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Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

theregister.com

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Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#21

Post by dmitrygr »

pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

Lots of my code is on github (eg https://github.com/syuu1228/uARM), uploaded by others. I gave no license for its use in training. What now?

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#22

Post by simion314 »

pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

That will work if I upload only my code, but there are many open source projects where there are more then one author and GithHub did not acquired the rights from all the authors, the uploader to GitHub might not even be the author too.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#23

Post by nyc_data_geek »

kirth_gersen wrote: post #14
klyrs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to think for oneself will diminish rapidly in an environment that rewards one for not doing so. Smart people still exist. They just aren't online.

Suicide by words, here?

The Internet is still one of the easiest ways to find and participate in communities and conversations with other smart people, if you're invested in vetting and filtering who/what you're engaging with.

That said, I expect the ease of such will continue to decline as we approach a largely dead Internet, primarily consisting of bots talking to bots trying to sell each other herbal brain force supplements or whatever

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#24

Post by falcolas »

satvikpendem wrote: post #18
devmor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the matter of artwork there's no need for suspicion - it is and has been happening for a while now. There are entire online databases dedicated to providing non-consenting artist's "styles" as downloadable model parameters by name.

Style is not copyrightable so I see nothing wrong with making essentially a robot that can paint in the style of someone else.

In isolation, no. But the produced works can be too close for fair use (as demonstrated with the Prince pieces by Andy Warhol), and passing it off as a piece from the original artist can open you up to forgery/fraud charges.

To put another way, the motivations to produce art in another artist's style can still land the artist/buyer in legal trouble regardless of fair use.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#25

Post by zdragnar »

dmitrygr wrote: post #21
pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

Lots of my code is on github (eg https://github.com/syuu1228/uARM ), uploaded by others. I gave no license for its use in training. What now?

If the person didn't have your permission or permission from the license to agree to github's terms, then you sue the person who uploaded it to GitHub.

You don't get to go after GitHub because you have no contractual relationship with them. At best, you can get an injunction forcing them to take it down, though getting them to un-train copilot may not be feasible. At best you'd get a small cash offer, since you're unlikely to be able to justify any damages in a suit.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#27

Post by satvikpendem »

falcolas wrote: post #24
satvikpendem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Style is not copyrightable so I see nothing wrong with making essentially a robot that can paint in the style of someone else.

In isolation, no. But the produced works can be too close for fair use (as demonstrated with the Prince pieces by Andy Warhol), and passing it off as a piece from the original artist can open you up to forgery/fraud charges. To put another way, the motivations to produce art in another artist's style can still land the artist/buyer in legal trouble regardless of fair use.

Yes that is true, but I don't think the people who use style transfer are actually passing it off as the original, they just like it for the aesthetic value of their own images. In other words, no one using the Van Gogh LoRA is actually trying to forge the Starry Night.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#28

Post by whimsicalism »

daedrdev wrote: post #4

> The anonymous programmers have repeatedly insisted Copilot could, and would, generate code identical to what they had written themselves, which is a key pillar of their lawsuit since there is an identicality requirement for their DMCA claim. However, Judge Tigar earlier ruled the plaintiffs hadn't actually demonstrated instances of this happening, which prompted a dismissal of the claim with a chance to amend it. I…

Huh. There have definitely been well publicized examples of this happening, like the quake inverse square root

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#29

Post by loceng »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #17
loceng wrote: post #9

This kind of argument makes me feel like it also supports the abolition of patents: eventually multiple other people will come up with the same obvious solution, which becomes obvious once a person spends enough time looking at a problem.

The Patent System is not intended to be a test of exclusive original thought. The function of the Patent System is to incentivize search for solutions by temporarily securing exclusive right to market novel devices and processes for the discoverer.

Of non-obvious inventions. My argument being all inventions are obvious once attention is applied to that area and scope.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#30

Post by falcolas »

satvikpendem wrote: post #27
falcolas wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In isolation, no. But the produced works can be too close for fair use (as demonstrated with the Prince pieces by Andy Warhol), and passing it off as a piece from the original artist can open you up to forgery/fraud charges. To put another way, the motivations to produce art in another artist's style can still land the artist/buyer in legal trouble regardless of fair use.

Yes that is true, but I don't think the people who use style transfer are actually passing it off as the original, they just like it for the aesthetic value of their own images. In other words, no one using the Van Gogh LoRA is actually trying to forge the Starry Night.

Given the value of an "authentic" painting of the Starry Night (or more realistically the value of something forged in, say, Samwise Didier's style) I can't agree with "no one".

I have to imagine that it's likely quite popular to sell AI generated art that mimics or copies existing works.

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