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GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

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Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#71

Post by cipherboy »

insanitybit wrote: post #50
tpxl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…

> Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube That can't possibly be a valid claim, right? AFAIK copyright is "gone" after the original author dies + ~70 years. Before fairly recently it was even shorter. Something from 1640 surely can't be claimed under copyright protection. There are much more recent changes where that might not be the case, but 1640? > When Jane Rando uses dev…

The poster isn't claiming that this is a valid DMCA suit. Nearly everyone who is at a mildly decent level and has posted their own recordings of classical musical to YouTube have received these claims _in their Copyright section_. YouTube itself prefixes this with some lengthy disclaimer about how this isn't the DMCA process but that they reserve the right to kick you off their site based on fraudulent matches made by their algorithms.

They are absolutely completely and utterly bullshit. Nobody with half an ear for music will mistake my playing of Bach's G Minor Sonata with Arthur Grumiaux (too many out of tune notes :-D). But yet, YouTube still manages to match this to my playing, probably because they have never heard it before now (I recorded it mere minutes before).

So no, it isn't a valid claim, but this algorithm trained on certain examples of work, manages to make bad classifications with potentially devastating ramifications for the creator (I'm not a monetized YouTube artist, but if this triggered a complete lockout of my Google account(s), this likely end Very Badly).

I think it's a very relevant comparison to the GP's examples.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#72

Post by alxlaz »

insanitybit wrote: post #50
tpxl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…

> Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube That can't possibly be a valid claim, right? AFAIK copyright is "gone" after the original author dies + ~70 years. Before fairly recently it was even shorter. Something from 1640 surely can't be claimed under copyright protection. There are much more recent changes where that might not be the case, but 1640? > When Jane Rando uses dev…

> That can't possibly be a valid claim, right?

It's not, but good luck talking to a human at Youtube when the video gets taken down.

> Again, that doesn't sound like a valid suit. Surely she would win?

Assuming she could afford the lawyer, and that she lives through the stress and occasional mistreatment by the authority, yes, probably. Both are big ifs, though.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#73

Post by akudha »

ghoward wrote: post #27
acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

I am a programmer who has written extensively on my blog and HN against Copilot. I am also not a hypocrite; I do not like DALL-E or Stable Diffusion either. As a sibling comment implies, these AI tools give more power to people who control data, i.e., big companies or wealthy people, while at the same time, they take power away from individuals. Copilot is bad for society. DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are bad for soci…

but I sure wish I had the resources to sue these powerful entities.

I wonder if there is a crowdfunding platform like gofundme, for lawsuits. Or can gofundme itself can be used for this purpose? It would be fantastic to sue the mega polluters, lying media like Fox etc.

That said, even with a lot of money, are these cases winnable? Especially given the current state of Supreme Court and other federal courts?

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#74

Post by lbotos »

insanitybit wrote: post #50
tpxl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…

> Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube That can't possibly be a valid claim, right? AFAIK copyright is "gone" after the original author dies + ~70 years. Before fairly recently it was even shorter. Something from 1640 surely can't be claimed under copyright protection. There are much more recent changes where that might not be the case, but 1640? > When Jane Rando uses dev…

> That can't possibly be a valid claim, right?

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that while the "1640's violin composition" itself may be out of copyright, if I record myself playing it, my recording of that piece is my copyright. So if you took my file (somehow) and used it without my permission, and I could prove it, I could claim copyright infringement.

That's my understanding, and I've personally operated that way to avoid any issues since it errs on the side of safety. (Want to use old music, make sure the license of the recording explicitly says public domain or has license info)

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#75

Post by cipherboy »

insanitybit wrote: post #65
Rodeoclash wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a legal copyright claim, it's a "YouTube" copyright claim which is entirely owned and enforced by YouTube.

OK but then we're just talking about content moderation, which seems like a separate issue. I think using "YouTube copyright claim" as a proxy for "legal copyright claim" is more to the parent's point, especially since that's how YouTube purports the claim to work. Otherwise it feels irrelevant.

Copyright claims are a form of content moderation, by preventing reuse of content that others own.

But it can still be weaponized to prevent legitimate resubmissions of parallel works, that can potentially deplatform legitimate users, depending on the reviewer and the clarity of the rebuttal.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#76

Post by williamcotton »

ghoward wrote: post #53
williamcotton wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a programmer and a songwriter and I am not worried about these tools and I don’t think they are bad for society. What did the photograph do to the portrait artist? What did the recording do to the live musician? Here’s some highfalutin art theory on the matter, from almost a hundred years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

Do you know what's different about the photograph or the recording? They are still their own separate works! If a painter paints a person for commission, and then that person also commissions a photographer to take a picture of them, is the photographer infringing on the copyright of the painter? Absolutely not; the works are separate. If a recording artist records a public domain song that another artist performs li…

I'm not sure sure that originality is that different between a human and a neural network. That is to say that what a human artist is doing has always involved a lot of mixing of existing creations. Art needs to have a certain level of familiarity in order to be understood by an audience. I didn't invent 4/4 time or a I-IV-V progression and I certainly wasn't the first person to tackle the rhyme schemes or subject matter of my songs. I wouldn't be surprised if there were fragments from other songs in my lyrics or melodies, either from something I heard a long time ago or perhaps just out of coincidence. There's only so much you can do with a folk song to begin with!

BTW, what happened after the photograph is that there were less portrait artists. And after the recording there were less live musicians. There are certainly no less artists nor musicians, though!

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#77

Post by nottorp »

msbarnett wrote: post #24
machinekob wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure DALL-E was trained only on not copyright material ( they say so :| ). But to be honest if your code is open source im pretty sure Microsoft don't care about licence they'll just use it cause "reasons" same about stable diffusion they don't give a fuk about data if its in internet they'll use it so its topic that probably will be regulated in few years. Until then lets hope they'll get milked (both Mic…

> I'm pretty sure DALL-E was trained only on not copyright material Nope. DALL-E generates images with the Getty Watermark, so clearly there’s copyrighted materials in its training set: https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/comments/xdjinf/its_pretty_o...

Dunno about Getty, but I've been shown the cover for Beatles' Yellow Submarine done in different colors as some great AI advancement.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#78

Post by bayindirh »

acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

I, with my software developer hat, am not excited by AI. Not a bit, honestly. Esp. about these big models trained on huge amount of data, without any consent.

Let me be perfectly clear. I'm all for the tech. The capabilities are nice. The thing I'm strongly against is training these models on any data without any consent.

GPT-3 is OK, training it with public stuff regardless of its license is not.

Copilot is OK, training on with GPL/LGPL licensed code without consent is not.

DALL-E/MidJourney/Stable Diffusion is OK. Training it with non public domain or CC0 images is not.

"We're doing something amazing, hence we need no permission" is ugly to put it very lightly.

I've left GitHub because of CoPilot. Will leave any photo hosting platform if they hint any similar thing with my photography, period.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#79

Post by make3 »

naikrovek wrote: post #28
jonnycomputer wrote: post #5

Microsoft should just train it on all their proprietary code instead. See how sanguine they are about it then.

who said they haven't. for something to show up verbatim in the output of a textual AI model it needs to be an input many times. I wonder if the problem is not copilot, but many people using this person's code without license or credit, and copilot being trained on those pieces of code as well. copilot may just be exposing a problem rather than creating one. I don't know much about AI, and I don't use copilot.

there's exactly no way they have

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#80

Post by ghaff »

ghoward wrote: post #57
drstewart wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great! I assume you believe all search engines should be illegal then?

Search engines don't sell the information of others; they sell certain metadata of that information, namely, the location of that information.

And excerpts of that information in many cases.
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