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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

#231

Post by AaronFriel »

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.

Is there any evidence of Copilot producing substantial (100s of lines) verbatim copies of copyrighted works?

Absent this, I don't think there's a case. The courts have given extraordinarily wide latitude to fair use and ML algorithms are routinely trained on copyrighted works, photos, etc. without a license.

I understand that this feels more personal because it involves our field, but artists and authors have expressed the same sentiment when neural nets began making pictures and sentences.

The question here is no different than "Is GPT-3 an unlicensed, unlawfully created derivative work of millions, if not billions of people?"

No, I'm quite confident it is not.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#232

Post by swiley »

blibble wrote: post #203
swiley wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Microsoft just killed source code copyright? That would definitely be a win.

it would be a win for Microsoft that don't distribute their source code whereas for open source it's a disaster

There's nothing to stop the employees from distributing it at that point and even with copyright it gets distributed anyway, it's just not allowed to be used for anything serious.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#233

Post by contravariant »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #174
contravariant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were to write large swaths of copyrighted code from memory then yes you'd be committing a copyright violation. Most humans don't do so unintentionally though.

Just as an example, this is very widespread in music though.

If the whole 'Dark Horse' debacle proved anything it would be that that can still be considered a copyright infringement. Sure that particular example was (rightly IMHO) deemed to not be a copyright violation, but they still had to show their version was original enough, they couldn't just claim such copying wasn't ever an infringement.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#234

Post by otterley »

AaronFriel wrote: post #193
keonix wrote: post #185

If the training set contains verbatim (A)GPL code does this mean that Copilot also should be distributed by Microsoft under GPL? Because without it Copilot (as it is distributed by Microsoft) couldn't be built, wouldn't it make it a derivative work of GPL'd code (and obviously every other license)? I see a lot of people comparing human learning to machine learning in the comments, but there is a huge difference - we…

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…

If this issue is eventually litigated, we will see. The law in the Second Circuit (where the final judgment was rendered before the case was eventually settled) may well be different than the law in a different circuit. If there is a split in the circuit courts, then the Supreme Court may have to weigh in on this issue.

When fair use is an issue, the courts look at the facts in context each time. These are obviously different facts than scanning books for populating a search index and rendering previews; and each side is going to argue that the facts are similar or that they are dissimilar. How the court sees it is going to be the key question.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#235

Post by cmsonger »

AaronFriel wrote: post #193
keonix wrote: post #185

If the training set contains verbatim (A)GPL code does this mean that Copilot also should be distributed by Microsoft under GPL? Because without it Copilot (as it is distributed by Microsoft) couldn't be built, wouldn't it make it a derivative work of GPL'd code (and obviously every other license)? I see a lot of people comparing human learning to machine learning in the comments, but there is a huge difference - we…

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…

This is a thoughtful and insightful reply. Thank you.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#236

Post by AaronFriel »

tedunangst wrote: post #229
indymike wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because fair use is an exception to copyright itself. A copyright license can't take away your legal right to fair use.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#237

Post by 8note »

_Understated_ wrote: post #218
Hamuko wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? You can wipe your ass with the GPL license if your use of the product falls within Fair Use. You can actually take snippets from commercial movies and post them onto YouTube if your YouTube video is transformative enough for your usage to be considere…

> You can wipe your ass with the GPL license if your use of the product falls within Fair Use. Is Copilot fair use? It's reading code, generating other code (some verbatim) and making money from it all while not having to release its source code to the world? > That doesn't mean that GitHub has to redistribute Copilot under GPL I wasn't saying that was the case: some of the code that Copilot used may not allow redist…

Making money is irrelevant to fair use

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#238

Post by dpe82 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #210
_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…

If you view GPL code with your browser would that mean that your browser now has to be GPL as well? In the sense that copilot is not much different than a browser for Stack Overflow with some automation, why would it need to be GPLed? Your own code on the other hand…

Or if you simply read GPL code and learn something from it - or bits of the code are retained verbatim in your memory, are you (as a person) now GPL'd? Obviously not.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#239

Post by hellcow »

prettygood wrote: post #217
ssivark wrote: post #64

Calling it “public” code feels like doublespeak. It’s most definitely NOT public domain code — it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable ( but not copyable ) by people. “Source available for viewing” is very different from “public property” as the phrase is commonly understood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property

Not copyable by people, but we can go through the code, learn from it and then use that knowledge to improve our coding skills. Isn't that what autopilot is doing here? The system is merely learning how to code, and then applying it's learnings on other programming problems. It's not like it's writing software to specifically compete with other programs.

Not when it outputs large sections of unique code verbatim, as it's been shown to do.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#240

Post by AaronFriel »

_Understated_ wrote: post #227
AaronFriel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Google Books were creating new books, that would only help their argument. Transformativeness is one of the four parts of the fair use test.

Copilot producing new, novel works (which may contain short verbatim snippets of GPL works) is a strong argument for transformativeness.

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