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Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

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Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#11

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

bugfix-66 wrote: post #7
mixmastamyk wrote: post #6

What a bizarre post. I haven't come to a definitive conclusion on the subject, but "how can I help a trillion-dollar organization?" is very far from my first thought on it. Is this a service folks have become dependent on?

It boggles the mind. I was also in disbelief when I saw this post.

You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#12

Post by klyrs »

You could try to contribute a license-finder for copilot that would detect potential copyright violations and emit valid attribution / reproduce the licenses of copyrighted works that copilot's output is derived from.

Oh, and you'll want to detect incompatible software licenses and prevent derivative works from being created with such conflicts .

In so doing, you would be helping Microsoft to follow the law and respect my copyright. The lawsuit would probably evaporate overnight.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#13

Post by bugfix-66 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #11
bugfix-66 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles the mind. I was also in disbelief when I saw this post.

You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.

You can't take a person's name off their work and sell it.

People who work hard to produce open source software expect credit and acknowledgement for their work. That's why almost every license has an attribution clause.

If you don't want credit for your work, you use the MIT No Attribution License:

https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0

Not widely used, as you might expect.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#14

Post by klyrs »

warning26 wrote: post #10

For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I understand why most of the HN crowd is against this, because Microsoft is big and evil and people want to see them suffer. But realistically, a win here would effectively ban training AIs on the internet.

You paint us as petty and simpleminded. I have complicated feelings about Microsoft; I think they've done a lot of good and bad over my lifetime. My issues with copilot are principled. I have the exact same issue with non-Microsoft efforts to ingest copyrighted works and emit derivative works to the detriment of artists. Argue against that, not a pathetic strawman.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#15

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #11
bugfix-66 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles the mind. I was also in disbelief when I saw this post.

You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.

No, one does not, in fact, have to admit that. Your statement represents an opinion.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#16

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

You don't have to do a thing. Microsoft (and Amazon, with it's CodeWhisperer, and every other similar business building such services) went into this fight with their eyes wide open. They knew this would happen and are well prepared for it. And even among the FSF's own invited whitepapers on CoPilot (https://www.fsf.org/news/publication-of-the-fsf-funded-white...) was one ("Copyright implications of the use of code repositories to train a machine learning model") that that seemed to conclude that CoPilot-like services could defensibly say that copyright was not violated regardless of the license.

So if this suit succeeded, I would be very surprised. Even the FSF isn't rushing to file suit and they care about this controversy probably more than anyone.

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

klyrs wrote: post #14
warning26 wrote: post #10

For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I understand why most of the HN crowd is against this, because Microsoft is big and evil and people want to see them suffer. But realistically, a win here would effectively ban training AIs on the internet.

You paint us as petty and simpleminded. I have complicated feelings about Microsoft; I think they've done a lot of good and bad over my lifetime. My issues with copilot are principled. I have the exact same issue with non-Microsoft efforts to ingest copyrighted works and emit derivative works to the detriment of artists. Argue against that, not a pathetic strawman.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What can I personally do to fight AGAINST the Copilot class action?

#18

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

bugfix-66 wrote: post #13
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have to admit that it is Microsoft (and the other vendors of similar CoPilot-like services) that are on the side of "Information wants to be free!" this time. The irony of FOSS advocates reversing course on their own principles to oppose it is deep indeed.

You can't take a person's name off their work and sell it. People who work hard to produce open source software expect credit and acknowledgement for their work. That's why almost every license has an attribution clause. If you don't want credit for your work, you use the MIT No Attribution License: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT-0 Not widely used, as you might expect.

Such a short-sighted view. The grand goal of FOSS was the abolition of copyright protection for code and and the end of proprietary software, was it not? Credit and acknowledgment doesn't even figure into it.

What is a ML model that has knowledge of huge swaths of humanity's code (eventually all of it) and can serve as an assistant to build any kind of software on demand if not a huge milestone on the road to the total software freedom envisioned by RMS and GNU? People will be able to build whatever software they want, easily and at any time, and whatever the code they finally wind up with will even feed back into making the ML model even better for the future. One could still build closed source software or harp about "credit" but why bother? The ML model would replicate anything with a modest bit of effort. It might not have been the path to end-user freedom that the early FOSS proponents imagined but, if it works, that's victory.

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