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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#281

Post by Hamuko »

moffkalast wrote: post #274
meheleventyone wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's minus a license then it should be assumed that rights are retained (in the same way you can't just take ownership of an image you find on the internet) so if it were filtering it shouldn't take code from repo's without explicit and favorable licenses. If it is taking code only from repo's with permissive licenses (e.g. MIT) then why aren't they following the attribution requirements? I don't think you can hav…

If I steal some code and put it on Github under MIT that doesn't really make it MIT, I'm just lying that it is. If Copilot then uses that it's still in violation of the law I'd assume (ignorance doesn't exonerate you etc.). So they'd have to verify on a case by case basis, which they obviously haven't given the volume of data they had to feed the thing. It's kinda shocking that they think they can sell this, even pro…

And especially with such blanket statements as "the code you write with GitHub Copilot’s help belongs to you".

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#282

Post by [deleted] »

HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

[deleted]

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#283

Post by paulcole »

Sakos wrote: post #201
HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

I share my code without a license because I want others to be able to see how I solved things. However, this doesn't mean I'm okay with wholesale copying my code. If it's some random guy, then whatever. If it's a corporation like Microsoft, then yeah, I have a problem with it. Under German law, the code is legally not allowed to be reproduced or used without explicit permission even if it doesn't have a license. I re…

> Under German law, the code is legally not allowed to be reproduced or used without explicit permission even if it doesn't have a license

This is nuts. How can anbody be expected to both know that you’re German and German law when you post on an international website?

Or is this a German law that exists to prevent other Germans from doing things but that the rest of the world scoffs at?

https://choosealicense.com/

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#284

Post by kachhalimbu »

shireboy wrote: post #226

I do feel these arguments are valid if a little overstated. Most devs have googled, found some code, and pasted it in without thinking about attribution. Doesn’t make it right, but it is a question of how much code is being copied and how specific. For example, I peruse open repos to learn - I learned about the spread operator in JavaScript that way- doesn’t mean every time I use it I need to attribute whatever repo…

I like this take. Copilot to me seems a glorified (very intelligent) auto-search-paste/autocomplete service. It is just mimicing what usual devs do which is to copy-paste code from StackOverflow/github for many mundane types of codes like for loops, mongo find queries, callback func definitions etc for JS devs for eg.

The idea of auto-attribution if copilot surfaces licensed code is best because then it keeps the copilot user honest where the code is coming from and honor the original license.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#285

Post by jimnotgym »

meheleventyone wrote: post #223
zarzavat wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of a fair use right is that you don’t need the copyright owner’s permission to be able to exercise it. Fair use allows you to do things that the copyright owner doesn’t like. Is fair use on a massive scale still fair use? Courts generally think so, otherwise Google would have been out of business a long time ago.

Is this fair use? I don't think that's been established yet. And if it is why didn't MS and OpenAI train it on their private code repositories? Fair use for thee not for me isn't very in keeping with the spirit of that claim.

Just because there has not been a test case yet does not make it illegal! If MS think it is fair use then they are free to go ahead. Business is all about recognising and assesing risks like this.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#286

Post by samatman »

core-utility wrote: post #213
meheleventyone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They own their code and it either has a license for use or is implicitly rights retained if not. If Copilot regurgitates their code, from a project that is public but with a non-permissive license they are having their IP rights violated so are totally correct in being unhappy about that. Just because you’ve made something cool doesn’t give you the right to harm others in the process. If MS or OpenAI don’t think this…

Do we have any evidence that copilot doesn't check/filter by license?

This is in fact impossible.

All they could do is filter by the LICENSE file in the repo.

Unfortunately for them, by law copyright and license are determined by the authors and merely represented by a LICENSE file, which could be lying about both.

The court isn't going to accept that excuse when this goes to trial.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#287

Post by teakettle42 »

ThereIsNoWorry wrote: post #269
teakettle42 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s literally plagiarism by definition.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/12/30/how-often-do-people-ac... I feel like you're arguing in bad faith. So, whatever.

Explaining a fundamental ethical concept you should have learned in primary school when writing your first book reports is not arguing in bad faith.

SO’s license requires attribution.

If you don’t want to be a plagiarist, you either need to include attribution, or you need to rewrite the solution in entirely your own words.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#288

Post by tiborsaas »

highwaylights wrote: post #160
HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

This seems disingenous. People don’t have a problem that AI is being used in some form to provide the service. The complaint is pretty clearly that code is being lifted from repositories without attribution or compensation, and being redistributed into other applications. How impressive the work behind copilot is or is not really isn’t relevant.

I've made use of a ton of open source tools and have not paid any attribution or compensation. By made use of, I mean I used them as their intended purposes and not their source code. I have a FOSS OS, server, CMD tools and libraries powering my ideas, it's part of the deal that I don't have to pay.

If I modify them I know what I have to do, but Co-pilot is somewhere in-between the two, it's abstracting knowledge from these codebases. We don't yet know how to deal with it properly, but this will change with time, that's why having these conversations are important.

I think that AI models will gain a new legal state, whatever they learn will be considered original work if it's not repeating non-trivial work 1:1.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#289

Post by OrwellianTimes »

HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

Fully agreed. It's just people getting mad and jealous but hear me out.

Copilot is NOT SELLING coed other people wrote, it is simply acting as a curator to show you all the solutions people HAVE WRITTEN for free.

Copilot does NOT write entire programs, it's simply an assistant. And there is not much copyright you CAN apply to 3-4 lines of generally understandable code.

I've used Copilot and am actively paying for and I have not seen many cases where it's generating bad code. It's only there to remove boilerplate and common problems, not there to write entire applications.

Why are people getting so salty?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#290

Post by wolframhempel »

dmortin wrote: post #110
wolframhempel wrote: post #105

When my last company got acquired, part of the due diligence process was a scan of our codebase for snippets from stack overflow. Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it. Now, I'm not entirely sure how necessary this was from a legal perspective. But introducing an AI into the mix will bring up a lot of uncertainty when it comes to how much change is…

Did the scan find the process if they changed the variable names, for example? Or is that considered a differing snippet then?

This is exactly where it gets murky. We had the usual 1-4 line snippets. We went the extra mile to change them, rewriting them from scratch, partially with different implementations. Did we need to do that? Would it have been enough to just change a variable name or some spacing or similar? I don't think there's a clear standard.

The music industry has struggled with this for a long time. When is a song derivative, when a copy, when is it "inspired by"...

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