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An open source lawyer’s view on the copilot class action lawsuit

katedowninglaw.com

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Re: An open source lawyer’s view on the copilot class action lawsuit

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The output isn't guaranteed to be free of copyright from its training materials. It just usually is. There have been clear demonstrations of it regurgitating code from the training set verbatim, which would of course still be covered by the original license. Microsoft isn't going to train Copilot on Windows code for the same reason it didn't train it on private repos: the code is private and they don't want to risk l…

Private isn't a useful distinction though right? Even open source code often has a licence and conditions on how you can reuse or integrate it into your own code. Someone owns it. If you sell a product which can regurgitate large parts of code who's licence doesn't allow it to be completely freely used and modified then this kind of outcome seems a foregone conclusion.

> Private isn't a useful distinction though right?

Yes it is. If code is public you can't necessarily use or copy the code (depending on the license) but there's nothing stopping you reading it and learning how it works and any secrets contained in it (e.g. information about future products).

There's a reason most proprietary software isn't "source available".

> If you sell a product which can regurgitate large parts of code who's licence doesn't allow it to be completely freely used and modified

Yes but they don't do that. I'm not sure why people are finding this so hard to understand.

Re: An open source lawyer’s view on the copilot class action lawsuit

#182
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implementation of artificial neural networks isn't even close to how a brain works.

Yes but what difference exactly plays a role for the copyright question? And why?

Different networks with different dynamics for different processing and control mechanisms? Feedback that gives us self awareness?

That's not even scratching the surface of differences

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