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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#521

Post by tyingq »

nl wrote: post #490
tyingq wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were true, then they would have trained it on all of MS's proprietary source code too.

It is true. And that doesn't follow at all.

There's enough examples of it regurgitating longish verbatim code out there, and not just comments or GPL license text.

If they are comfortable training it on code that isn't licensed for unrestricted copy/paste, I don't personally understand why they can't train it on their own code that's also not licensed for that.

Edit: They even added 'q rsqrt,' to their banned word list to squelch an example of long verbatim code passages.

Basically, it's not that I don't understand your explanation. It's that it does emit long passages of unchanged code in practice, for whatever real-world reason.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#522

Post by concordDance »

vorpalhex wrote: post #517
mhaymo wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That regurgitated code exists on Github exists under an MIT license: https://github.com/jethrodaniel/fast_inv_sqrt "jethrodaniel" does not appear to have the copyright to offer that license, but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error.

> but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error. Please insert that meme, "That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works!" The legal system is permission based, not forgiveness or "I didn't know" based.

If they had a reasonable basis for believing they had a license they're in the clear. "I didn't know" might not be enough but "I had good reasons to think otherwise" is.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#523

Post by lowercased »

Hamuko wrote: post #444
rob74 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if you do the second thing you are not a great dev, and would have probably ended up copy pasting it anyway. If you do that on your own, it's your (legal) responsibility. If Copilot does it for you, it's GitHub's/Microsoft's responsibility.

> If Copilot does it for you, it's GitHub's/Microsoft's responsibility. GitHub/Microsoft says that it's still your responsibility. > You should take the same precautions as you would with any code you write that uses material you did not independently originate. These include rigorous testing, IP scanning, and checking for security vulnerabilities. You should make sure your IDE or editor does not automatically compil…

Let MS buy BlackDuck scanner and integrate in to GitHub/CoPilot. They could then suggest code and also scan it for any license violations, and give you both sides of the equation in the same tool.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#524

Post by cycomanic »

csee wrote: post #229
cycomanic wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musicians learn from other musicians and imitate to an extent, which is why all the musicians in a genre sound very similar, and we don't see present day rappers compensating the previous generation of rappers. You clearly don't know how copyright around sampling works. Yes rappers are paying shitloads to previous generation musicians for samples they use.

Sure, if we're talking about sampling, which is analogous to co-pilot copy and pasting chunks of code verbatim (which we've seen happen). But the complaints about co-pilot go far deeper than that. Quoting from the tweet: "it just sells code other people wrote". Do musicians "just" copy from all the people they've been inspired by and learned from?

What does "inspired" mean in the context of a computer program?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#525

Post by blihp »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #364

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, bu…

1) Most likely

2) TBD

3) Not likely. Worst case a judgement will go against them, they'll effectively pay a fine and then they'll retrain it on a more restricted set of source code.

4) OSS has a pretty tragic history re: enforcement. It wins nearly every skirmish but has no interest in the war so from a big picture standpoint, it loses due to apathy.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#526

Post by dekhn »

afiori wrote: post #90
antihero wrote: post #31

I mean, if it's autocompleting a fairly simple line, and can do that because it's analysed a lot of lines, I don't really see that as "stealing anything". If you are using it to write whole complex functions thatare the same as other people's, I guess that is copying. But if you do the second thing you are not a great dev, and would have probably ended up copy pasting it anyway. I think the first use case is far more…

The when Oracle won its copyright lawsuit against google it was because of a 8 line bound checking utility function.

Not only was that not the only code in question, you left out the conclusion! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_.... It went to the supreme court, they concluded fair use, FU oracle.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#527

Post by fonix »

hansword wrote: post #203
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…

If I enter 'Mickey Mouse' into an ML-TTI thing like Craiyon (Dall E mini) do you think I will be able to sell the resulting image on a Tshirt? No, I won't, because Disney has fancy lawyers, the average open source developer hasn't. What you are saying is: Screw little people, let M$ make their money. Either copyright is for everyone, or for no one. I prefer the latter, but this is not the world we live in.

This is more like entering "cartoon mouse nose" into Craiyon though. You're getting incohesive code snippets returned to you based off a single line (appropriate word for code and a drawing).

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#528

Post by Flimm »

vorpalhex wrote: post #517
mhaymo wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That regurgitated code exists on Github exists under an MIT license: https://github.com/jethrodaniel/fast_inv_sqrt "jethrodaniel" does not appear to have the copyright to offer that license, but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error.

> but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error. Please insert that meme, "That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works!" The legal system is permission based, not forgiveness or "I didn't know" based.

I personally don't want to have to upload proof of identity to GitHub and a signed document swearing that I own the copyright to all the code I upload to GitHub, or proof that I coded it. We need to be careful what we wish for.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#529

Post by concordDance »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #364

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, bu…

There's also one more question:

5. Even if it is illegal, is it actually bad? No one can possibly sell code snippets, the transaction costs are many orders of magnitude greater than any reasonable price. In my opinion, at least in this case the benefits massively outweigh the costs and the law should not apply here.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#530

Post by minhazm »

vorpalhex wrote: post #517
mhaymo wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That regurgitated code exists on Github exists under an MIT license: https://github.com/jethrodaniel/fast_inv_sqrt "jethrodaniel" does not appear to have the copyright to offer that license, but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error.

> but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error. Please insert that meme, "That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works!" The legal system is permission based, not forgiveness or "I didn't know" based.

Actually the legal system is evidence based. Microsoft has evidence that the code they are producing is licensed under MIT as far as they can reasonably know. There's no definitive way to know that who actually owns the original copyright. I could grant permission to use my repo, but maybe I got that code from someone else, who then got it from someone else and so on and so forth. It's a similar situation with stolen goods, if you unknowingly purchase stolen goods you usually cannot be charged for theft as long as there aren't obvious signs that it's stolen such as the goods being priced far below market value.
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