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Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

thehftguy.com

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Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#111

Post by sshumaker »

nindalf wrote: post #72
unreal37 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people just automatically doubt things that companies say when they can be sued (or would otherwise destroy their business) if they are lying about it. Seems unnecessarily pessimistic.

I'm frequently told on HN that Big Tech would willingly, flagrantly violate GDPR like its nothing. Even if the upside of collecting that info was minimal and the downside was 4% of global revenue. I guess if they can do that, then what's a small lie about private repos between friends.

I’m fairly confident this is untrue. At Microsoft at least, it’s a big deal when there is a privacy issue, even a small localized one on a single product - and creates a small firestorm.

We’ll get engineers working long hours focused on it, consulting closely with our legal and trust teams. One of the first questions we ask legal when we suspect a privacy issue is “Is this a notifiable event?”

It’s not really about getting slapped by regulators - it’s the fact that much of Microsoft’s business is built by earning the trust of large companies and small ones. Many of them are in the EU of course, but we have strict compliance we apply broadly. It’s just not worth damaging our reputation (and hurting our business) for some shortcut somewhere, as trust takes a long time to build and is easily broken.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#112

Post by shanebellone »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #106
williamcotton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not legally fair use but no musicians consider it stealing. Remember, the session players who wrote those hooks and grooves were not given a copyright. They got paid a flat fee. They could not care less if their drum beat, bass line or horn part was reused in a creative new way. The lawyers of the copyright holders sure do care, though!

Copyright infringement is not stealing, full stop. It is just that, an infringement on a commercial interest that the government grants.

"Copyright infringement is not stealing, full stop. It is just that, an infringement on a commercial interest that the government grants."

This perspective is incredibly obtuse. You use the law (that you fundamentally reject) as a justification for a semantic debate that no one is having.

Whether you label it as infringement or theft, the impacts are identical. Regardless of the terminology, you are withholding a payment that is owed for something you've unlawfully taken.

Check your footing, your moral high ground is located in the Mariana Trench, alongside debtors and fraudsters.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#114

Post by alwaysbeconsing »

circuit10 wrote: post #96
bilqis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will that actually be against ToS or copyright? Many people tend to say that copilot learning from OSS doesn’t infringe any copyright and is no different from a person just learning from someone else’s work. So how is it different if copilot is learning from private repositories? Or eg from leaked source code?

Isn’t it illegal to learn from leaked source code? Or even to view it at all?

It is not, at least in the US. Distribution is illegal; possession may or may not be prosecuted; and if you read the code and provably reuse it or make use of trade secrets you could lose a lawsuit. But if you "somehow" have access and don't do anything associated with the code, the basic act of reading it carries no penalties.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#115

Post by account42 »

az226 wrote: post #55
bilqis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say they don’t

I’m sure you think this is a clever reply but the reality is that GitHub wouldn’t even begin to think if that were even technically possible. If it got out that it trained on confidential customer data, it would be game over. The risk is so stupidly large nobody in their right mind would take it. So yeah, if they say they don’t, they don’t.

Yet its ok to train of copyleft code?

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#116

Post by Timwi »

circuit10 wrote: post #96
bilqis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But will that actually be against ToS or copyright? Many people tend to say that copilot learning from OSS doesn’t infringe any copyright and is no different from a person just learning from someone else’s work. So how is it different if copilot is learning from private repositories? Or eg from leaked source code?

Isn’t it illegal to learn from leaked source code? Or even to view it at all?

I fully expect the answer to this vary wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#117

Post by logifail »

neximo64 wrote: post #38
jackdaniel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in the same paragraph - you can't scan/download "whole" github because you'll be throttled.

Are you actually throttled if you try to git clone or is that what the theory is, or is the assumption that it uses API calls to scrape through github? Has anyone actually tried, because i've cloned lots of repos and have never been throttled. I'd go so far as to say the author of that post has never even tried it.

> Has anyone actually tried, because i've cloned lots of repos and have never been throttled

(Full disclosure: I have some pretty serious data hoarding issues)

When someone says "I've cloned lots of repos and have never been throttled" I'm afraid I immediately start wondering whether "lots" means multiple GB or multiple TB ... or more!

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#118

Post by toastal »

samwillis wrote: post #4

> Microsoft GitHub is the largest collection of open source code in the world. Microsoft GitHub is in a unique and dominant positions to host and access and distribute most of the open-source code in the world No, it's not in a "unique and dominant position". Open source code is freely available online, it's almost trivial to build a bot to scrape OS code from anywhere on the web (GitHub included). The comparison to…

Microsoft GitHub has access to all the commits you force pushed away or branch you deleted. We have no reason to believe that it’s actually gone with no transparency and the source code being closed.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#119

Post by zanellato19 »

scott_w wrote: post #97
ChatGTP wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it's practical to do this with almost all the public repos on Github?

That's not Github's fault or Github's problem, from an antitrust perspective. If they went out of their way to make it difficult, you might have an argument but, as far as I know, they aren't. It's just practically difficult by the nature of the problem.

They rate limit, so they do make it difficult though

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#120

Post by aleph_minus_one »

account42 wrote: post #115
az226 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you think this is a clever reply but the reality is that GitHub wouldn’t even begin to think if that were even technically possible. If it got out that it trained on confidential customer data, it would be game over. The risk is so stupidly large nobody in their right mind would take it. So yeah, if they say they don’t, they don’t.

Yet its ok to train of copyleft code?

Copyleft code is (typically) not confidential.
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