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Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

theregister.com

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Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#331

Post by zamadatix »

lumb63 wrote: post #314

It seems to me that regardless of the outcome of this case, some developers do not want to have their code used to train LLMs. There may need to be a new license created to restrict this usage of software. Or, maybe developers will simply stop contributing open source. In today’s day and age, where open source code serves as a tool to pad Microsoft’s pockets, I certainly will not publish any of my software open sourc…

"I don't license as open source because $something which I don't like could use my code" is a pretty common note over time but, despite almost always coming with a warning of the end of some large open source segment, is rarely impactful in any way. Some people probably will use a special license and most won't care except for when they run across projects using said one offs and it becomes a pain to integrate licensing models.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#332

Post by sensanaty »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #162
deciplex wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes the little guy is actually wrong. He is, sometimes. Also sometimes, the moon passes exactly between the sun and Earth, a new star appears in the sky, the magnetic field of our planet reverses, a proton decays (jury is still out on that one, actually). Etc. Tools like Copilot are plagiarism machines. We know the data they're being trained on, and a conclusion of "that's plagiarism" is not - or anyway shoul…

> big guys gang up on little guys all the time And obnoxious individuals gum up enterprises. It's lazy to the point of dismissal to conclude based on bigness.

Those poor corporations, however will they survive? I say we let them dump chemicals straight into our oceans, after all we don't want to gum them up from earning infinite profit!

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#334

Post by naikrovek »

voidfunc wrote: post #189
voxic11 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't copyright a mathematical operation. Only a particular implementation of it, and even then it may not be copyrightable if its a straightforward and obvious implementation. That said the implementation doesn't appear to be totally trivial and copilot apparently even copies the comments which are almost certainly copyrightable in themselves. https://x.com/StefanKarpinski/status/1410971061181681674 https://gith…

Its even simpler, iD is owned by ZeniMax. ZeniMax is owned by Microsoft.. who would they even sue?

That's not how that works.

All the plaintiffs would need to do is provide evidence that copywritten code was produced verbatim. This includes showing the copyrighted code on GitHub, showing copilot reproducing the code (including how you manipulated copilot to do it), showing that they match, and showing that the setting to turn off reproduction of public code is set.

It makes no difference who owns the copyrighted code, it need only be shown that copilot is violating copyright. Microsoft can't say "uhh that doesn't count" or whatever simply because they own a company that owns a company that owns copyright on the code.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#335

Post by zephyr9 »

munificent wrote: post #45

> Indeed, last year GitHub was said to have tuned its programming assistant to generate slight variations of ingested training code to prevent its output from being accused of being an exact copy of licensed software. If I, a human, were to: 1. Carefully read and memorize some copyrighted code. 2. Produce new code that is textually identical to that. But in the process of typing it up, I randomly mechanically tweak a…

It seems the total disregard that the tech community showed toward copyright when it was artists losing out has come back to bite. Face-eating leopards, etc.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#336

Post by devmor »

satvikpendem wrote: post #277
devmor wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just pure exploitation. You're using the product of someone's work to create a machine that takes away their work.

Why does someone's work matter?

If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t want to take it.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#337

Post by CuriouslyC »

devmor wrote: post #114
CuriouslyC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure wish I could non-consent to people observing me in the world, I'd like to move through society invisibly and only show myself when it benefitted me. Unfortunately, the only answer is to stay inside if I don't want people to see me.

We are not discussing people observing people. We are discussing programs observing people.

Seems like a meaningless distinction in the face of a government that defines giving money as speech.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#338

Post by devmor »

struant wrote: post #183
devmor wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just pure exploitation. You're using the product of someone's work to create a machine that takes away their work.

Why is doing a task with a machine suddenly objectionable when the same task performed by humans is perfectly fine?

Chiefly, scale and accountability.

The work of a person can be mitigated and a person can be held accountable for their actions.

Much of our society operates on the idea that we don’t need to codify and enforce every single good or bad thing due to these reasons; and having such an underpinning affords us greater personal freedom.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#339

Post by davrosthedalek »

Qwertious wrote: post #275
eropple wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, and in a vacuum I agree with it. There's a pretty core problem with these kinds of assertions, though: people have to make rent. Never have I seen a substantiative, pass-the-sniff-test argument for how to make practical this system when your authors and your artists need to eat in a system of modern capital. So I'm asking genuinely: what's your plan? What's the A to B if you could pass a law tomorro…

Not the person you responded to, but: >So I'm asking genuinely: what's your plan? What's the A to B if you could pass a law tomorrow? Patreon (or liberapay etc). Take a look at youtube: so many creators are actively saying "youtube doesn't pay the bills, if you like us then please support us on Patreon". Patreon works. Some of the time, at least - just like copyright. Also crowdsourcing (e.g. Kickstarter), which work…

How many subscribers on patreon are there because the creators provides pay-walled extra content? How many would remain if that pay-walled content would be mirrored directly by youtube or on youtube?

Crowdsourcing might work better, but how many would donate to a game where, instead of getting it cheaper as a kickstarter supporter, they could get free after it is released?

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