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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#781

Post by ShamelessC »

namose wrote: post #761
ShamelessC wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I've just never had to work with GPL code before, but the complaints essentially only seem to be coming from coders who like this style of open source where you still get to make it kind of a pain in the ass to actually use your software. I guess you have the right to do this, but it doesn't mesh at all with why I personally contribute (without any expectation of attribution), which is that (much like stack o…

But GPL owners aren’t seeking rent, so you’re just asking those who believe all code should be open source to unilaterally let large companies use all their code, while they reap no such benefits from the large companies

Like I said, I understand the premise, just not the emotion behind why you want to release code to the public at all if it isn't simply a donation to all human knowledge.

There are better ways to gain notoriety as a coder than by essentially legally requiring your name is attached to a thing for all time.

I personally would be thrilled to know my work was valuable enough to be used by a company because I really just couldn't care less that about the "credit" part of it. I know what I've done and don't have anything to prove.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#782

Post by Separo »

jalfresi wrote: post #65
Separo wrote: post #18

GitHub provides the repo hosting and tools for free on public projects. I'm happy with this deal.

This does raise a point - do we now have to assume that all those services that provide free hosting/access/service to open source projects will be strip-mining the work of the open source community to sell them back to us all? I almost feel stupid believing it was an altruistic move to contribute back to the shoulders of giants they were already standing on...

No. You still have the option not to buy Copilot and still use GitHub's services for free on public projects. Or, if you're not comfortable with your open source code being perused by an AI, you can set up your own privately hosted public Git repo pretty easily.

I honestly don't understand the general outrage at this fair seeming deal to me.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#783

Post by throwaheyy »

DJHenk wrote: post #770
throwaheyy wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

> There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC. Of course there is something proprietary or original about that. Why else would they need such an enormous AI to suggest it. Auto completing simple boilerplate was already solved in a much simpler way. > Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocomplet…

Applying your logic, is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page?

After all, if showing a search result in the IDE is “publishing” (let alone “selling” (?)) why hasn’t Google been sued out of existence for showing search results (oops, “publishing” copies of original work, billions of times over), as well as selling related advertising?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

> Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#784

Post by throwaheyy »

gfrff wrote: post #709
WisNorCan wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your take that Microsoft should offer this for free? Or if they are not willing to do it for free, Microsoft should cancel this service and we should wait for Apache or someone else to offer the service? Or something else ?

Microsoft should make this service free for open source (not just thought leaders), and compensate people otherwise. I should have a 0.01% equity in Open AI if they're using my stuff like this. Or they should do opt in.

Half serious/flippant, we need MS to create a cryptocurrency so that developers can be credited with micropayments each time their code gets “quoted” in the IDE.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#785

Post by ghusbands »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #733
ghusbands wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again, research "meeting of the minds". It's a standard legal term directly relevant to all contracts and terms. Also, "transparency" is another important one.

Many online services have very wide terms around what they can do with your data, which most people who bother to read them interpret as being what is required for them to handle the service for you without breaking copyright law. In that context, being able to use and analyse your data to improve their services could be another catch-all that lets them do specific performance optimisation on their backend.

One party instead deciding they've got blanket permission to do whatever they like with your work, including selling it to others, may well not hold up in court.

Contracts aren't programs and one party tricking the other rarely works out in court - courts world-wide tend to rule against trickery and deception.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#787

Post by williamcotton »

imtringued wrote: post #771
williamcotton wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior art has been used for copyright in plenty of court cases, and increasingly so! Here’s an example: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=728470765881077... It seems particularly apt to consider prior art for use in software IP if only for the similarities with the patentable invention of mechanical parts.

What? You are free to reverse engineer any non patented object and reproduce an almost identical object. Prior art for copyright is meaningless unless it is about authorship. You can still do a clean room implementation and ignore prior art.

But the current interpretation is that you cannot claim authorship over things that were already in the public domain. Feel free to read the case notes and follow some of the links in there for more info. Am I not interpreting the court rulings correctly?

——

Considering de novo the evidence before the district court, we hold that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment. Johannsongs failed to offer admissible evidence to rebut Ferrara's analysis, so there is no genuine dispute of material fact as to his conclusions that Söknuður and You Raise Me Up are not substantially similar and most of their similarities are attributable to prior art. Based on these conclusions, Johannsongs has failed to satisfy the extrinsic test and Defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#788

Post by sirsinsalot »

visarga wrote: post #613
sirsinsalot wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A commons of knowledge is a public good." Yes but this copilot model takes that, adds value and doesn't itself join the public common good. Instead it takes it, and makes you pay to have it back in another form. If copilot were open source and the model released for the public good, being built of public data (in your scenario) we would have a very different conversation.

It costs money to run a huge language model with low latency, in the loop with you - charging 10$/month is reasonable. You need multiple GPUs to load even a single copy. Copilot is adding something extra to the original code - it selects the recommendation from the whole corpus, while keeping the surrounding context into consideration and adapting to your variable names. And in reality 99.9% of the generated code has…

You are incorrect. The code it generates is substantially the same (complete with comments) as the input, which is often sought without permission and in violation of license.

And offers nothing back to those authors in return.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#789

Post by sirsinsalot »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #751
visarga wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs money to run a huge language model with low latency, in the loop with you - charging 10$/month is reasonable. You need multiple GPUs to load even a single copy. Copilot is adding something extra to the original code - it selects the recommendation from the whole corpus, while keeping the surrounding context into consideration and adapting to your variable names. And in reality 99.9% of the generated code has…

Thank you for you this. I wouldn't never been able to articulate it better - people are just annoyed that someone is making m money and they aren't, without considering why that is.

That's not at all what people are annoyed at and to be reductive like that is childish.

The issue is consent of using people's code as input and paying nothing back.

Also the parent comment is substantially technically wrong on a number of points, but feel free to use it as validation for yourself.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#790

Post by sirsinsalot »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #752
sirsinsalot wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an AI "listened" to music and created new samples for musicians to use for a fee, do you not think the original musicians should be compensated? The value transfer is basically theft. It isn't about the usefulness of the service, or even that something similar is a good thing ... it is about the execution and what it says about fairness for those that worked to create the data it depends on to produce value.

If I listen to music and create samples to be sold, is it theft?

If your aim is to produce music that is directly derived from what you listened to ... yes. And this has been tested in court time and again.

AI isn't being inspired or creative, it is mass scale and mechanised bootlegging.

To compare it to human inspiration is naive or wishful thinking.

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