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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#361

Post by redox99 »

teakettle42 wrote: post #325
redox99 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plagiarism isn’t a legal concept, it’s an ethical one. Well if it isn't a legal but an ethical concept, then that's just your opinion, since there isn't some universal body that establishes exactly what is ethical and what isn't. And as I said in my previous comment, " I don't consider". > You need to either attribute the source, or rewrite it in entirely your own words — just like when writing a paper. Often times…

> Well if it isn't a legal but an ethical concept, then that's just your opinion Plagiarism being unethical is just my opinion? > Are you going to attribute that every time you use Math.pow? Does a simple 2-ary function call of a well-defined API qualify as “taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.”? If not, then it’s not plagiarism.

> Plagiarism being unethical is just my opinion?

What constitutes as plagiarism and what doesn't, outside of what the law says, yes.

> Does a simple 2-ary function call of a well-defined API qualify as “taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.”?

So you agree that taking some code verbatim from SO is not plagiarism then?

What about this, would copy pasting this verbatim be plagiarism?

https://stackoverflow.com/a/959004

And this?

https://stackoverflow.com/a/45049763

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#362

Post by [deleted] »

teakettle42 wrote: post #330
ThereIsNoWorry wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, rearranging conditionals or loops or variables then, problem solved. You cannot 1:1 copy paste anyway. That never works. You always have to adapt it to your particularity. So it's "reworded" by default. And CoPilot is doing nothing else. It's not just 1:1 memorising code, it's a tiny bit smarter than that. I strongly believe you're not a developer. Point taken. I understand your considerations. You should write c…

> I strongly believe you're not a developer. > You should write code sometimes to solve a complex problem There’s a very high chance you posted your comment from a device using code I wrote. Glueing together plagiarized code copied from SO, or stolen from OSS projects on GitHub, is not software engineering.

[deleted]

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#363

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

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…

> 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.

It is not true. Whenever there is something really useful, everybody is happy, and while of course they always are some nansayers, they're very few.

However, when you do something controversial, you can expect to hear criticism. You are of course free to dismiss that criticism, but when a lot of people are telling you what you are doing is unethical, maybe it's time to stop and think about it.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#364

Post by VoodooJuJu »

It is now proven that copilot returns code from codebases with non-permissive licenses [1].

I'm curious - what are the legal implications of this going forward? I've so many questions.

1. Will Microsoft ever face lawsuits for these license violations?

2. If so, who/how? Class-action?

3. Will copilot be forced to open-source in the future? Under which license? Some open source licenses are incompatible with others, but copilot uses code from probably every OSS license conceived.

4. If Microsoft faces no justice, will we start seeing more OSS license violations? Will Google start using AGPL-licensed code?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 | Copilot regurgitating Quake code

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#365

Post by vlovich123 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #358
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…

I'm sure the MS lawyers thought long and hard about this and are patiently awaiting any actual lawsuits with confidence in their position. It would be very hard to prove ownership of any snippets. To the point where you can argue that it is just fair use and to the point where companies would think long and hard before committing any resources to fighting MS on this in court at great expense. I don't think that will…

MS is unlikely to be sued here because the infringement claim wold be against their users and my guess is the license indemnifies them against you suing them for defects in the tool you use (ie use at your own risk and if you get sued you agree you won’t sue us).

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#366

Post by ilikehurdles »

ThereIsNoWorry wrote: post #312
teakettle42 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, rearranging conditionals or loops or variables then, problem solved. You cannot 1:1 copy paste anyway. That never works. You always have to adapt it to your particularity. So it's "reworded" by default. And CoPilot is doing nothing else. It's not just 1:1 memorising code, it's a tiny bit smarter than that. I strongly believe you're not a developer. Point taken. I understand your considerations. You should write c…

I absolutely attribute things I find on SO to where I found them. You finished college maybe a year ago and are already making some absolute judgments about what makes other people qualified to call themselves developers simply because they don’t develop as you do.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#367

Post by lupire »

zarzavat wrote: post #218
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…

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.

"on a massive scale" is one of the legal definitions of unfair use.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#368

Post by moffkalast »

tiborsaas wrote: post #331
moffkalast wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not repeating non-trivial work 1:1 But that's basically all copilot does? It's just a fancy compression system with a search function.

No, it customizes the snippets to your context, the code is synthesized and not looked up in a db like a web search engine.

But it kind of is when you think about it. Network weights are just a db written in an incomprehensible format and the synthesis part is searching and converting it back to readable data.

Even if it changes the var names and formatting a bit, it's still at best highly derivative. And at worst it spits out the exact code verbatim.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#369

Post by aahortwwy »

jimnotgym wrote: post #295
meheleventyone wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I sometimes read people's open source code on github and use the ideas from that to develop my own ideas. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short passages and then rework them. I also employ a team of people who may do the same. Is that fair use, yes of course it is. Is co-pilot automating that fair use, I would say so.

Microsoft's internal policies don't allow their employees to do this without legal approval.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#370

Post by ParetoOptimal »

dmix wrote: post #167
ThereIsNoWorry wrote: post #113

1. You most likely agreed to that by using GitHub. 2. Copy&Pasting Code by manual search exists. 3. This is just a smart tool so you don't have to figure out yourself what to copy&paste (in the best case) and save a lot of time. Sometimes I truly wonder how people can genuinely be upset about things like this. What is broken are copyright and patent laws in the 21st century.

> Sometimes I truly wonder how people can genuinely be upset about things like this 90% of Twitter is just inventing new ways to whine about things

There's some truth there, but there is more negative in outright dismissing the uncomfortable but important ethical dilemmas one might be introduced to.
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