All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#221

Post by AaronFriel » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

_Understated_ wrote: post #202

AaronFriel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, see Authors Guild v. Google. Even without a license or permission, fair use permits the mass scanning of books, the storage of the content of those books, and rendering verbatim snippets of those books. The Google Books site is not a derivative work of the millions of authors they copied from, and if they did copy any coincidentally GPL, AGPL, or creative commons copyleft work, the fair use exception applies befo…

> By comparison, Copilot is even more obviously fair use. Not sure I see it that way. If I take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it, not quite directly, but very closely, how is that fair use? Or legal? Copying and storing a book isn't recreating another book from it. Copilot is creating new stuff from the contents of the "books" in this case. Edit: I misunderstood fa…

I've edited my comment with examples and a clarification.

Fair use is an exception to copyright and, by definition, copyright licenses.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#222

Post by stonemetal12 » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

_Understated_ wrote: post #125

lukeplato wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is a commercial paid service that generates money for Microsoft

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…

Both the Copy machine and VCR were found to be legal because they had substantial non infringing uses. As is I don't see how Copilot does. It could, if trained on public domain or attribution free code only, unfortunately there probably isn't enough code out there to train the model adequately under such rules.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#223

Post by _Understated_ » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

arianvanp wrote: post #213

_Understated_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By comparison, Copilot is even more obviously fair use. Not sure I see it that way. If I take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it, not quite directly, but very closely, how is that fair use? Or legal? Copying and storing a book isn't recreating another book from it. Copilot is creating new stuff from the contents of the "books" in this case. Edit: I misunderstood fa…

Google did not scan those books and use it to build new books with different titles. The comparison doesn't hold up at all.

> Google did not scan those books and use it to build new books with different titles. The comparison doesn't hold up at all.

Not sure if you meant to reply to me but I agree with you: you can't compare what Google did to what Copilot does.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#224

Post by tedunangst » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #201

AaronFriel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, see Authors Guild v. Google. Even without a license or permission, fair use permits the mass scanning of books, the storage of the content of those books, and rendering verbatim snippets of those books. The Google Books site is not a derivative work of the millions of authors they copied from, and if they did copy any coincidentally GPL, AGPL, or creative commons copyleft work, the fair use exception applies befo…

> No, see Authors Guild v. Google. That case required that the output be transformative, in that "words in books are being used in a way they have not been used before". Copilot only fits the transformative aspect if it is not directly reciting code, that already exists in the form that it is redistributing. So long as it does so, it fails to meet the criteria.

It's not possible to get copilot to output a transformed version of the input?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#225

Post by Zababa » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:48 PM UTC

underyx wrote: post #5

OP’s rhetoric, and most discussion I see, asserts that training a model on copyrighted data is a copyright violation. Personally I don’t find this to be so obviously the case. Think back to when we were listening to AI generated pop music, for instance. I don’t recall any concern in HN comments about the copyright holders’ music being used for learning.

> Think back to when we were listening to AI generated pop music, for instance. I don’t recall any concern in HN comments about the copyright holders’ music being used for learning.

Were those products sold to help people write commercial pop music faster? If not, I don't think your point is valid.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#226

Post by benhurmarcel » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

deviledeggs wrote: post #21

Tenoke wrote: post #3

The outrage-bait approach in this thread detracts from it. Yes, they trained it on everything. No, it's not clear if that's legal or not (probably is) or if that is much of a problem.

It's not outrage bait. The thing reproduces GPL licensed code verbatim.

But is that reproduced code "substantial"?

I'm sure there's a "for i in range(0, n):" somewhere in a GPL repo, and yet having that in my code doesn't make it GPL.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#227

Post by _Understated_ » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #221

_Understated_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By comparison, Copilot is even more obviously fair use. Not sure I see it that way. If I take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it, not quite directly, but very closely, how is that fair use? Or legal? Copying and storing a book isn't recreating another book from it. Copilot is creating new stuff from the contents of the "books" in this case. Edit: I misunderstood fa…

I've edited my comment with examples and a clarification. Fair use is an exception to copyright and, by definition, copyright licenses.

I understand the concept of fair use (I think) but I can't see how it applies to Copilot.

Google didn't create new books from the contents of existing ones (whether you agree that they should have been allowed to store the books or not) but Copilot is creating new code/apps from existing ones.

Edit: I guess my understanding of fair use was wrong. I stand corrected.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#228

Post by ghoward » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #172

rubyist5eva wrote: post #140

Open source developers need a new kind of license with a ML model training clause, so there is no more ambiguity if they don't want their code to be used in this way.

People have been suggesting this ever since Copilot was announced and it doesn't work on any level. They're using all code on GitHub, even the ones with no license and which you can't use for any purpose and the reasoning is that they see it as fair use - which supersedes any licenses and copyrights in the US.

They only claimed that training the model was fair use. What about its output? I argue that its output is still affected by the copyright of its inputs, the same way the output of a compiler is affected by the copyright of its inputs.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#229

Post by tedunangst » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:49 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #212

AaronFriel wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, see Authors Guild v. Google. Even without a license or permission, fair use permits the mass scanning of books, the storage of the content of those books, and rendering verbatim snippets of those books. The Google Books site is not a derivative work of the millions of authors they copied from, and if they did copy any coincidentally GPL, AGPL, or creative commons copyleft work, the fair use exception applies befo…

Books (mostly) are not distributed under the GPL.

Does the GPL forbid fair use? Why don't book publishers use a license that forbids fair use?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#230

Post by vharuck » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

Naga wrote: post #138

cool_dude85 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, we built this tool for you that auto violates licenses. Sure, we're owned by a huge megacorp with billions of dollars, but it's your responsibility to confirm - and yes, we recognize it's impossible to confirm - that what you release using our tool isn't violating the license. In short, github gets to make the license violator bot and push the violations off onto the small fry who actually use it? No thanks.

Isn't that sortof the justification behind bittorrent and trackers?

I see the difference as BitTorrent being an ignorant tool that just processes the data it receives. If you point BitTorrent to copyright data, it emits copyright data. The fault is on the users. Copilot was built with and "contains" copyright data, which it can produce with non-copyright input.