Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#21

Post by grawprog » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

> to use your code to improve their products and features

>It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content

I'm curious. Copilot isn't actually part of github. It's a plugin for Visual Studio wouldn't that mean copilot is distributing code hosted on github, outside of github? You can't use copilot without visual studio.

How is this not Microsoft just parasitizing all the code hosted on github to make visual studio better? Which as far as i know, depsite being owned by Microsoft is not actually part of github.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#22

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #10

> If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features. So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward. This doesn't sound right. Alice writes code, and releases it under some restrictive license (GPL, s…

If Bob is unable to give GitHub the rights that GitHub demands, then it means Bob was unable to lawfully upload the code to GitHub in the first place. You're making an argument that Bob violated GitHub's terms, not that GitHub is violating Alice's (though that may also be true).

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#23

Post by matmann2001 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

Technically, they aren't distributing Your Content. It's laundered through their machine learning model first.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#24

Post by zufallsheld » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

lindenksv85 wrote: post #16

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

They technically don’t distribute any code. They show it to you in a hosted environment. It’s the user that causes a distribution. They “provide it as part of the service.”

In the same vain streaming sites don't distribute movies, they show them to, you in a hosted environment. and this argument did not hold up in court.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#25

Post by tyingq » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

matmann2001 wrote: post #23

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

Technically, they aren't distributing Your Content. It's laundered through their machine learning model first.

With degrees of laundered varying from "copied verbatim" to "minor things like symbol names changed" to "actually transformed significantly".

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#26

Post by jefftk » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #22

jefftk wrote: post #10

> If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features. So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward. This doesn't sound right. Alice writes code, and releases it under some restrictive license (GPL, s…

If Bob is unable to give GitHub the rights that GitHub demands, then it means Bob was unable to lawfully upload the code to GitHub in the first place. You're making an argument that Bob violated GitHub's terms, not that GitHub is violating Alice's (though that may also be true).

GitHub's primary business is hosting open source software. There's no way they are going to claim that every user who uploaded code without owning the full rights is violating their TOS.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#27

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

lindenksv85 wrote: post #20

kzrdude wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about open source projects where the uploader and github users are not the only copyright holders? As a user i can't grant github any random license for the code, if I maintain for example Linux or python or any other old project there. The ONLY available terms are those given by the license, surely?

If you are putting up code on GitHub to which you don’t have all the rights you’re actually in violation of their TOS and you are violating the rights of other copyright holders. I understand this is common and may not violate community norms or expectations but it is technically a license violation on multiple fronts. Contributors who add to existing GitHub projects are providing the same license to GitHub as the pr…

But legally, they can't provide such a license. So GitHub can't have that license, surely, because they never had the legal authority to bestow it upon Github.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#28

Post by lindenksv85 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #9

It would be nice if we moved from a copyright discussion to an ethical one, since it could be years until the law is even tested. Is it ethical to do this, when some licenses are clearly chosen because of e.g. attribution or sharing improvements? Did Microsoft/GitHub consider the ethical implications, for example a chilling effect on code being open sourced in future (i.e. people choosing not to open source stuff so…

I think it’s important to recognize that most ML models will not be built in top of copyleft material. It will mostly use data that we as users have voluntarily provided to someone at some point and to which that platform now claims ownership. So we need to think long and hard about whether or not we believe any of these models should receive any copyright protection at all and in a much broader context. I think if we insist on claiming that copilot is copyrightable itself and should be under GPL then we have totally capitulated with respect to all other use cases in a way that actually further protects incumbent advantage for large companies and which deprived everyone else of any benefit or remuneration for their own data. You’re basically saying it’s ok for companies to privatize the collective knowledge of all of humanity. I’m not on board with that.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#29

Post by hansvm » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

matmann2001 wrote: post #19

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

Technically, they aren't distributing "your" code. It's laundered through their machine learning algorithm first.

Is that actually different legally from an "ML" algorithm that xors the code with the same garbage 1M times or otherwise does something expensive to implement a noop?

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#30

Post by jcelerier » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

> "To the extent you see a piece of suggested code that’s very clearly regurgitated from another source — perhaps it still has comments attached to it, for example — use your common sense and don’t use those kinds of suggestions.”

how is "use common sense" even remotely a meaningful thing