Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#91

Post by filoleg » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #50

lindenksv85 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess the Github Copilot authors did not handpick projects they checked were legitimately put on Github. So they are accomplices in that case.

YouTube doesn't really handpick things that get put on their platform either, beyond very basics and whatever automated tools they have to cover that.

Beyond that, that's what DMCA takedown requests are for. Github would only be an accomplice in that case, if they got a legitimate DMCA takedown request and chose to completely ignore it.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#92

Post by sobellian » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:11 PM UTC

tvirosi wrote: post #61

If this really counts as fair use it turns into a giant loophole to steal any IP you want. Just create a website with a github-like TOS, upload some disney copyrighted pictures to it, train a GAN super overfitted on the images, and then claim mickey mouse as your own.

The lawyer's argument is that Copilot's query system is transformative. If you assemble Copilot's output to replicate a copyrighted work, then even if Copilot isn't infringing, you are by taking that work out of context. The burden is on the owner to ensure they don't infringe.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#93

Post by rhdunn » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:12 PM UTC

fhajm wrote: post #80

This lawyer does not understand GitHub. Half of the code is uploaded by third parties who do not hold any copyright. These people either think that for ideological reasons everything should be on GitHub or they want Google links to their companies. Furthermore "improve their services" reasonably only applies to their core service that was present when people agreed to the TOS and not to some new code laundering AI. I…

Then there's the issue of any project that uses CoPilot. For example, if a developer of proprietary software uses this and it is later found that the code matches GPL code, they would be liable. Likewise if an open source uses code from a different license or proprietary code via this.

Looking at the source code or the function and variable names in binaries, you cannot tell if CoPilot is used or not, so there isn't a functional difference between someone copying that code or CoPilot copying it.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#94

Post by erhk » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

invokestatic wrote: post #54

pedrocr wrote: post #31

Given this fair use argument that the work is probably transformative enough here's what I'll be doing next. I'll take the Windows and Office source code, run it through a decompiler and then train a neural network on that output. This sequence of steps should be at least as transformative of Microsoft's copyright as what Copilot is doing with the open-source corpus, probably much more so. I will then use that neural…

I've heard something similar in response to Copilot in another thread (something like offering a sum of money to Github if they train their model exclusively on the Windows NT source code). But I think the legal theory here is that Copilot is trained on many thousands of sources. If Copilot was trained on a single source, or even a small handful of sources, the derivative work claim becomes much stronger. When traine…

Well i could certainly construct a data set wjere windows NT is an atomic outlier and muddy the water with arbitrary inputs to satisy your irrelevant requirement. Perhaps ill jam some pictures of cows in, or any nubmber or animal photos. Maybe even some classical literature. Hell, maybe i even just jam a shit ton of Javascript in. Thats code right?

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#95

Post by erhk » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

tvirosi wrote: post #61

If this really counts as fair use it turns into a giant loophole to steal any IP you want. Just create a website with a github-like TOS, upload some disney copyrighted pictures to it, train a GAN super overfitted on the images, and then claim mickey mouse as your own.

You cant just upload copyrighted photos. You dont own them.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#96

Post by progbits » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:16 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #85

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 wonder if one could enforce a license's "this code may not be used to train any ML model of any sort for any reason without prior permission".

I've been wondering the same though found basically no discussion on this topic.

Let's ignore whether GPL or whatever license allows GitHub to do this - let the lawyers sort this out. Instead we should focus on whether it is possible to legally prevent such behavior via license.

In other words, where is my GPLv4 with anti-ml clause?

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#97

Post by erhk » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:16 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…

You can opensource with Git without using github. You can self host.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#98

Post by erhk » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:18 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #43

lindenksv85 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I don't know if by "You’re basically saying" you mean me specifically, but if you do, you're dead wrong. I'm not ok with this at all. However, I'm not so stupid to think me, as a non-IP lawyer can make sense of the current legal situation (which is what copyright is; law) or even propose new laws. However, as a dev I can think about it and say "to me, this is immoral and unethical", and refuse to use Copilot, not wor…

Github is not required to open source your work

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#99

Post by modeless » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:19 PM UTC

> 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

Sure, that's fine if the author of the code chooses to upload it to GitHub. But what if they don't, and then someone else does? If I take an AGPL project that someone else wrote and upload it to GitHub, does that grant GitHub the right to use the code "to improve their products and features" which are closed source? I don't have the right to relicense the code, and neither does GitHub, so clearly not.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#100

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

tvirosi wrote: post #61

If this really counts as fair use it turns into a giant loophole to steal any IP you want. Just create a website with a github-like TOS, upload some disney copyrighted pictures to it, train a GAN super overfitted on the images, and then claim mickey mouse as your own.

You can't claim mickey mouse as your own, but you can exploit all the labor that went into creating all the work you're training on. Point a generative model at someone else's labor and now it'll do that for you. It seems like the person whose labor is being used should be somehow compensated, or at least have some say in its use.