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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

#501

Post by agilob »

sailingparrot wrote: post #304
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

No, it's not trained on all public code as the title suggests, it's trained on all GitHub public code (so public repos hosted on GH), none of the things you enumerate are hosted on GH.

>it's trained on all GitHub public code (so public repos hosted on GH)

This is exactly what I meant.

>none of the things you enumerate are hosted on GH.

Plenty of them on GH, if not src then magnet links

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#502

Post by salawat »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #434
shakna wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transformed output _may_ fall under fair use. However - Copilot directly recites code. That is _very unlikely_ to fall under fair use. Redistributing the exact same code, in the same form, for the same purpose, probably means that Copilot, and thus the people responsible for it, are infringing.

> " However - Copilot directly recites code. " Sounds like that wouldn't be difficult to fix? Transform the code to an intermediate representation ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_representation ) as a pre-processing stage, which ditches any non-essential structure of the code and eliminates comments, variable names, etc., before running the learning algorithms on it. Et voila, much like a human learning…

At that point, can we all just agree IP is the stupidest concept to ever be layered on top of math (which programming is) and move on with non-copyrightable code?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#503

Post by mthoms »

extra88 wrote: post #285
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…

Yes to all this. I think the factor most at risk in a fair use test with Copilot is whether it ever suggests verbatim, code that could be considered the "heart" of the original work. The John Carmack example that's popped up here at least gets closer to this question, it was a relatively small amount but it was doing something very clever and important. One can imagine a project that has thousands of lines of code to…

This is an excellent comment because it captures some important nuance missing from other analysis on HN.

I agree with you that the relative importance of the copied code to the end product would be (or should be) the crux of the issue for the courts in determining infringement.

This overall interpretation most closely adheres to the spirit and intent of Fair Use as I understand it.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#504

Post by carom »

habitue wrote: post #353

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

It is a large corporation eroding the integrity of open source licenses. It is perfectly reasonable to be pissed off about this.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#505

Post by AaronFriel »

infogulch wrote: post #410
AaronFriel wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 express…

Why did you choose the standard of "substantial" = "100s of lines"? Especially since we've already seen examples of verbatim output in the dozens of lines range, that choice of standard is rather conveniently just outside what exists so far. If we find a case with 200 lines of verbatim output will you say the only reasonable standard is 1000s of lines? I don't think your argument is as strong as you're making it out…

Just a fairly arbitrary number. It's easy to produce a few lines from memory, up to 10s of lines and that's "obviously" fair use. I would be surprised if many of haven't inadvertently "copied" some GPL code in this way!

This goes to the "substantial" test for fair use. Clips from a film can contain core plot points, quotes from a book can contain vital passages to understanding a character, screen captures and scrapes of a website can contain huge amounts of textual detail, but depending on the four factors for fair use, still be fair use. (There have been exceptions though.)

The reaction on Hacker News to a machine producing code trained on their works is no different than the reactions artists and writers have had to other ML models. I suspect many of us are biased because it strikes at what we do and we think that our copyrights (because we have so many neat licenses) are special. They are not.

I think it would need to get to that level of "Copilot will emit a kernel module" before it's not obviously fair use.

After all, Google Books will happily convey to me whole pages from copyrighted works, page after page after page.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Capital_in_the_Twenty_F...

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#506

Post by luffapi »

Narishma wrote: post #498
luffapi wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copilot should be inspiring people to figure out how to do better than it, not making hackers get up in arms trying to slap it down. One of the (many) problems is that GitHub/Microsoft already benefit from runaway network effects so it’s difficult to “do better”. Where will you get all of that training code if not off GitHub? The real answer to this is to yank your projects from GitHub now while you search for alte…

Even if you do that, what's to stop them from using open source software from all over the web and not just what's on GitHub? The only way to stop them then is to go closed source.

I mean stop them at a larger level by threatening their success as an organization. If developers stop publishing to GitHub they have bigger problems than training ML models.

Whether or not this move is “legal”, it should serve as a wake up call that GH is not actually a service we should be empowering. This incident is just one example of why that’s a bad idea.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#507

Post by AaronFriel »

b3morales wrote: post #424
extra88 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Authors won't incorporate snippets of books into new works Of course they do, previous works are quoted all the time.

... with attribution .

And without. Attribution isn't a "copyright escape clause", copying a work without permission is still infringement - unless it's fair use.

Plagiarism is not the same as infringement.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#508

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

habitue wrote: post #353

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

On many ML posts, you get arguments about IP, and there's a long history of IP wars on this forum, especially when licensing comes up. Then you add the popular Big Tech Is Evil arguments you see. I think it's a variety of factors coming together for people to be upset about someone else profiting from their own work in ways they didn't mean to allow.

I expect that we'll need new copyright law to protect creators from this kind of thing (specifically, to give creators an option to make their work public without allowing arbitrary ML to be trained on it). Otherwise the formula for ML based fair use is "$$$ + my things = your things" which is always a recipe for tension.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#509

Post by dec0dedab0de »

stingraycharles wrote: post #500
neonihil wrote: post #457

I think it’s pretty easy to defeat MS in court. We just need to bring the music industry into this! For example: Let’s train a network on Beatles music to generate new Beatles songs. I’m pretty sure music lawyers will find a way to prove that the trained network is violating the label’s copyright, as they always manage to do that. And then we just need to use the precedent and argue that music is the same thing as co…

Wouldn’t a more accurate metaphor be “let’s train a network on all music, to generate new music”, which includes Beatles, and may generate songs that contain the same chords as the Beatles used?

Yes, but may also use the same chord progressions, lyrics, or melodies. Could even say it contains snippits of the actual recordings, depending on how you look at it

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#510

Post by jeremyjh »

hedora wrote: post #465
jeremyjh wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not Copilot? Because the sources used for input do not belong to the person operating the tool. If you say that doesn't matter, then you are saying open source licenses don't matter because the same thing applies - I could just run a tool (compiler) on someone else's code, and ignore the terms of their license when I redistribute the binary.

No, I think that’s the point. If I take some code I don’t have a license for, feed it to a compiler (perhaps with some -O4 option that uses deep learning because buzzwords), then is the resulting binary covered under fair use, and therefore free of all license restrictions? If not, then how is what Copilot is doing any different?

> If I take some code I don’t have a license for, feed it to a compiler (perhaps with some -O4 option that uses deep learning because buzzwords), then is the resulting binary covered under fair use

No, the binary is not free of license restrictions. Read any open source license - there are terms under which you can redistribute a binary made from the code. For GPL you have to make all your sources available under the same terms for example. For MIT you have to include attribution. For Apache you have to attribute and agree not to file any patents on the work in Apache licensed project you use. This has been upheld in many court cases - though it is not always easy to find litigants who can fund the cases the licenses are sound.

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