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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

#51

Post by wtallis »

CameronNemo wrote: post #45
adastra22 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not costless to correct if you don't know who's code was an input in the first place.

It's intractable to preemptively avoid all possible copyright claims, but correcting them after being called out on it only requires adding the license and attribution required by whoever's currently suing you.

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

#52

Post by gjsman-1000 »

CameronNemo wrote: post #49
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why do you think it would only be 25 lines?

Because that is about, so far, the longest piece of clearly, demonstrably unique code that has ever been shown to have been copied. The longest you’d ever be able to clearly convince a court with, at least.

https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554/pho...

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

#53

Post by circuit10 »

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 only applies if you use the filters they have that prevent code from being copied directly, so that shouldn’t be likely to happen

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

#54

Post by jiofj »

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.

The API signatures were arguably the only thing that mattered.

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

#55

Post by wtallis »

seanhandley wrote: post #32
Scaevolus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Both things are hard to do well IMHO

That's not really a factor in determining what's eligible for copyright protection.

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

#56

Post by judge2020 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #23
tyingq wrote: post #14

Yet they don't feed their own closed source assets to Copilot for training...why not?

It's very telling that they train on millions of developers' code, but won't use their source. If it won't violate IP rights, there shouldn't be a problem. It suggests those whose code is trained upon have something to lose if the trained models are used by others.

It's likely a clash between some high level managers, and they just haven't pushed the issue to the point that Satya has to make a decision for the org as a whole.

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

#57

Post by bcrosby95 »

naikrovek wrote: post #38

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?

"people on this site" consists of thousands of people, including you, with a variety of opinions, and not everyone comments on every subject. You're basically complaining that not everyone believes the same thing.

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

#59

Post by sublinear »

Yeah is it becoming clear enough to some people yet that you can't replace software engineers, let alone really help them, with AI? This is only going to get worse, not better.

Copilot is such a flawed product from the start. It's not even a matter of its ability to write "good" code. The concept is just dumb.

Code is necessarily consumed by people first before it's executed by a computer in a production environment. There are many ways to get a computer to do something, but the approval process by experienced humans is vastly more important than the drafting of it. Software dev is already incredibly cheap and the last place to cut costs.

There is no AI threat other than the one posed by grifters trying to convince you that there is.

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