Other than the legality of this code being copied almost verbatim - who is the person who would use it? A person who would use it could also write it. If they cannot write it, why would they ever use this very specific code that magically appeared?
GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
221–230 of 806 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#222Earlier 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,…
I think copilot is a clearer copyright violation than any of the stable diffusion projects though because code has a much narrower band of expression than images. It's really easy to look at the output of CoPilot and match it back to the original source and say these are the same. With stable diffusion it's much closer to someone remixing and aping the images than it is reproducing originals. I haven't been following…
I don’t think copilot is intrinsically a copyright violation, as you seem to be alluding to. Examples like this seem to be more controversial, but I’m not sure there’s a clear copyright violation there either.
If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Probably not very many. Who should own the copyright for each of them? Would the outcome be different for any other product feature? If you asked every dev on earth to write a function that checked a JWT claim, how many of them would be more or less exactly the same? Would that be a copyright violation? I hope the courts answer some of these questions one day.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#223As some other commenters have noted, it seems like the copyrighted code is being copied and pasted into many other codebases (shadowgovt says they found 32,000 hits), which are then (illegally) representing an incorrect license.
So obviously the source of the error is one or more third parties, not Microsoft, and it's obviously impossible for Microsoft to be responsible in advance for what other people claim to license.
It does make you wonder, however, if Microsoft ought to be responsible for obeying a type of "DCMA takedown" request that should apply to ML models -- not on all 32,000 sources but rather on a specified text snippet -- to be implemented the next time the model is trained (or if it's practical for filters to be placed on the output of the existing model). I don't know what the law says, but it certainly seems like a takedown model would be a good compromise here.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#224I’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’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.
This is a fascinating observation and I think there's a lot of truth to it. But maybe our inference should be that these systems mistreat each of us, even if it's difficult to see unless it's falling on you.
Maybe a more important question than whether or not this is a violation of intellectual property is whether this is a violation of human dignity, not that it's illegal (though in this case, it may be) but that it's extremely rude in a way that we don't necessarily have the vocabulary for yet.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#225It 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.
Code Snippets Data
Depending on your preferred telemetry settings, GitHub Copilot may also collect and retain the following, collectively referred to as “code snippets”: source code that you are editing, related files and other files open in the same IDE or editor, URLs of repositories and files paths.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the is exacty the gap the gp is mentionning: to a trained artist it is clear as water that the original image has been lifted wholesale, even if for instance the colors are adjusted here and there. You put it as a remix, but remixes are credited and expressed as such.
I haven’t seen any side by sides that seem like a lift. Any examples? I don’t see Midjourney (et al) as remixes, myself. More like “inspired by.”
Its clear where the knowhow was lifted from it doesnt matter that if the final image is somewhat unique (almost every image is).
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#227It 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.
> OpenAI Codex was trained on publicly available source code and natural language, so it works for both programming and human languages. The GitHub Copilot extension sends your comments and code to the GitHub Copilot service, and it relies on context, as described in Privacy below - i.e., file content both in the file you are editing, as well as neighboring or related files within a project. It may also collect the URLs of repositories or file paths to identify relevant context. The comments and code along with context are then used by OpenAI Codex to synthesize and suggest individual lines and whole functions.
"How Does Copilot Work"
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#228I think people may be drastically over-valuing their code. If it was emitting an entire meaningful product, that would be something else. But it’s emitting nuts and bolts. If the issue is more specifically copyright infringement, then leverage the legal apparatus in place for that. Their lawyers might listen better. This is not a strongly held opinion and if you disagree I would love to hear your constructive thought…
If they're that trivial and valueless, Microsoft should have no problem coming up with their own training sets instead of stealing them en masse from the public.
If I create something, I get to define the terms of its use, reproduction, distribution, etc. "Value" plays no part in whether someone can appropriate and distribute that creation without permission from the creator.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the is exacty the gap the gp is mentionning: to a trained artist it is clear as water that the original image has been lifted wholesale, even if for instance the colors are adjusted here and there. You put it as a remix, but remixes are credited and expressed as such.
I haven’t seen any side by sides that seem like a lift. Any examples? I don’t see Midjourney (et al) as remixes, myself. More like “inspired by.”
Not safe for work, but one example I saw going around:
https://twitter.com/ebkim00/status/1579485164442648577
Not sure if this was fed the original image as an input or not.
Also seen a couple cases where people explicitly trained a network to imitate an artist's work, like the deceased Kim Jung Gi.
Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code
#230Is 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.
> It seems utilitarian in nature
That has no bearing on copyright.