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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#421
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

Expect you're not licensing functions, you're licensing a repository. If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

> If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

It is…

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#422

Why would anyone want to stop Copilot is beyond me. Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. If you put your code publicly on the internet, you should expect that people will reuse your code at some poi…

> Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. > Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available (and free to copy and use), in the…

> Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available

Why are you asking this as if the answer might be no?

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#423
It's hilarious how when I express displeasure about AI image generators looking likely to take a huge bite out of my profession of "artist" and playing extremely fast and loose with fair use, I get told that it's completely inevitable now and I should either retrain as a prompt engineer or go join the buggy whip manufacturers, but now that this is clearly violating programmer copyrights, you folks are starting to get angry.

I'll just leave y'all with my favorite of the things you keep telling me to STFU about art AI with: If you're the kind of programmer who feels threatened by this, then you're not a real programmer.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#424

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…

> 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)? A future where technology is developed in accordance with longstanding law? Also, maybe a future where my copyrighted works are compensated for when they're being used to automate my job aw…

> If the music industry can deal with royalties, maybe software can, too?

Maybe this is not the industry to emulate: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/how-mus...

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#425
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

Expect you're not licensing functions, you're licensing a repository. If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

>If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

I'm assuming you're referring to fair use. In that case whether it's copyright infringement or not is very situational (the legal standard consists of a test with various subjective factors) and isn't as simple as "it's less than a paragraph so I can copy whatever I want".

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#426

Why would anyone want to stop Copilot is beyond me. Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. If you put your code publicly on the internet, you should expect that people will reuse your code at some poi…

You want to use my code, without ever knowing I wrote it? You want to use my hard work, regurgitated anonymously, stripped of all credit, stripped of all attribution, stripped of all identity and ancestry and citation? FUCK YOU!

Training must be opt in, not opt out.

Every artist, every creative individual, must EXPLICITLY OPT IN to having their hard work regurgitated anonymously by Copilot or Dall-E or whatever.

If you want to donate your code or your painting or your music so it can easily be "written" or "painted", in whole or in part, by everyone else, without attribution, then go ahead and opt in.

But if they don't EXPLICITLY OPT IN, you can't use the artist's or author's creative work for training.

All these code/art washing systems, that absorb and mix and regurgitate the hard work of creative people must be strictly opt in.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#427
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

Expect you're not licensing functions, you're licensing a repository. If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

> If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

Note that this may not actually be true, and you may need to pay to license even shorter excerpts of creative work. Copyright is a complex topic. It's not always safe to assume that you have the rights you think you have, in terms of reproducing others' work.

For example: "The proportion of a total work is not the only factor, though. If you are including the most crucial aspect of a work, even if it is only a small part, then the question of “substantiality” comes into play." [1]

[1] https://www.dukeupress.edu/getmedia/3363cb6e-04b6-43ec-b004-...

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#428
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

Not everyone believes in intellectual property and good luck enforcing that license worldwide.

So? Most of the developed world have legal systems that does believe in intellectual property. The fact that a few people "don't believe in intellectual property" because they want to torrent movies/games is mostly irrelevant when it comes to the software engineering profession.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#429

Why would anyone want to stop Copilot is beyond me. Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. If you put your code publicly on the internet, you should expect that people will reuse your code at some poi…

> Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. > Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available (and free to copy and use), in the…

> Following this line of thought, do you think that all code from all software should be open source and publicly available

Let's help shape this thought: Copyright should be abolished entirely. It is one of many monetization schemes and its negative effects greatly outweigh its positives.

We know people won't stop writing software in the absence of copyright. We know they won't stop writing books, singing songs, etc. Copyright is not the primary motivator for either science or art.

Will we need new monetization structures? Of course. But generally speaking we already have them where it matters.

End copyright entirely.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#430
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

Expect you're not licensing functions, you're licensing a repository. If I use a sentence or even a paragraph from a copyrighted book, it's not copyright infringement.

If you take a function from a repository (or a sentence from a book), it is the unlicensed use of copyrighted material. Everything in the repository is covered by the license, functions, files… everything.

Whether or not it is infringement depends on if the use can be considered fair use. This is a more nuanced question and is not always clear.

In this case (Copilot) the real question is how transformative the AI training is. Given how verbatim some of the outputs are makes the argument less clear.

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