GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021) • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#11

Post by lelanthran » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:49 AM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #5

> If I go to a bookshop, take a book off the shelf and start reading it, I am not infringing any copyright Do pro-generative AI people have absolutely no argument besides this? If I had a dollar for every time I've heard it, I'd be rich by now. And it's not even close to being a good argument.

> Do pro-generative AI people have absolutely no argument besides this?

They say it even though the standard response is: "When I buy a joint[1], I am breaking no laws. Does that make it legal for a corporation to purchase 200m tons of marijuana for profit?"

As far as legal concepts go, scale matters! Just because you are legally allowed to do something individually, does not automatically make it legal to do it for profit 200m times a month.

FCOL, before you even get to the scale argument, some things that are legal to do for free are not legal to do for profit.

[1] In my jurisdiction, anyway. Many others too.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#12

Post by minot » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:51 AM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #9

> What is astonishing about the current debate is that the calls for the broadest possible interpretation of copyright are now coming from within the Free Software community. That should not be astonishing. The Free Software community has made it clear from day 1 that the GPL can only achieve its goals through enforcement of copyright. If the authors wanted their code to be made use of in non-Free software, they woul…

> The Free Software community has made it clear from day 1 that the GPL can only achieve its goals through enforcement of copyright

We should mention when we say this, although I think it is self-evident, that the preferable alternative is reducing the scope of copyright across the board -- be it with shorter time frames (I'd argue even twenty years total is too long!) or some other means.

To programmers and developers, remember the core of free software is NOT the commercial developer / programmer and it NEVER has been. The core is always the user and what they need. This is so important that it needs to be repeated every time someone talks about free software because free software is NOT about open source. Open source code is a necessary part of free software but it is NOT sufficient.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#13

Post by hexo » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:53 AM UTC

Nope. It does. No amount of mental acrobacy changes that.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#14

Post by dtech » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:56 AM UTC

jclulow wrote: post #10

> The output of a machine simply does not qualify for copyright protection – it is in the public domain. The machine, such as it is, is generally not acting on its own. A person operates the machine, and presumably is on the hook for infringement on some level. Consider: what if one directs the machine to reproduce a specific body of code and it ostensibly does so. Was there copying? What if I have a person read out…

The machine argument also rings hollow to me. This same argument could be made for a scanner + printer that does some transformation - changes colors a bit randomly or something - I'd be having a hard time convincing a court the resulting image is now copyright free.

Obviously LLMs are much more advanced than this, but in the basis it's still a machine that takes its input data and applies specified transformations with randomness.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#15

Post by pdpi » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:57 AM UTC

flaptrap wrote: post #4

Who are they trying to fool? Wholesale expropriation after stripping the license and authorship, while those in the open source community observe both of them very carefully. Give credit where credit is due, including paying the creators when the licensing is violated.

Context is important here. Reda was elected to the European Parliament as a member of the German Pirate Party, so his position here isn't "big businesses are entitled to your code", and more "this sort of wholesale expropriation is a consequence of our posture towards copyright in general".

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#16

Post by netmare » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 9:58 AM UTC

flaptrap wrote: post #4

Who are they trying to fool? Wholesale expropriation after stripping the license and authorship, while those in the open source community observe both of them very carefully. Give credit where credit is due, including paying the creators when the licensing is violated.

That's a great point about stripping authorship. It would be nice if there was some sort of blockchain linking every bit of knowledge to its source. Some people at least would like getting attribution--I know I would. Instead we get a planet-sized meat grinder producing the perfect burger material. Just make sure to add enough spices to make it edible, i.e. not to offend anyone.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#17

Post by elpocko » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:00 AM UTC

jclulow wrote: post #10

> The output of a machine simply does not qualify for copyright protection – it is in the public domain. The machine, such as it is, is generally not acting on its own. A person operates the machine, and presumably is on the hook for infringement on some level. Consider: what if one directs the machine to reproduce a specific body of code and it ostensibly does so. Was there copying? What if I have a person read out…

I've coded dozens of procedural asset/"art" generators. It's really surprising to me that, apparently, the output of my creative work (i.e. the novel algorithms) is not protected by copyright.

#18

Post by raincole » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:00 AM UTC

cowsandmilk wrote: post #9

> What is astonishing about the current debate is that the calls for the broadest possible interpretation of copyright are now coming from within the Free Software community. That should not be astonishing. The Free Software community has made it clear from day 1 that the GPL can only achieve its goals through enforcement of copyright. If the authors wanted their code to be made use of in non-Free software, they woul…

What is astonishing is that a large proportion of Free Software community relies on a platform owned by Microsoft.

#19

Post by fire_lake » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:01 AM UTC

Copilot often feels like an automation of clean room reimplementation of protected materials.

#20

Post by carom » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 10:03 AM UTC

This is missing the largest argument in my opinion. The weights are the derivative work of the GPL licensed code and should therefore be released under the GPL. I would say these companies release their weights or simply not train on copyleft code.

It is truly amazing how many people will shill for these massive corporations that claim they love open source or that their AI is open while they profit off of the violation of licenses and contribute very little back.