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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

#191

Post by snarfy »

williamcotton wrote: post #38
ghoward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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_...

> What did the recording do to the live musician?

The recording destroyed the occupation of being a live musician. People still do it for what amounts to tip money, but it used to be a real job that people could make a living off of. If you had a business and wanted to differentiate it by having music, you had to pay people to play it live. It was the only way.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] »

shadowgovt wrote: post #111
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…

Searching for the function names in his libraries, I'm seeing some 32,000 hits. I suspect he has a different problem which (thanks to Microsoft) is now a problem he has to care about: his code probably shows up in one or more repos copy-pasted with improper LGPL attribution. There'd be no way for Copilot to know that had happened, and it would have mixed in the code. (As a side note: understanding why an ML engine ou…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by zopa »

stickfigure wrote: post #90
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,…

Yeah, inequality sucks. So how about we focus on making the world better for everyone instead of making the world equally shitty for everyone?

Because we’re not the ones with the power. People with limited power pick the fights they might win, not the fights that maximize total welfare for everyone including large copyright holders. There’s no moral obligation to be a philosopher king unless you’re actually on a throne.

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

#194

Post by __alexs »

lucideer wrote: post #174
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 don't know specifically what DALL-E was trained on, but if it's art for which the artists' have not consented to it being used to train AI then that's problematic. I haven't seen any objections to DALL-E on that basis specifically though, whereas all the discussion of Copilot is around the fact that code authorship & Github accounts are not intrinsically tied together, making it impossible to have code authors cons…

Stable Diffusion and DallE were both trained on copyrighted content scraped from the internet with no consent from the publishers.

It's quite a common complaint because some of the most popular prompts involve just appending an artist's name to something to get it to copy their style.

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

#195

Post by heavyset_go »

XorNot wrote: post #152
pclmulqdq wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the distinction is that only one of those classes tends to produce exact copies of work. Programmers get very upset at DALL-E and Stable Diffusion producing exact (and near-exact) copies of artwork too. In contrast to exact copying, production of imitations (not exact copies, but "X in the style of Y") is something that artists have been doing for centuries, and is widely thought of as part of arts education.…

I'm mildly suspicious that this example is an implementation of a generic matrix functionality though: you couldn't patent this sort of work, because it's not patentable - it's a mathematics. It's fundamentally a basic operation, that would have to be implemented with a similar structure regardless of how you do it.

Mathematics is not patentable, but you can patent the steps a computer takes to compute the results of that particular algorithm.

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

#196

Post by sumedh »

insanitybit wrote: post #149
Rimintil wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That can't possibly be a valid claim, right? It has indeed happened. https://boingboing.net/2018/09/05/mozart-bach-sorta-mach.htm... Sony later withdrew their copyright claim. There are two pieces to copyright when it comes to public domain: * The work (song) itself -- can't copyright that * The recording -- you are the copyright owner. No one, without your permission, can re-post your recording And of course, ther…

> Sony later withdrew their copyright claim. Right, that's my point... I can sue anyone for anything, doesn't mean I'll win.

> I can sue anyone for anything, doesn't mean I'll win.

You cant sue if you dont have money, a big corp can sue even if they know they are wrong.

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

#197

Post by tremon »

insanitybit wrote: post #61
SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this isn’t like photography and portrait artistry. This is more like a wealthy person stealing your entire art catalog, laundering it in some fancy way, and then claiming they are the original creator. Stable Diffusion has literally been used to create new art by screenshotting someone’s live-streamed art creation process as the seed. While creating derivative work has always been considered art(such as deletion…

> This is more like a wealthy person stealing your entire art catalog, laundering it in some fancy way, and then claiming they are the original creator. If I take a song, cut it up, and sing over it, my release is valid. If I parody your work, that's my work. If you paint a picture of a building and I go to that spot and take a photograph of that building it is my work. I can derive all sorts of things, things that I…

Fair use is an affirmative defense. Others can still sue you for copying, and you will have to hope a judge agrees with your defense. How do you think Google v. Oracle would have turned out if Google's defense was "no your honor, we didn't copy the Java sources. We just used those sources as input to our creative algorithms, and this is what they independently produced"?

If I take a song, cut it up, and sing over it, my release is valid

"valid", how? You still have to pay royalties to the copyright holder of the original song, and you don't get to claim it as your own.

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

#198

Post by __alexs »

williamcotton wrote: post #38
ghoward wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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_...

> What did the photograph do to the portrait artist?

It completely destroyed the jobs of photo realistic portrait artists. You only have stylised portrait painting now and now that is going to be ripped off too.

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

#199

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

> For myself, I am skeptical of intellectual property in the first place. I say go for it.

Me too. I think copyright and these silly restrictions should be abolished.

At the same time, I can't get over the fact these self-serving corporations are all about "all rights reserved" when it benefits them while at the same time undermining other people's rights. Microsoft absolutely knows that what they're doing is wrong. Recently it was pointed out to me that Microsoft employees can't even look at GPL source code, lest they subconsciously reproduce it. Yet they think their software can look at other people's code and reproduce it? What a load of BS.

I'll forgive them for going for it the second copyright is gone. Then it won't be a crime for any of us to copy Windows and Office either. You bet we're gonna go for it too.

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

#200

Post by ghoward »

c7b wrote: post #127
ghoward wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SD is better than the other two, but it will still centralize control. I imagine that Disney would take issue with SD if material that Disney owned the copyright to was used in SD. They would sue. SD would have to be taken off the market. Thus, Disney has the power to ensure that their copyrighted material remains protected from outside interests, and they can still create unique things that bring in audiences. Any s…

> I imagine that Disney would take issue with SD if material that Disney owned the copyright to was used in SD. They would sue. SD would have to be taken off the market. Are you sure? I'm not familiar with the exact data set they used for SD and whether or not Disney art was included, but my understanding is that their claim to legality comes from arguing that the use of images as training data is 'fair use'. Anyone…

> Are you sure?

Yes, I'm sure.

> I'm not familiar with the exact data set they used for SD and whether or not Disney art was included, but my understanding is that their claim to legality comes from arguing that the use of images as training data is 'fair use'.

They could argue that. But since the American court system is currently (almost) de facto "richest wins," their argument will probably not mean much.

The way to tell if something was in the dataset would be to use the name of a famous Disney character and see what it pulls up. If it's there, then once the Disney beast finds out, I'm sure they'll take issue with it.

And by the way, I don't buy all of the arguments for machine learning as fair use. Sure, for the training itself, yes, but once the model is used by others, you now have a distribution problem.

More in my whitepaper against Copilot at [1].

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/copilot.pdf

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