Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#231

Post by rwalle »

deworms wrote: post #139
smt88 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot wouldn't be shut down or neutered because "a few vocal people" protested against it. It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. You act like Microsoft is trying to do a public service and people are angry about it. The reality is that they're taking billions of hours of work and using it to build a product t…

Quoted post unavailable.

Well... If you do a search you'll find that there are actually lots of lawsuits related to open source license violation, mostly around GPL license. Maybe educate yourself first

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#232

Post by [deleted] »

planetsprite wrote: post #154
rockemsockem wrote: post #128

What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? Where you have to opt into models or can opt out (and many wind up doing so)? OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al will STILL train such models that can do all the same things, but it will be much harder for non-industry-backed individuals to navigate the legal minefield w…

Any law where the penalty is a fine only exists for the poor. Any regulation where the penalty is in the millions only exists for small businesses.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#234

Post by striking »

williamcotton wrote: post #193
klyrs wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "look I prompted CoPilot for this piece of code that I already knew about and it spit it right out" https://twitter.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554 An english description plus three characters of a function name is enough to coax CoPilot into distributing LGPL-licensed code out of context, without a proper license. That's neither "emotional" nor "cherry-picked", it's a clear-cut license violation.

Quoted post unavailable.

From your second link:

> In a computer program, the lowest level of abstraction, the concrete code of the program, is clearly expression, while the highest level of abstraction, the general function of the program, might be better classified as the idea behind the program.

Copilot is alleged to be reproducing blocks of code verbatim, which fall into the expression side of the idea/expression distinction, which by your own links and statements appears to show that the allegations against Copilot are not false.

I'm not going to say you're necessarily disagreeing with reality (I'm not really sure what that's supposed to mean) but you're certainly contradicting the evidence you've brought.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#235

Post by kapoxjHLuMm1 »

rockemsockem wrote: post #221
numpad0 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with this comment[1] from the other thread; never previously thought that a process being transformative means input and output datatypes do not coincide, but maybe that is it. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240681

That's an interesting take, the whole level of indirection thing between Microsoft-OpenAI and StabilityAI and that research group is certainly another dimension to this that sort of muddies the waters.

very interesting indeed

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#237

Post by rockemsockem »

klllai wrote: post #187
Andys wrote: post #173

If you're against Copilot as developer, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Locking up code under non-permissive licenses stymies the pace of code development and increases the costs of progress dramatically. We all stand on the shoulders of others before us. Including the organisations that stand to benefit the most from aggressive licensing.

Copy & paste isn't "standing on the shoulders of others". It is more like being an intestinal parasite.

Not trying to overly advocate for copy-pasting here, but isn't copy-pasting just the ugly child of calling a library function? If it's a blind copy-paste it's pretty much the same effect. Surely you wouldn't call using a library being an intestinal parasite?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#238

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

williamcotton wrote: post #193
klyrs wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "look I prompted CoPilot for this piece of code that I already knew about and it spit it right out" https://twitter.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554 An english description plus three characters of a function name is enough to coax CoPilot into distributing LGPL-licensed code out of context, without a proper license. That's neither "emotional" nor "cherry-picked", it's a clear-cut license violation.

Quoted post unavailable.

> If the code was covered by license in the first place

the comment you're replying to stated that it was covered by the LGPL.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#239

Post by janef0421 »

renewiltord wrote: post #59

Honestly, Github Copilot seems fine. It's just a tool that you're responsible for using responsibly. If I Google something, and copy and paste that, then Google is not responsible for my infringing. It's just "intelligent autocomplete".

Google search doesn't return random snippets of text without indicating their source.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#240

Post by klyrs »

williamcotton wrote: post #193
klyrs wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "look I prompted CoPilot for this piece of code that I already knew about and it spit it right out" https://twitter.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554 An english description plus three characters of a function name is enough to coax CoPilot into distributing LGPL-licensed code out of context, without a proper license. That's neither "emotional" nor "cherry-picked", it's a clear-cut license violation.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Edit: Downvotes mean you disagree with reality.

Alternative theory: you're overconfident and wrong, and haven't even read the tweet I shared. CoPilot is observed to reproduce entire files (less two lines), down to variable names and comments, verbatim, from a repo that's covered by the LGPL.

If verbatim copies are not covered by copyright, then software can effectively never be copyrighted. And that there would be an extreme departure from "reality."

regarding your edit: this is a verbatim copy. The process you're describing is actually strengthening, not weakening, my argument. It allows material dissimilarity in the face of an overall similarity. Whatever process is meant to be applied to the licensed code and the allegedly infringing code, it will produce identical output given identical input. You're attempting to claim that the entire file would be deleted by the process and that the remainder would be an empty comparison which would (granted) be covered by fair use. And since CoPilot has been shown to redistribute multiple files, your "case" would hinge upon the entire repository not being covered by copyright. This is beyond absurd.

edit 2:

> Or don't! Just keep downvoting in support of your fantasies! Wheeeeee!

Please review the site guidelines. You're both whining about downvotes and sneering at the community with this. Probably time to take a break from the keyboard.

edit 3:

> Care to address the content of my claims?

Probably time to take a break from the keyboard.

Post reply on HN