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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

#101

Post by msbarnett »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #63
msbarnett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Lots of people ironically put the Getty watermark on pictures and memes that they make to satirically imply that they are pulling stock photos off the internet with the printscreen function instead of paying for them.

Memes generally would not fall under the category of non-copyrighted material; they’re most of the time extremely copyrighted material just being used without permission. And even a wholly original work an artist sarcastically puts a Getty watermark and then licensed under Creative Commons or something would fall into very murky territory – the Getty watermark itself is the intellectual property of Getty. The original image author might plead fair use as satire, but satirical intentions aren’t really a defence available to DALL-E.

So even if we’re assuming these were wholly original works that the author placed under something like a Creative Commons license, the fact that it incorporated an image they had no rights to would at the very least create a fairly tangled copyright situation that any really rigorous evaluation of the copyright status of every image in the training set would tend to argue towards rejecting as not worth the risk of litigation.

But the more likely scenario here is that they did minimal at best filtering of the training set for copyrights.

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

#102

Post by ghoward »

williamcotton wrote: post #76
ghoward wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

> 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.

I disagree, but this is a debate worth having.

This is why I disagree: humans don't copy just copyrighted material.

I am in the middle of developing and writing a romance short story. Why? Because my writing has a glaring weakness: characters, and romance stands or falls on characters. It's a good exercise to strengthen that weakness.

Anyway, both of the two people in the (eventual) couple developed from my real life, and not from any copyrighted material. For instance, the man will basically be a less autistic and less selfish version of myself. The woman will basically be the kind of person that annoys me the most in real life: bright, bubbly, always touching people, etc.

There is no copyrighted material I am getting these characters from.

In addition, their situation is not typical of such stories, but it does have connections to my life. They will (eventually) end up in a ballroom dance competition. Why that? So the male character hates it. I hate ballroom dance during a three-week ballroom dancing course in 6th grade, the girls made me hate ballroom dancing. I won't say how, but they did.

That's the difference between humans and machines: machines can only copyright and mix other copyrightable material; humans can copy real life. In other words, machines can only copy a representation; humans can copy the real thing.

Oh, and the other difference is emotion. I've heard that people without the emotional center of their brains can take six hours to choose between blue and black pens. There is something about emotions that drives decision-making, and it's decision-making that drives art.

When you consider that brain chemistry, which is a function of genetics and previous choices, is a big part of emotions, then it's obvious that those two things, genetics and previous choices, are also inputs to the creative process. Machines don't have those inputs.

Those are the non-religious reasons why I think humans have more originality than machines, including neural networks.

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

#103

Post by williamcotton »

williamcotton wrote: post #13

Is the code in question even covered by copyright in the first place? It seems utilitarian in nature. Oh, the comments! Those are covered by copyright for sure.

You know, I make it a habit of not trying to get upset by downvotes but this is really absurd. What am I saying that is incorrect? Am I being rude? What exactly do you disagree with?

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

#104

Post by lupire »

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.

YouTube does this moderation in order to avoid legal pressure from copyright holders, as in

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v.....

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

#105

Post by thorum »

ianbutler wrote: post #82
thorum wrote: post #29

What might be going on here is that Copilot pulls code it thinks may be relevant from other files in your VS Code project. You have the original code open in another tab, so Copilot uses it as a reference example. For evidence, see the generated comment under the Copilot completion: "Compare this snippet from Untitled-1.cpp" - that's the AI accidentally repeating the prompt it was given by Copilot.

I just tested it myself, and I most certainly do not have his source open, and it reproduced his code verbatim with just the function header in a random test c file I created in the middle of a rust project I'm working on.

Ah ok.

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

#106

Post by lupire »

lbotos wrote: post #74
insanitybit wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 operate…

The problem is that YouTube AI thinks your recording is the same as every other recording, because it doesn't understand the difference between composition and recording.

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

#107

Post by CapsAdmin »

I would imagine the root problem here is people taking copyrighted code, pasting it in their project and disregarding the license. To me this seems common, especially when it comes to toy, test and hobby projects.

I don't see how copilot or similar tools can solve this problem without vetting each project.

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

#108

Post by pessimizer »

Jevon23 wrote: post #31
colesantiago wrote: post #2

Github Copilot is not AI at all, it is just a dumb code regurgitator that just sells you code you wrote on GitHub and takes all the credit for it shamelessly.

Hopefully you understand how artists feel about DALL-E and Midjourney now.

I like that if you prompt these with specific artists names, they try their best to rip those particular artists off.

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

#109

Post by lupire »

deworms wrote: post #88

It prints this code because you have it open in another editor tab. Wish people who don't know at all how it works stopped acting all outraged when they're laughably wrong.

Can you link to more info about this? If this is accurate, many people aren't aware.

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

#110

Post by naikrovek »

ianbutler wrote: post #85

I just tested it myself on a random c file I created in the middle of a rust project I'm working on, it reproduced his full code verbatim from just the function header so clearly it does regurgitate proprietary code unlike some people have said, I do not have his source so co-pilot isn't just using existing context. I've been finding co-pilot really useful but I'll be pausing it for now, and I'm glad I have only been…

what proprietary code? the guy on Twitter is seeing his own GPL code bring reproduced. nothing proprietary there.

do you have the "don't reproduce code verbatim" preference set?

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