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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

#281

Post by lannisterstark »

dh2022 wrote: post #258
giantg2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying bad code doesn't exist there. My thought is that the percent of bad code increases with volume (or at least higher number of producers). Tens of millions of people committing to Github should mean its more cluttered with garbage than in MS. I at least assume MS has some automated code standard or security scans. That's at least more than nothing.

" I at least assume MS has some automated code standard or security scans." -- that is a .... big assumption.

Do you have the exact style of talking in all your comments lol?

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

#282

Post by MikusR »

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.

Even Microsoft knows that their own code is absolute garbage that would bring the quality of copilot way down.

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

#283

Post by circuit10 »

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.

They're not claiming that it can never spit out code exactly, but that they will take liability for if:

- It does

- The user didn't turn off the filters that prevent this

- The user didn't intentionally make it do it

- This use is found to be illegal

There's a difference between code that needs to be kept private from bad actors (from their point of view at least) and code that is public but with restrictions on its use that anyone who gets it should be aware of. This is like saying "if you truly believe that license agreements are legally binding, then publish your user's passwords publically with a license saying no one can use them"

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

#284

Post by sillysaurusx »

bsder wrote: post #280
sillysaurusx wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting a lot of pushback, but the EU seems to agree with you: https://creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/CC-St... https://www.notion.so/DSM-Directive-Implementation-Tracker-3... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/790/oj The TDM4 copyright exception allows datasets to be created consisting of copyrighted works, as long as there is a mechanism for rightsholders to opt out. This seems like the be…

> as long as there is a mechanism for rightsholders to opt out. I really don't like this--opt-out never works because the scale advantages are backwards. It places the burden in the wrong place. The aggregators should have to get opt-in. Look at YouTube. Because of "opt-out", lots of people monetize content that they have no right to and it's up to the original author to have to fight the scale of a zillion uploaders…

One subtle benefit of the opt out is that it forces commercial ML companies to reveal what they trained on. So Copilot would need to reveal a list of repositories, in order to give the repo authors a chance to opt out.

This is a fairly big deal since right now there’s no incentive for AI companies to disclose their training data, and it seems unlikely that legislation to that effect will be enacted anytime soon. Whereas this opt out mechanism is already getting widespread adoption in the EU.

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

#285

Post by versteegen »

regularfry wrote: post #255
akhosravian wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are no IP protections for “style” there are certainly elements that are covered. Particular colors be trademarked, characters can be copyrighted separately from the works they appear in, design patents are a thing that cover more than most folks realize. I don’t think any but the most copyleft segment of society thinks it would be reasonable for a generative AI trained on exactly one persons work to be us…

> I don’t think any but the most copyleft segment of society thinks it would be reasonable for a generative AI trained on exactly one persons work to be used for profit by someone else. Why do you think that? It doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Well imagine you created a novel generator that just cut-and-paste whole sentences from the Harry Potter books to create a new Harry Potter, and posted it online. Now, as long as this was done as a just a bit of fun, non-commercial, I feel like that likely should be allowed as fair use (whether it actually would is not the point), though borderline. If you tried to sell it, definitely too far.

So I think "used for profit" is quite key.

But another example is someone writing and selling a reference guide to Tolkien's mythos that catalogues the content of his novels. And we would say that should be allowed, though that could be taken too far as well, for example it could duplicate the material in the appendices to LoTR.

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

#286

Post by Spivak »

spott wrote: post #276
belorn wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Napster and the Pirate Bay founders argued that only users could be held responsible, since it was the user who requested the infringing files. It did not stop the courts. Anyone could use those tools to download creative common files and linux ISO, but those arguments did not succeed in the legal system. Bittorent as a technology was however not made illegal, as could be seen in games using it to distribute pat…

Napster and the Pirate Bay struggled because the vast majority of content was pirated. You would be hard pressed to say a significant minority of generative ai has any copyright issues, much less copyright issues as blatant as straight piracy.

Yeah they seem to be applying legal theory like programming code. If what they said about Napster applied to every website then literally every site with user generated content would be instantly wiped off the internet.

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

#287

Post by singleshot_ »

Karellen wrote: post #261
dh2022 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming Microsoft code base is superior to Linux / Git / MySql / whatever else is in github right now. That is a .... big assumption. And if Microsoft's code ends up influencing the rest of the world code that would be a .... big downside.

I don't think you should be looking at the best of the Microsoft/GitHub corpora to gauge their overall quality. You probably want to be looking at the quality of the median project, which is going to be heavily influenced by the long tail of low quality projects. IMO, the long tail of non-code-reviewed, written-by-someone-in-their-first-month-of-coding, barely-even-compiles noob code[0] in Github is going to be order…

I would think if the LLM knew it was rookie code, it could actually be pretty useful, no?

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

#288

Post by giantg2 »

clankyclanker wrote: post #275
giantg2 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't when we're dealing with an organization that is audited for SOC 1/2, DoD, and likely others.

Are you sure? https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/09/hack-of-a-microsoft... The Azure-State-Department breach had nearly a half dozen contributing bugs...

And how does that compare to all the bugs on Github?

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

#289

Post by tpmx »

StewardMcOy wrote: post #191

Are there any actual details on this? I get that this is a blog post, but the only links I see on the page are to other blog posts. It leaves a lot of questions. Is this blog post a legally enforceable contract? Is Microsoft specifically indemnifying all users of Copilot against claims of copyright infringement that arise from use of Copilot? The blog post says that "there are important conditions to this program", a…

This is why (so far) it's just PR, not actual legal protection. Brad Smith, being an attorney understands this. Why would he otherwise risk Microsoft (a $2.5T company) with an uncapped liability guarantee?

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

#290

Post by dh2022 »

giantg2 wrote: post #266
dh2022 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I at least assume MS has some automated code standard or security scans." -- that is a .... big assumption.

No, it really isn't when we're dealing with an organization that is audited for SOC 1/2, DoD, and likely others.

My friend - Chinese secret services read Secretary of Commerce's emails because of Microsoft's security leaks: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/commerce-secretary-gina-raim...

So yeah, assuming Microsoft systems are up to standard or have security reviews or whatever is a .... big assumption.

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