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Microsoft will assume liability for legal copyright risks of Copilot

blogs.microsoft.com

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

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gumballindie wrote: post #12
fsdavcaa wrote: post #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.

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.

> legal speak for "any copyright infringement is your fault"

Proving intent is difficult. This basically means if you have emails in which someone describes their work as copyright laundering, Microsoft can use that to get out of indemnifying you.

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

#32

Post by seanhandley »

Scaevolus wrote: post #29
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same website that rejoiced when Oracle v Google resulted in a Google victory, despite Google arguably doing similar. They did so with 11,000 lines of Oracle's code, but it was decided to be fair use. If that's the case... I don't think a regurgitation of 12 lines of GPL code by accident here and there will be a strong argument against fair use. Adding to that: How many people here actually abide by the St…

11,000 lines of _declaring_ code-- the API signatures.

Defining the “what” is just as much a part of the intellectual property as defining the “how”. Both things are hard to do well IMHO

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

#33

Post by hollerith »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25
heavyset_go wrote: post #8

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.

This is the same website that rejoiced when Oracle v Google resulted in a Google victory, despite Google arguably doing similar. They did so with 11,000 lines of Oracle's code, but it was decided to be fair use. If that's the case... I don't think a regurgitation of 12 lines of GPL code by accident here and there will be a strong argument against fair use. Adding to that: How many people here actually abide by the St…

>How many people here actually abide by the StackOverflow contribution license of CC-BY-SA when copying and pasting code from there?

I always thought that code snippets that small are not considered by the Courts to be eligible for 'copyright protection'.

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

#34

Post by mnd999 »

jtchang wrote: post #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 ke…

They also have money so they’re worth suing.

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

#35

Post by gjsman-1000 »

hollerith wrote: post #33
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same website that rejoiced when Oracle v Google resulted in a Google victory, despite Google arguably doing similar. They did so with 11,000 lines of Oracle's code, but it was decided to be fair use. If that's the case... I don't think a regurgitation of 12 lines of GPL code by accident here and there will be a strong argument against fair use. Adding to that: How many people here actually abide by the St…

>How many people here actually abide by the StackOverflow contribution license of CC-BY-SA when copying and pasting code from there? I always thought that code snippets that small are not considered by the Courts to be eligible for 'copyright protection'.

In that case, is Copilot regurgitating 25 or so lines of GPL code, less than 1% of the time, eligible for copyright protection?

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

#36

Post by hangsi »

tyingq wrote: post #24
jfghi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot, I want to build a spreadsheet application and a database engine.

Ah, so for copyright reasons.

This isn't really copyright - more the microeconomics of losing market share/control.

Specifically, I think they are less concerned with (say) specific Excel code leaking than with the knock on effects of a cheap perfect substitute.

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

#37

Post by flatline »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #25
heavyset_go wrote: post #8

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.

This is the same website that rejoiced when Oracle v Google resulted in a Google victory, despite Google arguably doing similar. They did so with 11,000 lines of Oracle's code, but it was decided to be fair use. If that's the case... I don't think a regurgitation of 12 lines of GPL code by accident here and there will be a strong argument against fair use. Adding to that: How many people here actually abide by the St…

I do think this is relevant to the conversation.

I don’t copy/paste code from SO but there is sometimes inevitable duplication because sometimes there is only one right way to do something! Copyright can stray into the case of the ridiculous pretty quickly.

Is an interface declaration inherently different from, say, a merge sort implementation? It’s all code. But they also serve very different purposes. I do not think prior to Google v Oracle there was much case law to distinguish between different types of code, but in the industry we recognize all kinds of nuance.

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

#38

Post by naikrovek »

This is one of the things people on this site have been saying that Microsoft should do if they really stand behind Copilot, and now that they've done it, you have again moved the goalposts and this announcement is entirely insufficient.

How dare they? amirite?

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

#39

Post by adastra22 »

CameronNemo wrote: post #10
heavyset_go wrote: post #8

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.

Compliance with MIT/X11 license just requires distributing the license file with the binary. If you infringe, it is trivial and costless to correct.

Copyleft licenses are more troublesome for those who would rather not release source code. GPL is being used as a stand-in for all copyleft licenses.

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

#40

Post by backendanon »

stale2002 wrote: post #18
hulitu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The context is whether it extinguishes the legal protections of the owner by making the barrier to sue extraordinarily high. Conversely, if you write something that is copyright protected under the law, would you be OK with Microsoft effectively stealing that protected work and sharing it with the world without even attribution to you as the original author?
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