Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#11

Post by wolverine876 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

> As we mentioned, GitHub trains Copilot on numerous pieces of public code, many of which are covered by strong copyleft licenses (i.e. GPL v2, GPL v3). Copyleft licenses require that derivative works (of the copyleft-licensed code) must carry the same license as the original code.

Even when no GPL v2/3 code is quoted by Copilot, is using the code for training a non-free product allowed under the license? Under the license, is Copilot therefore now licensed GPL v2/3? The GPL code was certainly used to create a critical, integral part of Copilot, and to create its output.

If I understand correctly, GPL v2/3 were designed to prevent non-free products from being parasites on FOSS code, taking and not giving. If that's the spirit of GPL, Copilot seems to clearly violate it.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#12

Post by kbenson » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

SethTro wrote: post #4

I find the first argument, that if you're project is in GitHub then they have the right to train in it, weak. Plenty of projects are hosted elsewhere but have been mirrored by random users (e.g. not the copyright holder) to GitHub

I think they have a right to train in it, but not to present portions verbatim. Do you have a right to look at a bunch of open source code and come to conclusions about good programming practices? Are you prevented from knowing that a specific library in a language is good/common for a specific task because you see others using it?

That's analogous to training, where there are associations between things, in my mind. I don't think that means they can provide licensed code verbatim though, just as you should not copy GPL code directly out of a Github repo and paste into your own private commercial code base.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#13

Post by wolverine876 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #2

These agree with my conclusions- it's fair use or permitted by license, but that it remains untested (as the GPL does in a larger sense) by law. I guess in about 5 years we'll see Softbank v. GitHub CoPilot in the supreme court deciding whether ML can make transformative work.

Why do we accept that the courts are so slow? I don't understand why there isn't a drive to reform courts by accelerating outcomes by an order of magnitude, and by making outcomes not depend on wealth.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#14

Post by Zambyte » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

Google Books is a great parallel to make with Microsoft's Copilot. The key differences between the two is

A) Google Books produces verbatim results 100% of the time, while Microsoft's Copilot produces verbatim results some N > 0% of the time (with some % of results greater than N that would be considered a derivative if a human wrote it), and

B) Google Books doesn't make the claim that you own the copyright to any greater than 0% of the search results, while Microsoft's Copilot makes the claim that you own the copyright to 100% of the results.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#15

Post by swhalen » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

Does the fair use exemption (or an equivalent) exist in all countries?

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#16

Post by lindenksv85 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

They technically don’t distribute any code. They show it to you in a hosted environment. It’s the user that causes a distribution. They “provide it as part of the service.”

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#17

Post by tomrod » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

Further, what if I branched the code from something hosted outside of Github -- and failed to follow proper attribution?

This is a huge legal mess and its not being used to IMPROVE Github products and ops, it IS the Github product.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#18

Post by tyingq » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

lindenksv85 wrote: post #16

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

They technically don’t distribute any code. They show it to you in a hosted environment. It’s the user that causes a distribution. They “provide it as part of the service.”

I'm not sure how sending it over the wire to Visual Studio doesn't count as distribution. Distribution without attribution, reference to where it came from, how it's licensed, etc.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#19

Post by matmann2001 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

Technically, they aren't distributing "your" code. It's laundered through their machine learning algorithm first.

Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

#20

Post by lindenksv85 » Thu, Jul 15, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #8

tyingq wrote: post #3

“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…

What about open source projects where the uploader and github users are not the only copyright holders? As a user i can't grant github any random license for the code, if I maintain for example Linux or python or any other old project there. The ONLY available terms are those given by the license, surely?

If you are putting up code on GitHub to which you don’t have all the rights you’re actually in violation of their TOS and you are violating the rights of other copyright holders. I understand this is common and may not violate community norms or expectations but it is technically a license violation on multiple fronts. Contributors who add to existing GitHub projects are providing the same license to GitHub as the project maintainer though per the TOS.