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FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

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Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#171

Post by hodgesrm »

sjy wrote: post #134
hodgesrm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software licenses have barely been tested in court... OSS licenses have been litigated and upheld. Can't supply details of my own experience for confidentiality reasons but plenty of plaintiffs have prevailed in suits about violations of OSS license terms. My guess is the numbers are higher than you might think because a lot of the cases end in non-public settlements.

A confidential settlement does not mean that a licence has been “tested in court” or “litigated and upheld.” It means the parties thought the risk of losing was high enough to justify a settlement. The state of the law remains uncertain because cases are getting settled rather than litigated.

Technically you are right, but the fact that defendants knew they were at high risk of losing means such licenses have teeth.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#172

Post by blibble »

judge2020 wrote: post #170
blibble wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My money's on yes, but this isn't settled until SCOTUS says so. there are more countries in the world than the United States, and most of the world's developers live outside of the United States copyright only works because the Berne Convention was more or less universally agreed between governments most countries won't pay any attention to what the US Supreme Court decides

> most countries won't pay any attention to what the US Supreme Court decides Copyright lawsuits across nation state lines are pretty much non-existent and not worth it. What matters in the U.S. is pretty much as far as anyone who cares about copyright is going to care about.

I am capable of suing Microsoft in the UK for violating my UK copyright without requiring any involvement with the US legal system

and the UK has essentially no concept of fair use

and the same will play out across every country in Europe and the 90% of the world that isn't the United States

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#173

Post by judge2020 »

blibble wrote: post #172
judge2020 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most countries won't pay any attention to what the US Supreme Court decides Copyright lawsuits across nation state lines are pretty much non-existent and not worth it. What matters in the U.S. is pretty much as far as anyone who cares about copyright is going to care about.

I am capable of suing Microsoft in the UK for violating my UK copyright without requiring any involvement with the US legal system and the UK has essentially no concept of fair use and the same will play out across every country in Europe and the 90% of the world that isn't the United States

But that just becomes a copyright dispute with the country. The only thing preventing Microsoft from just not showing up to your court case is that they have presence there and want to continue doing business in the country. Imagine you write a project and some solo developer in the U.S. (that's not Microsoft) violates your copyright - the only way you would get damages or injunctive relief is by suing them in the U.S. or hoping the U.K. passes a judgement on them and extradites or sanctions them. If they never plan to go to the U.K. and the U.K. doesn't extradite them for nonpayment or noncompliance of whatever judgement you have against them, there's not really much you can do.

https://www.lw.com/thoughtLeadership/enforcement-of-foreign-...

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#174

Post by thayne »

comex wrote: post #153
jazzyjackson wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, if they're sure they won't be recycling copyrighted code wholesale, why not include their own in the training set. Surely their internal code is higher quality than the average git repo, which must be 80% abandonware (if my personal repos are anything to go by :P)

Probably because of the (very small) chance that Copilot could regurgitate something secret or embarrassing. Which is not necessarily hypocritical. The amount of copying needed for something to be copyright infringement is not high… but it's still significantly higher than the amount needed to leak information. For that, just a few words will do, e.g. // For Windows 12 or // Fuck [company name] or long secret_key[2]…

and open source codebases don't have code like that?

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#175

Post by blibble »

judge2020 wrote: post #173
blibble wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am capable of suing Microsoft in the UK for violating my UK copyright without requiring any involvement with the US legal system and the UK has essentially no concept of fair use and the same will play out across every country in Europe and the 90% of the world that isn't the United States

But that just becomes a copyright dispute with the country. The only thing preventing Microsoft from just not showing up to your court case is that they have presence there and want to continue doing business in the country. Imagine you write a project and some solo developer in the U.S. (that's not Microsoft) violates your copyright - the only way you would get damages or injunctive relief is by suing them in the U.…

> Imagine you write a project and some solo developer in the U.S. (that's not Microsoft) violates your copyright

how is this completely different situation relevant in the slightest?

we're talking about possible massive, pre-medidated industrial scale copyright infringement by Microsoft, a large multinational with a substantial UK presence

not some random guy in the US

if Microsoft don't show up to the court: I win by default

I can then send in the bailiffs to start seizing their property (and their staff will be arrested if they interfere)

personally I'd start at one of their datacentres

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#176

Post by judge2020 »

blibble wrote: post #175
judge2020 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that just becomes a copyright dispute with the country. The only thing preventing Microsoft from just not showing up to your court case is that they have presence there and want to continue doing business in the country. Imagine you write a project and some solo developer in the U.S. (that's not Microsoft) violates your copyright - the only way you would get damages or injunctive relief is by suing them in the U.…

> Imagine you write a project and some solo developer in the U.S. (that's not Microsoft) violates your copyright how is this completely different situation relevant in the slightest? we're talking about possible massive, pre-medidated industrial scale copyright infringement by Microsoft, a large multinational with a substantial UK presence not some random guy in the US if Microsoft don't show up to the court: I win b…

It's your prerogative who you sue, but again, i'm just describing how the law works in relation to copyright suits. That situation matters because there's no international law that says whoever you sue has to fly to your country and show up to your lawsuit, it's that the UK only has jurisdiction over the UK (and incidentally some jurisdiction over commonwealth nations via AJA 1920). imagine it weren't 'some guy' but a US-only startup selling only to U.S. based firms and they were valued tomorrow at $100B, regardless of their size you wouldn't have a way of seizing their property since the UK can't seize property in another country (I guess not without that country's permission). The only way they would be punished is if they're sanctioned and thus can never do business within the UK, or they get extradited some-how some-way. Microsoft indeed will show up because they want to keep selling Windows and Office 365 there, but otherwise, as I've said, copyright lawsuits across nation state lines and not within a single country basically don't happen.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#177

Post by lostmsu »

thayne wrote: post #174
comex wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because of the (very small) chance that Copilot could regurgitate something secret or embarrassing. Which is not necessarily hypocritical. The amount of copying needed for something to be copyright infringement is not high… but it's still significantly higher than the amount needed to leak information. For that, just a few words will do, e.g. // For Windows 12 or // Fuck [company name] or long secret_key[2]…

and open source codebases don't have code like that?

Not the parts that are secret or embarrassing.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#178

Post by lostmsu »

heavyset_go wrote: post #115
davisr wrote: post #7

The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If megacorps like Microsoft can sue people into oblivion for violating their copyright terms, people can sue Microsoft into oblivion for violating theirs. I don't use MS Github, I have no skin in the game, but I hope there is at-least a $1000 award to every instance of AGPL and GPL license violation be…

> The ignorance in this comment section is already giving me an aneurysm. Software licenses matter. Copyright matters. If anyone thinks they don't, ask why Microsoft didn't train Copilot on their Windows, Office, or Azure source repositories.

Because that's extra work to wire them up? Until recently Windows wasn't even in Git.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#180

Post by alpaca128 »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
gradys wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why you think training models on copyrighted text is illegal or copyright infringement or whatever else it might be?

My explanation will not be popular here on HN, but I'm never one to shy away. Especially when asked directly. Buying a book, buying an audio CD, or buying a DVD/Blu-ray is granting the holder permission to read,listen,view that product as a single instance. You can lend them out, but that's all you're really allowed to do with them. The text,audio/video is not owned by you to do with as you please. People obviously d…

> People obviously do not like that, and argue making copies/backups is their right.

In some jurisdictions this is in fact their right by law as long as they own the original (the music/film industry of course used this as an excuse to slap additional fees on every sale of any storage medium). Redistribution is different however.

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