, stared at it intensely for 1 hour, closed that computer, and then typed out code in the other computer that you were contributing from, you technically didn't use it for the contribution, you just used CoPilot for your education only. Intellectual property is itself a flawed concept in many ways. It's like asking…

If you read the video with a view to reproducing it then you created a derivative work, ie copyright infringement.

If you just used it for inspiration, that's fine; if the way it was coded is a result of technical constraints, that's fine too; if the code is generic it's not distinctive enough to acquire copyright in the first place.

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

#516

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

saurik wrote: post #448
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about attribution. The only reason I use MIT, is so some knucklehead doesn't try to sue me, because they cheezed up my code.

Then you should use BSD0, not MIT. The assumption should be that people chose the license they chose for a reason, and their intent should be honored. https://opensource.org/licenses/0BSD

Probably. I don't mind it, if they give me credit (I do, on my work), but it's not imperative.

Unlike other licenses, I don't think I'll have a bunch of self-appointed juntas going after people that use my code without attribution.

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

#517

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rvnx wrote: post #401
dheera wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then you'd want to forbid contributors from using CoPilot I mean, if you used CoPilot on one computer, stared at it intensely for 1 hour, closed that computer, and then typed out code in the other computer that you were contributing from, you technically didn't use it for the contribution, you just used CoPilot for your education only. Intellectual property is itself a flawed concept in many ways. It's like asking…

Intellectual property itself is silly. How can a thought be the property of someone ? Secrecy is the solution if you don't want others to learn from you (like Coca-Cola does).

It's not a natural right, we supposedly do it too stimulate innovation by offering a reward and in order to get things into the public domain -- obviously Disney (and the politicians that kowtowed to them) ruined that for the World.

Patents should have reduced with product lifecycles, copyright should be a similar period; maybe 10-14 years.

My personal opinion.

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

#518

Post by thatcat »

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.

Actually it's not theft in the US, it's intellectual property rights infringement. The way you're defining it memes are theft. There is also a thing called fair use when you don't use a significant portion of a copyrighted work, which is why memes and using small bits of code aren't infringement when you use them in different context.

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

#519

Post by dahart »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #462
dahart wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So @chrisseaton was correct No that’s not true. I did not edit my posts after reading their reply, and the false accusation was that I changed my comment after it was replied to. I didn’t challenge whether the question was in good faith, but I’ll just note that the relevant discussion of copyright got dropped in favor of an ad-hominem attack. My question of which “it” was being referred to is a legitimate question…

> I did not edit my posts after reading their reply, and the false accusation was that I changed my comment after it was replied to. Replies exist before you read them.

Thanks? Edits exist before you finish replying too, right? Maybe point that out to @chrisseaton, whose incorrect assumption was that I edited in response to what he wrote.

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

#520

Post by Filligree »

native_samples wrote: post #507
mdpye wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...)

The US definition seems more robust, as otherwise, I could somehow steal something you built (e.g. a farm) and then generously allow you to continue using it, perhaps for a fee. You would therefore not be deprived of it but I would still be the new owner or user. It seems unlikely this distinction would ever matter in a real court though.

The US version sounds like it wouldn’t be theft if you immediately throw it away.

That can’t be right.

Post reply on HN