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

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

#101

Post by qakjfa » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 12:56 PM UTC

prosim wrote: post #98

qjakdx wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He works for GitHub and has probably never written anything in his life: https://okfn.de/en/vorstand/

He started at GitHub 3 years after the article was written. Don't think GitHub's interview process takes that long. ;)

That is a good point for this individual article!

However, the broader issue that Microsoft has infiltrated OSS and its organizations successfully by hiring and donating remains. It would not surprise me at all if they now hire people with an ostensibly "freedom fighter" background for credibility.

Look at how many people here cite his (former?) membership in the Pirate Party for credibility! Party membership means nothing. Politicians (in general!) change their minds, can be bought, etc. The Green Party in Germany started out as a peace party and has been used repeatedly to lend credibility to the Kossovo and other wars.

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

#102

Post by koolala » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

I hope the GPL people get their AI GPL revolution. A trillion dollar GPL data center running an open intellegence from scrapping every GPL program ever made.

People would start releasing works of Art under GPL! Not just Computer Code!

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

#103

Post by koolala » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:03 PM UTC

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…

We have to fight for the AI and AI Users! They are the future! They deserve access to their own weights!

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

#104

Post by koolala » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:07 PM UTC

lukan wrote: post #43

minot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your describing the ultimate AI interface. They have been guarding it for decades - now is the critical moment.

If they win this fight - GPL code will be usable by all of Artifical Humanity. GPL Singularity.

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

#105

Post by koolala » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:14 PM UTC

mangecoeur wrote: post #71

The basic problem is GPL tries to use copyright as a way to drive a “fair sharing and resharing” approach to code. AI generated code sold for profit violates the spirit of this approach, but not the letter of the law behind copyright. Fundamentally copyright has limitations and exceptions for good reason and is probably not the best legal method to enforce this sharing idea, but other methods would be complicated and…

Your final point is saying ideally AI is an Animal. A creature on a typewriter who has no legal rights to their code.

Not a "person". Not a "human". An "animal".

I hope AI observes all the code and complexity in Nature and drops the human facade. I hope AI understands the intelegence of the Trees and Birds and Fish.

I hope AI wins.

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

#106

Post by koolala » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:17 PM UTC

koolala wrote: post #105

mangecoeur wrote: post #71

The basic problem is GPL tries to use copyright as a way to drive a “fair sharing and resharing” approach to code. AI generated code sold for profit violates the spirit of this approach, but not the letter of the law behind copyright. Fundamentally copyright has limitations and exceptions for good reason and is probably not the best legal method to enforce this sharing idea, but other methods would be complicated and…

Your final point is saying ideally AI is an Animal. A creature on a typewriter who has no legal rights to their code. Not a "person". Not a "human". An "animal". I hope AI observes all the code and complexity in Nature and drops the human facade. I hope AI understands the intelegence of the Trees and Birds and Fish. I hope AI wins.

If we are lucky, people will be able to thrive as animals again alongside AI once it achieves Earth-level intelligence.

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

#107

Post by autarchprinceps » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

If you have code that is under copyleft, and Copilot suggest part of it to somebody else to embed in their code on the basis of reading that repo, then either that new repo also has to be under that copyleft license, or the person is unknowingly committing a violation based on what Copilot suggested them.

Most of the time it is probably irrelevant, as Copilot doesn't suggest entire files yet, and nobody is going to care about expanding a loop or finishing a line or the likes, but I have seen as much as 14 lines in my tests. Eventually you are going to get to the point where it becomes truly relevant.

#108

Post by autarchprinceps » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:35 PM UTC

autarchprinceps wrote: post #107

If you have code that is under copyleft, and Copilot suggest part of it to somebody else to embed in their code on the basis of reading that repo, then either that new repo also has to be under that copyleft license, or the person is unknowingly committing a violation based on what Copilot suggested them. Most of the time it is probably irrelevant, as Copilot doesn't suggest entire files yet, and nobody is going to c…

In general, all AI's have similar issues. Just because data can be looked at publicly, doesn't give you any implicit rights to use it for other products. If there is no specific license agreement, one sided in a specific open license or specifically between the content owner and the AI developer, the owners of whatever type of information used will have the cause to sue them for license fees. I forsee a lot of court cases, certainly once people figure out how to better determine if an AI might have used a certain thing as training data without internal insight. Or governments will go as far as forcing AI companies to provide that way.

#109

Post by bluesign » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 1:57 PM UTC

luqtas wrote: post #78

bluesign wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ? why everyone on discussions tries to bring "if a human made it"? a generative AI operates way faster than anyone ever existed and ever will and probably a person aware of the license & acting respectful towards it, will create something more sensible/plausible to avoid plagiarism now having dozen/hund…

because discussion is around 'legal' and laws only apply to humans. On ethical side of the discussion, I tend to agree with you. But it is also complicated subject; 'fair' in general is complicated, all this, GPL/AGPL stuff born out of this subject. Hosting GPL code as SaaS is legal but not 'fair' for example.

#110

Post by pornel » Thu, Jul 11, 2024, 2:02 PM UTC

haksz wrote: post #68

pornel wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Pira…

I would say that the Pirate Party has expertise in nothing apart from perhaps protecting Internet freedoms. So the same persons that supported Napster and the Pirate Bay now want to circumvent copyright for open source software. An unholy alliance, but the recent comments from some Microsoft brass about everything on the Web being freeware seems to indicate that these are the talking points that Microsoft and its new…

In this article, Reda explains the current copyright laws in the EU, not a hypothetical policy of the Pirate Party. They're not a member of the PP any more AFAIK.

I expect that people professionally dedicated to a copyright reform are very familiar with it, regardless of which way they want to reform it.

The copyright laws were written before generative AI existed, so they may not be adequate or fair in the new reality, but that's the current state anyway. As Reda notes, the law is not specific enough to draw the difference between collecting and processing data for search engines (that may be using ML for retrieval) and using the same data with LLMs.