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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#731

Post by zzo38computer »

rosmax_1337 wrote: post #567

I think this problem has no good solution until IP laws around the world are properly reimagined from the ground up. I'm of the quite radical stance that code, music, art in terms of their intellectual existence should be free for anyone to take. (you can own a harddrive with code on it, and claim noone should steal it, but not the idea of the code itself) If you have ideas, code, music or art which you wish for noon…

I agree. This will fix it. I think that copyright and patent should be abolished, but that if it is secret then it is still secret (unless someone else manages to come up with the same thing (e.g. by decompiling a published computer program to reconstruct the source code), which case it can be public). And so then also the AI can copy the code too just as much as you may do so manually; if it is published then you can do it and it should not be illegal to write such things.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#732

Post by signatoremo »

birdyrooster wrote: post #592
bastardoperator wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making stuff up. MSFT never bought SCO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Not sure where your confidence came from but a Google of “sco Microsoft” reveals: By the mid-1980s Microsoft had gotten out of the Unix business, except for its ownership stake in SCO.[20] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft

No, SCO was found in 2002, from Candera Software who was a Linux distributor [0]. How could Microsoft in 1980s own a company that wasn’t founded until 2002?

They later filed for bankruptcy in 2007.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_Group

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#733

Post by mynameisvlad »

ghusbands wrote: post #717
mynameisvlad wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, exactly, is there to challenge? “I’m sorry your honor I didn’t understand what I was signing” I don’t think has ever been a valid reason in a courtroom, similar to “I’m sorry I didn’t know I was committing a crime” is not a valid defense.

Courts interpret the intended and understood meaning of contracts and terms all the time. Research the term "meeting of the minds" and case law around it. When the terms were written, it's exceedingly unlikely that they intended it or anyone understood it to be blanket permission to allow a trained AI to copy code for others and no user would have interpreted it that way. Microsoft/Github can't necessarily unilateral…

How does "[allowing] a trained AI to copy code" change the interpretation of the ToS?

By uploading your code, you give Github an exclusive license to use it to improve their services. Copilot is such a service. Just because it's an AI and it provides others code does not somehow invalidate the license you gave.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#734

Post by Beltalowda »

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…

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

That same Quake example from last year is repeated every single time.

Aside from the fact that GitHub has since added a protection for this, that this example gets repeated time and time again instead of a *list of examples leads me to believe this is (and was not) a common occurrence.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#735

Post by zerohp »

542458 wrote: post #460
aposm wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a scenario in which any lawyer would consider granting Github the right to "analyze" code anywhere close to granting Github the right to spit out that same code verbatim without your copyright notice (even if laundered by AI).

Here's Kate Downing, an IP lawyer specializing in software license: > According to Downing, the answer depends to a certain extent on where that code is hosted. If it’s on GitHub, there very clearly would not be copyright infringement. > “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,”…

Many repositories on Github were put there by people that do not own the copyright and never agreed to GitHub's Terms of Service.

Linux, for example, does not require copyright assignment. The original contributor of a change owns the copyright for that code and may have never used Github.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#736

Post by davesque »

typetheorist wrote: post #669
davesque wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not without the text of the license. I, as a developer, cannot just poach open source code under MIT without including the copyright and terms from the original project. From the license: "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."

I too have reservations about Copilot, but does the MIT license define a "substantial portion"? I doubt a snippet would fall under either "copies" or "substantial portions"

I doubt many licenses define that kind of terminology. That's left to precedents established by actual cases. My point was just that you're not free to use code from an MIT-licensed project without following the terms of the license. The other details get worked out when legal actions are taken.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#737

Post by rcxdude »

Kbelicius wrote: post #692
Guid_NewGuid wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that he's said that, I wasn't aware. I think at its root the problem is copyleft is a mirror image of copyright. It relies on and replicates all the cultural and legal requirements and constraints of the copyright model and curtails an imagining of other possibilities. Every sentence or thought spent on copyleft is misdirected in my view. Which is why I find Microsoft doing this (potential) en-masse licen…

>I think at its root the problem is copyleft is a mirror image of copyright. That is the (only)point of copyleft. If it weren't for copyright it wouldn't exist. Fight fire with fire, that sort of thing.

I don't think that's true: copyleft is right to repair for software. Even if the software is not copyrightable without the source code users are still relatively powerless. (Incidentally this is related to why patents were created: not to constrain or encourage innovation, but to get people to publish inventions instead of keeping them secret). If copyright were abolished and so too copyleft destroyed, linux users freedoms would probably materially go down, not up (though in general user freedom would marginally increase because most software is not copyleft).

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#738

Post by williamcotton »

leereeves wrote: post #712
meshaneian wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might argue that a snippet isn't a "substantial portion" of "the Software", and they're only charging for the service not the content - regardless, I don't like it, this is exactly what certain licenses attempt to prevent.

I would argue that substantial shouldn't be measured in lines of code, it should be measured in importance. Something like the fast inverse square root is substantial even though it's short.

The fast inverse square makes for a poor example when it comes to notions of intellectual property and copyright because there is prior art. The Wikipedia page has a history.

And imagine if Microsoft had been able to copyright the fast inverse square function before Carmack sat down to write Quake!

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#739

Post by jazzyjackson »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #643
jazzyjackson wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was just published as a public good it would probably be as illegal as sci-hub I consider the $10/m as a donation to the microsoft legal defense fund to allow free access to accumulated knowledge.

To allow access to a service that grants you the accumulated knowledge's output in small bits. I'm all for a world where these tools help developers, but i'm not here for a system that isn't open. I want to own my tools. Copilot is a bit like musicians paying a monthly fee for access to a loop library. Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them. If I made an…

> monthly fee for access to a loop library. Except all the loops are rip-offs of other peoples hard work and there's no effort to compensate them.

the analogy works if there were an open access library of music (restricted licenses tho they may be…) that was available to search and browse without the tool

then an auto-composer could suggest music to fill in gaps in my own composition, using snippets of audio from the otherwise freely available library

that's a plug-in I would pay for too, but yea if my "no commercial use allowed" melody made it into someone else's composition, I would want my license terms to be surfaced to them as well

except I personally wouldn't want to live in a future where every line of code has to have some claim of "who authored this function first" or "who wrote this melody and rhythm first", pursuant to licensing terms in perpetuity. that sounds terrible.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#740

Post by throwaheyy »

nickjj wrote: post #535

This might be overreacting but is there a way to opt-out of Copilot using your code in open source repos? It feels morally wrong to me that I can spend thousands of hours working on projects on my own free will but then a company can sell the code I wrote to others in the form of snippet completion as a service. In fact they end up selling your code back to yourself if you plan to use the service. If the answer is no…

The Twitter thread’s title seems unnecessarily incendiary and clickbaity.

I don’t buy that producing/synthesizing code snippets based off public repos is a problem.

There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC.

Besides, it’s basically just a (semantic and contextual) search engine inlined within the IDE. Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code.

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