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Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

blogs.microsoft.com

11–20 of 398 posts

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#11
With a big asterik-- "customers... must not attempt to generate infringing materials..."

It hinges on what *Microsoft* decides "attempting to generate infringing materials" means. You'd like it to mean that it only excludes use when you're doing something you know would infringe copyright, like "reproduce the entire half life 2 source code." But who knows.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#12

With a big asterik-- "customers... must not attempt to generate infringing materials..." It hinges on what *Microsoft* decides "attempting to generate infringing materials" means. You'd like it to mean that it only excludes use when you're doing something you know would infringe copyright, like "reproduce the entire half life 2 source code." But who knows.

That's just legal speak for "any copyright infringement is your fault".

The question though about microsoft stealing people's code and reselling it still stands.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#13

With a big asterik-- "customers... must not attempt to generate infringing materials..." It hinges on what *Microsoft* decides "attempting to generate infringing materials" means. You'd like it to mean that it only excludes use when you're doing something you know would infringe copyright, like "reproduce the entire half life 2 source code." But who knows.

Yeah, that's a truck-sized loophole right there.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#15
This is a very clever move by Microsoft. In essence they are painting a giant bullseye on their back to any lawsuits that may arise. The idea being that they have the resources to challenge them (they aren't wrong).

The way AI is going I'm sure we'll see some landmark cases very soon. It is very much in Microsoft's interest to grow this market as fast as possible and be at the center of it. This removes one of the key impediments to adopting generated code for smaller orgs: "Will I get sued if this product generates code that is copyrighted?".

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#16

With a big asterik-- "customers... must not attempt to generate infringing materials..." It hinges on what *Microsoft* decides "attempting to generate infringing materials" means. You'd like it to mean that it only excludes use when you're doing something you know would infringe copyright, like "reproduce the entire half life 2 source code." But who knows.

> It hinges on what Microsoft decides "attempting to generate infringing materials" means.

No, ultimately, it hinges on what a court enforcing the commitment believes “attempting to generate infringing materials” means.

(OTOH. it also means Microsoft ha an even bigger incentive to use its lobbying power to assure that the law is such that liability rarely occurs with the use of these tools.)

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#17
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that

Because now every copyright claim for GPL SW will hit the wall of Microsoft's lawyers.

According to the alleged playbook, the thing being extinguished is the same as the thing being extended.

But Microsoft has had a wall of lawyers for a long time. Microsoft's potential first-party GPL violations would have been defended by their lawyers for decades now.

This take seems to be stretching for a Microsoft bad interpretation.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#18
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you say that

Because now every copyright claim for GPL SW will hit the wall of Microsoft's lawyers.

People being able to get around copyright violations sounds like something that promotes the sharing of code not extinguishing it.

Re: Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

#20

You can now launder GPL code with the confidence that Microsoft's world class legal team will have your back if you're sued for it.

I don't know why it is just GPL people talk about. MPL, Apache, MIT licenses all have additional terms beyond a basic public domain equivalent license. None of those terms are being respected.

I agree with your point, I'm just using the GPL as an example of a license people tend to know the stipulations of.
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