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I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

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Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#121

Post by thewakalix »

crazygringo wrote: post #111
jcelerier wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your example is the very specific scenario where you're attempting to replicate an entire program, API, etc., to identical specifications. That's obviously not fair use. You're not dealing with little bits and pieces, you're dealing with an entire finished product. No - google's 9 lines of sorting algorithm (iirc) copied from Oracle's implementation were not considered fair use in the Google / Oracle debacle. Likew…

Sorry, but you're not recalling correctly. :) The Supreme Court decided Google v. Oracle was fair use. It was 3 months ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... That's the highest form of precedent, the question has now been effectively settled (unless Congress ever changes the law). Edit: added a dummy hash to end of URL so HN parses it correctly (thanks @thewakalix below)

There seems to be an issue with Hacker News's URL parsing. The final period isn't included as part of the link.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#122

Post by nxc18 »

saurik wrote: post #40

I never hosted--with quite some prejudice, even--any of my projects on GitHub (for a number of reasons that are off topic right now)... it didn't matter, though: people take your code and upload it to GitHub themselves (which is their right); so you can't avoid Copilot by simply self-hosting your repositories.

Indeed, the Windows Research Kernel itself is on GitHub. Kind of amazing that Microsoft is hosting their own pirated OS kernel.

https://github.com/cnsuhao/Windows-Research-Kernel-1

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#123

Post by saurik »

the8472 wrote: post #115
saurik wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This model doesn't learn and abstract: it just pattern matches and replicates; that's why it was shown exactly replicating regions of code--long enough to not be "de minimis" and recognizable enough to include the comments--that happen to be popular... which would be fine, as long as the license on said code were also being replicated. It just isn't reasonable to try to pretend Copilot--or GPT-3 in general--is some k…

This is called prompt engineering. If you find a popular, frequently repeated code snippet and then fashion a prompt that is tailored to that snippet then yes the NN will recite it verbatim like a poem. But that doesn't mean it's the only thing it does or even that it does it frequently. It's like calling a human a parrot because he completed a line from a famous poem when the previous speaker left it unfinished. The…

I don't know if I agree with your argument about GPT-3, but I think our disagreement seems to be besides the point: if your human parrot did that, they would--not just in theory but in actual fact! see all the cases of this in the music industry--get sued for it, even if they claim they didn't mean to and it was merely a really entrenched memory.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#124

Post by moyix »

saurik wrote: post #87
crazygringo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what GP is saying. In general, you're absolutely allowed to learn programming techniques from anywhere . You can contribute software almost anywhere even if you've read Windows source code. Re-using everything you've learned, in your own creative creation, is part of fair use. Your example is the very specific scenario where you're attempting to replicate an entire program, API, etc., to identical specific…

This model doesn't learn and abstract: it just pattern matches and replicates; that's why it was shown exactly replicating regions of code--long enough to not be "de minimis" and recognizable enough to include the comments--that happen to be popular... which would be fine, as long as the license on said code were also being replicated. It just isn't reasonable to try to pretend Copilot--or GPT-3 in general--is some k…

Have you used Copilot? I have not, but I have trained a GPT2 model on open source projects (https://doesnotexist.codes/). It does not just pattern match and replicate. It can be cajoled into reproducing some memorized snippets, but this is not the norm; in my experience the vast majority of what it generates is novel. The exceptions are extremely popular snippets that are repeated many many times in the training data, like license boilerplate.

Perhaps Copilot behaves very differently from my own model, but I strongly suspect that the examples that have been going around twitter are outliers. Github's study agrees: https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio... (though of course this should be replicated independently).

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#125

Post by encryptluks2 »

mmastrac wrote: post #44
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

> Copyright has concluded that reading by robots doesn’t count. Infringement is for humans only; when computers do it, it’s fair use. This would be interesting to test with AI and pop music.

This is a stupid argument that the Twitter author made. Saving music digitally is reading by robot, so recording music that wasn't digital into a digital format is fair use.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#126

Post by eCa »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #94

All of my open-source stuff on GH is MIT. I don't care whether or not Copilot (or anyone else) uses it. I seriously doubt that Copilot scans my (very few) private repos. Even then, I don't think I do anything particularly noteworthy. But that is just me.

The license you have chosen requires attribution. You may not care[1] but the other party still most likely will be in violation if Copilot reproduces a significant chunk of your code.

[1] I also MIT license my public code on Github, and also wouldn’t care that much.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#127

Post by kuon »

I've given thousands of hours to open source projects, I really think open source is a pillar of modern society. So you would think I am all for something like copilot, but no.

At first I thought this was a great feature, because easier access to code, but after some reflection, I am also very skeptical.

I am able to make my code open source, because I can make a living out of it, and I have a lot of open source code that I love to share for things like education or private stuff, but if you want to use it for something real, you need to hire me. If you can suck all the code without even I noticing it, that's not fair.

The other thing is code quality. I don't want to sound rude, but there are tons of bad code around. Not necessarily because the author is unskilled, but because the code might not need to be high quality (for example I wrote a script to sort my photos, it was very hastily written and specific to my usage, I used once and was done with it). Also, there are some bad/wrong pattern that are really popular.

I am surprised you are able to DMCA a twitch stream because someone whistle india jones theme but in this case it is considered fair use.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#128

Post by dahart »

jcelerier wrote: post #61
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

> As a human, I am allowed to read copyrighted code and learn from it. Of course not. Reading some copyrighted code can have you entirely excluded from some jobs - you can't become a wine contributor if it can be shown you ever read Windows source code and most likely conversely. Likewise, you can't ever write GPL VST 2 audio plug-ins if you ever had access to the official Steinberg VST2 SDK. Etc etc... Did people fo…

> Reading some copyrighted code can have you entirely excluded from some jobs

What provision of copyright law are you referring to? Are you conflating copyright law with arbitrary organizational policies?

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#129

Post by daenz »

I think it's clear that Copilot pushes boundaries...technological and legal. It makes people uncomfortable and challenges a lot of assumptions that we have about the current world. But this is exactly what I expect from the next revolutionary change in computing.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#130

Post by bcrosby95 »

lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

> Copyright has concluded that reading by robots doesn’t count. Infringement is for humans only; when computers do it, it’s fair use.

Reading by a robot doesn't count. But injecting a robot between copyright material and a product doesn't magically strip the copyright from whatever it produces.

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