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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

#221

Post by bobthecowboy »

hyperman1 wrote: post #74
CameronNemo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you upload it to github, you give microsoft extra rights above the license you choose. I'm not sure they are bound by the license.

This is nonsense. The uploader is not necessarily the copyright holder of the code. The uploader is not necessarily in a position to grant extra rights above the actual license.

What happens if someone else uploads my code to github?

What happens if proprietary code is uploaded to github?

What happens if national secrets are posted to github?

In all of those cases, the person doing the upload does not "own" the content, nor did they choose the license.

There is no reasonable read of a ToS agreement that would allow Microsoft/Github extra rights to that content.

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

#222

Post by CamperBob2 »

yladiz wrote: post #123
CamperBob2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not how fair use works now , but many things about copyright law will have to change radically over the next few years. There's too much at stake.

What is at stake?

[flagged]

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

#223

Post by heisenzombie »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #193
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's likely that generative AI in general will be deemed fair use Everybody seems to be saying this, but I really don't think there's even 50% chance of it happening. Google books was fair use because it was a public benefit and did not take away from publishers or authors, to the contrary it helped people find their works. Compare generative AI which extracts the essence of people's works and recreates similar wor…

> Everybody seems to be saying this, but I really don't think there's even 50% chance of it happening. That's true it's probably 99% plus it happening or at-least that's the conclusion that the experts and lawyers hired to help evaluate AI startup valuations are coming too. Hired by banks, venture funds, short selling shops, etc plenty of people who don't depending on it being ok to make money. > "yes we're using cop…

Art made from a collage of, say, magazine photos does not supplant or substitute for the magazine photos which is why it's much more likely to be deemed fair-use. Despite the collage using perhaps large portions of the copyrighted photos, it is nonetheless transformative in the sense that no-one is deciding to buy the collage art instead of the magazine photo.

Contrast LLM-created code which is certainly a substitute for the original copyrighted work.

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

#224

Post by mistrial9 »

kube-system wrote: post #214
mistrial9 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are assuming fair and impartial judgement that is then implemented

I'm not sure what you're referring to. What do you think would be unfair or impartial?

here is what I was thinking -- in business (or war), parties can implement an unreasonable or illegal action in fact, then use time to rebuff others while making their position stronger.. or alternately simply pay gatekeepers or stakeholders while furthering their position, before others can actually stop the action. None of these or other scenarios involve a considered opinion by an impartial party with an effective implementation, in fact the key is to avoid impartial decision while gaining an advantage (and income) in the ground

I do not disagree with what you said, only that in reality, this is not the only way business conflicts are decided.

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

#225

Post by spott »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #167
satvikpendem wrote: post #47

It's likely that generative AI in general will be deemed fair use, due to its (generally) transformative nature. Sure, if you really coax it, you can get code or images out that look similar to existing ones, but the courts might see that generally speaking, it produces new content that has not been seen before, especially in the case of images. Google Books literally copied and pasted books to add to their online da…

> It's likely that generative AI in general will be deemed fair use Everybody seems to be saying this, but I really don't think there's even 50% chance of it happening. Google books was fair use because it was a public benefit and did not take away from publishers or authors, to the contrary it helped people find their works. Compare generative AI which extracts the essence of people's works and recreates similar wor…

>extracts the essence of people's works and recreates similar works (in terms of style, etc) while cutting out the original authors completely.

Only if you ask it to. At which point the person asking is at the very least culpable as well of violating someone's IP.

It is also illegal for me to pay someone to write Micky Mouse fan fiction (though if I don't publish it, this gets more murky).

> The argument you're suggesting will hold is essentially "yes we're using copyrighted works, but we're doing it at scale and blending it, so that's ok".

I want to flip this on its head: the argument you are suggesting is essentially "LLMs should be illegal because they can be asked to break copyright at scale!" It isn't illegal to be an author for hire, even though someone could potentially ask you to write fan fiction for their personal collection in the style of Tolkien, but because an LLM can do it at scale, it is illegal?

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

#226

Post by kube-system »

mistrial9 wrote: post #224
kube-system wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. What do you think would be unfair or impartial?

here is what I was thinking -- in business (or war), parties can implement an unreasonable or illegal action in fact, then use time to rebuff others while making their position stronger.. or alternately simply pay gatekeepers or stakeholders while furthering their position, before others can actually stop the action. None of these or other scenarios involve a considered opinion by an impartial party with an effective…

Yes, "the question" that I am referring to above is the currently lack of that impartial decision. Courts have yet to issue any ruling that is particularly useful for determining where the line is for the application of LLMs. I am saying that when the line for fair use is further defined in this context, it won't be predicated on which license, if any, the content has.

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

#227

Post by nadermx »

tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

Is there any evidence that it isn't also trained on parts of msfts code base?

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

#228

Post by CTDOCodebases »

cma wrote: post #148
jacquesm wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't be suing Microsoft though. Microsoft would come to your aid if you are being sued for copyright infringement. That's a different situation altogether. So this is an indemnification for damages, not a protection against being sued.

In the most extreme case depending on how case law shakes out, the use of the models by a third party and distribution of the results will incur statutory damages for each work the model was trained on. This could bankrupt Microsoft for offering indemnification to even a tiny company, but as a response Microsoft could instead breach contract and not provide the indemnification. After the company goes bankrupt shareho…

This makes sense. When I read the article I couldn't help but think of the legal fiasco between the IRS and the Church of Scientology.

I wonder if this is part of a broader strategy to get people comfortable with copilot in a similar way to how Uber got people comfortable to their product even though they were operating in a legal grey area. At a certain point the public becomes accustomed to it so the lawmakers just cave in to the demand.

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

#229

Post by j-bos »

nadermx wrote: post #227
tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

Is there any evidence that it isn't also trained on parts of msfts code base?

Is there any evidence it is?

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

#230

Post by Eliah_Lakhin »

tremon wrote: post #194

Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.

Interestingly, would the Copilot become better after such training...
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