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GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

felixreda.eu

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

#41

Post by vrighter »

elpocko wrote: post #17
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.

We go back several decades, when "computer" meant a person with a pen and paper. The output of those computers could be copyrighted... by the computer, not you.

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

#42

Post by zarzavat »

kimixa wrote: post #36
blackoil wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since weights are not distributed only used by Github to provide the service, they need not worry about GPL atleast. I don't know about AGPL.

If those weights are a derivative of GPL'd code in a different form, and the results generate things derived from that derivative, then the generated code is still under license. "How much change is enough" has always been a gray area for courts and humans to decide. If you can get a decent facsimile of licensed code out the other end, how is it really any different from lossy compression? I doubt the courts would co…

If the output is substantially similar to GPL’d training data it may be infringing. Nobody disputes this.

However, copyright isn’t cooties. If the output is not similar, then it is not infringing regardless of how much GPL’d training data was used to generate it.

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

#43

Post by lukan »

minot wrote: post #12
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 develope…

"The core is always the user and what they need."

Which is why gnu/linux without a terminal is totally usable and therefore accesible to the non programmer. /s

I agree that user centric developement should be the goal, but I hardly see it implemented. Free software programmers almost allways solved their own needs first, which is alright, because usually no one paid them to serve other peoples needs, but I seldom see this goal met.

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

#44

Post by bluesign »

bayindirh wrote: post #30
blackoil wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since weights are not distributed only used by Github to provide the service, they need not worry about GPL atleast. I don't know about AGPL.

What about the emitted code which is actually derived from GPL code? What about BSL, SSPL, or other source available (for your eyes only) licenses? Copilot harvests all public repos, regardless of its license.

IANAL but searched a lot on this, this is very tricky subject legally.

To simplify:

- imagine all code Copilot trained on is GPL licensed. - we have a universal function `isInfringing(code)` that has access to all GPL code, and returns `true` if it is infringing some GPL code.

for a given prompt; if `isInfringing(copilot(prompt))==false` we cannot claim copilot infringing on GPL code, even it is trained on GPLed code.

so the problem starts here; does the piece of code copilot emits, if written by yourself also would be infringing ?

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

#45

Post by jeroenhd »

elpocko wrote: post #17
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.

Your creative work (the novel algorithms) are protected under normal copyright. Depending on where you live, you may even be able to patent those algorithms.

The output of those algorithms isn't a creative work (as you're running a creative work to generate them, not applying any kind of creativity once the program is finished), so it's not protected. Same with generated code.

The lines get a bit blurry when you start applying a creative process onto the generated work. The edits you do on generated images in Photoshop may be considered creative work, as may the edits you do to generated code.

Protections only apply as far as copyright/trademark law can apply. In the case of generative AI and LLMs, it seems that copyright/trademark law doesn't consider the generated output to be a derivate work of the data model, or the model is not a derivative work of the input dataset. As a result, the output of generative AI doesn't seem to be restricted by the license of the training material.

In theory, a sufficiently powerful generative AI may be able to generate entire Disney movies, which would not be considered derivative works under the current laws, as far as I can tell. I'm sure the moment Disney gets threatened, AI copyright law will be updated, though.

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

#46

Post by pornel »

carom wrote: post #20

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 violat…

GPL doesn't apply/doesn't have to be agreed to when the usage is allowed by the copyright law in another way. GPL can't override copyright exceptions like fair use (details vary by jurisdiction, but the principle is the same everywhere).

Even the license itself states it's optional, and you don't have to agree it (if you don't, you get the copyright law's default).

Author of the article is a former member of the Pirate Party and EU parliament, so they have expertise in the copyright law.

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

#47

Post by vrighter »

fire_lake wrote: post #19

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

a clean room implementation means that the person writing the code does not have acess to the code they're trying to replicate.

Even when the source is available, it is looked at by people, who write requirements based on what they observed in the code. After that, they are considered compromised, and are banned from ever touching the code of the re-implementation.

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

#49

Post by ealexhudson »

xeyownt wrote: post #39
desiderantes wrote: post #6

I think that the author has a warped idea of how LLMs work, and that infects its reasoning. Also, I see no mention of the inequality of this new "copyright free code generation" situation it defends; As much as Microsoft thinks all code is ripe for taking, I can't imagine how happy they would be if an anonymous person drops a model trained on all leaked Windows code and the ReactOS people start using it. Or if employ…

I think the author has a much better knowledge of the legal implication of the situations you describe. These situations might trigger a lot of issues, but none related to copyright. If you work for MS, then move to another company, there is no copyright infringement if you simply generate new code based on whatever you read at MS. There might be some rule regarding non-competitive, etc, but these are not related to…

I'm not sure that's completely true.

Having read MS code and starting to generate new code that is heavily inspired - sure, that's not copyright infringement. But, if you had memorized a bunch of code (and this is within human capability; people can recite many works of literature of varying length with total accuracy, given sufficient study) - that would be copyright infringement once the code was a non-trivial amount. The test in copyright is whether the copying is literal, not how the copying was done/did it pass through a human brain.

This scenario rarely comes up because humans are, generally, an awful medium for accurate repetition. However, it's not really been shown than LLMs are not: in fact, CoPilot claims (at least in its Enterprise agreements) to check its output _does not_ parrot existing code identically. The specific commitment they made in their blog post is/was, "We have incorporated filters and other technologies that are designed to reduce the likelihood that Copilots return infringing content". To be clear, they only propose to reduce the possibility, not remove it.

LLMs rely on a form of lossy compression which can sometimes give back verbatim content. I think it's pretty clear and unarguable that this is a copyright infringement.

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

#50

Post by skc »

raincole wrote: post #18
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.

I mean, a large proportion of the Free Software community loves Apple products, so it shouldn't be that surprising
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