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All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

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Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#161

Post by cool_dude85 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #152
agilob wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>copilot is not a human so it can't commit crimes I can setup my drone to detect me and attempt to crash into me. AI would be quite poor, probably would attempt to crash at any human. Would it be my fault it didn't crash into me and someone lost eyes? Can I setup torrent box that automatically downloads and seeds all detected links from public trackers? Would I be responsible for it?

Both of these examples include you creating something and then using it. I don't know how copilot works, but using the second example, if you wrote a script to download and seed trackers, and someone else used it, I don't think you would be held under any liability, especially if you don't profit off of it. Not a lawyer or even particularly well informed edit: I am reminded of the monkey selfie, in which it was ruled…

Did copilot spring from the aether? Or was it built and trained on licensed code by github? Someone did something.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#162

Post by schneidmaster »

_Understated_ wrote: post #92

Ok, my curiosity has been fired here... I have conjured up two scenarios here: Let's say I use copilot to generate a bunch of code for an app, something substantial, and it regurgitates a load of bits and pieces from many sources it got from GitHub, I'd assume there won't be any attribution in it... it will be as if Copilot made the code itself (I know it sort of does but lets not split hairs!). I'm guessing the prev…

There's a decent bit of caselaw indicating that computers reading and using a copyrighted work simply "don't count" in terms of copyright infringement -- only humans can infringe copyright. This article[0] does a pretty good job of summarizing the rationale that the courts have provided. My (non-lawyer) take is that GitHub is pushing this just half a step farther -- if computers can consume copyrighted material, and use it to answer questions like "was this essay plagiarized", then in GitHub's view they can also use it to train an AI model (even if it occasionally spits back out snippets of the copyrighted training data). Microsoft has enough lawyers on staff that I'm sure they have analyzed this in depth and believe they at least have a defensible position.

[0]: https://slate.com/technology/2016/08/in-copyright-law-comput...

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#163

Post by dylan604 »

baby wrote: post #151

The licensing game is really awful imo. It should be that releasing your code on github = fair game. Licenses are seriously hindering development. You either take part in open source or you don’t. I get anxious every time someone asks me to add a license to one of my project because I don’t know which license to use and wonder if it’ll prevent some people from using the software down the line. Once I tried writing my…

yeah, no. Licensing is really awful, yes.

"You either take part in open source or you don’t." I disagree. You can allow your software to be used and post the source code, but it is yours so you get some say in your intentions. Forking is what you're looking for. However, once you fork it, you still owe credit to those that did the heavy lifting before making whatever tweak it is you made and want to call it your own. There's nothing wrong with the original developers getting credit for the work they did. There's nothing wrong with the original devs willing to let other people use their work as long as it is used in the same spirit it was provided (FOSS). That also does not mean the original devs are wrong for wanting evilCorps that want to use their freesoftware to be included/distributed in their packages they sell and profit from to be restrictive.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#164

Post by ghoward »

Diggsey wrote: post #149
_Understated_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that bit I realise but the point I was getting at is this: if I take someone else's code, use chunks of it in my app, say that it's mine and make money from it is that not illegal? Or, at least in violation of the license? Superficially at least, Copilot (from my understanding) is "copying" code, letting me use it in my app, and making money from it. I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. Let's be clear, I…

Also NAL, but I think there's far more of a case that users of Copilot might violate copyright rather than Copilot itself: - Only a very small proportion of Copilot generated code is reproduced verbatim, so if you specifically built a product just from copied-verbatim code, your act of selecting and combining those pieces of copyrighted code would be creating a derivative work. - GitHub is not selling the copyrighted…

I think there is an argument to be made that Copilot is producing derivative code, though. It may produce copies verbatim, and that's a violation, but far more often, it produces a mixture of things it was trained on, most of which probably have some sort of license requiring attribution at the very least.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#165

Post by TuringNYC »

agilob wrote: post #134

This means that also all illegally leaked codes from Apple, CDPR, Intel, NSA and Microsoft leaks are used in the models? iBoot, Witcher 3? Gwent? NSA backdoors? Does the copilot still learn from new repos? Can I post github enterprise code publicly to let it learn from it? Serious answers only please

IANAL but the serious answer -- i think -- is that you always use things at your own risk, even purchased tools, and are protected via indemnity agreements. If there is no indemnity agreement (is is the case here), you assume the risk.

That said, if enough people are bitten by this, i'm not sure what happens -- does anyone know of a relevant case. One somewhat relevant case that caused mass pain was the SCO Linux Dispute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#166

Post by shakna »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #116
ghoward wrote: post #70

This is why I relicensed my code [1] yesterday to a license I wrote [2], which is designed to poison the well for machine learning. [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and... [2]: https://yzena.com/yzena-network-license/

Do the GitHub Terms of Service give them the necessary permissions for Copilot, independently of the license? (I honestly don't know the answer; this is a straight question.)

> The licenses you grant to us will end when you remove Your Content from our servers, unless other Users have forked it. [0]

I don't see how they can keep this clause, and then have a service that recites/redistributes code, based on a model that has already ingested said code.

> This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service, except that as part of the right to archive Your Content, GitHub may permit our partners to store and archive Your Content in public repositories in connection with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault and GitHub Archive Program. [1]

Copilot is distributed verbatim code when it regurgitates, which seems a pretty clear violation of this clause. (If it wasn't regurgitating, they'd have caselaw for fair use. But... It is.)

[0] https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o...

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#168

Post by ghaff »

La1n wrote: post #146
ghaff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically seeing how some people would have had open source play out. You can look at and use the code but not to make money or in any other way that I personally disapprove of. This is a world where open source would have ended up being pretty much irrelevant.

Are we now also not seeing now why people would want to do that? A multi-billion dollar company using people work to make more profits without paying them. I definitely understand why people pick a license that disallows use someone doesn't agree with. Imagine baking cookies for your friends, and one of them reselling them. The material effect is the same to you, you gave away your cookies, but sometimes you make/do…

People can do whatever they want with their work, including not sharing it at all.

But a great deal of the value that's come from open source generally has been that open source licenses haven't imposed the sort of usage-based restrictions (e.g. free for educational use only) that were fairly common in the PC world.

And, to your example, in the case of software the incremental copy that your friend sold cost you absolutely nothing. So it comes down to a purely emotional response to someone else making money off something you made.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#169

Post by FeepingCreature »

tsimionescu wrote: post #153
Yoric wrote: post #13

Out of curiosity, how do we define license violation in that case? I, as a human being, have trained by reading code, much of which is covered by licenses that are somehow not compatible with code I'm writing. Am I violating licenses? Asking seriously. It's really unclear to me where law and/or ethics put the boundaries. Also, I'd guess it's probably country dependent.

> I, as a human being, have trained by reading code, much of which is covered by licenses that are somehow not compatible with code I'm writing. Am I violating licenses? There are many good answers from the legal side. I would also attack this side: the way human beings learn is entirely different from the way ML models are trained. We don't do gradient descent to find the slope of data points and find the most likel…

I'm not sure this is actually true. We can explain code, but the fact that we can explain code is not necessarily related to the way we actually end up writing it. Have you ever written a function "on autopilot"? Your brain has selected what you wanted it to do, and now you're just typing without thought? I don't think we're as dissimilar to this model as we'd like.
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