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We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
201–210 of 824 posts
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#202I think it's a great time to explain why this won't hit AI art such as Stable Diffusion, even if GitHub loses this case. The crux of the lawsuit's argument is that the AI unlawfully outputs copyrighted material . This is evident in many tests with many people here and on Twitter even getting verbatim comments out of it. AI art, in the other hand, is not capable of outputting the images from its training set, as it's…
Eh... I don't know. It sounds to me like you are saying because the code example outputs exact lines, it's a copyright violation; but the image AI's necessarily don't output exact copies of even portions of pre-existing images, that's not how they work.
But I don't think copyright on visual images actually works like that, that it needs to be an exact copy to infringe.
If I draw my own pictures of Mickey Mouse and Goofy having a tea party, it's still a copyright infringement if it is substantially similar to copyright depictions of mickey mouse and goofy. (subject to fair use defenses; I'm allowed to do what would otherwise have been a copyright infringement if it meets a fair use defense, which is also not cut and dry, but if it's, say, a parody it's likely to be fair use. There is probably a legal argument that Copilot is fair use.... the more money Github makes on it, the harder it is though, but making money off something is not relevant to whether it's a copyright violation in the first place, but is to fair use defense).
(yes, it might also be a trademark infringement; but there's a reason Disney is so concerned with copyright on mickey expiring, and it's not that they think there's lots of money to be spent on selling copies of the specific Steamboat Willy movie...)
> There is actually no percentage by which you must change an image to avoid copyright infringement. While some say that you have to change 10-30% of a copyrighted work to avoid infringement, that has been proven to be a myth. The standard is whether the artworks are “substantially similar,” or a “substantial part” has been changed, which of course is subjective.
https://www.epgdlaw.com/how-can-my-artwork-steer-clear-of-co...
I think Stable Diffusion etc are quite capable of creating art that is "substantially similar" to pre-existing art.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#203Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this feels like it's more a law firm and individual looking to profit and make their mark in legal history rather than an aggrieved individual looking for justice. Programmer/Lawyer Plaintiff + upstart SF Based Law Firm + novel technology = a good shot at a case that'll last a long time, and fertile ground to establish yourself as experts in what looks to be a heavily litigated area o…
One of the core principles of the American system of government is that we outsource enforcement to private parties. Instead of the public needing to fund enforcement with tax dollars private parties undertake risky litigation in exchange for the chance of a big payoff.
There is a reasonable argument that's a horrible system. But it doesn't make sense to criticize the plaintiff looking for a profit - the entire system has been set up such that that's what they're supposed to do. If you're angry about it lobby for either no rules or properly funded government enforcement of rules.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way in hell that isEven is covered by copyright. "In computer programs, concerns for efficiency may limit the possible ways to achieve a particular function, making a particular expression necessary to achieving the idea. In this case, the expression is not protected by copyright." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari... Think about how absurd this is. So if Microsoft was the first…
There are software patents on bit twiddling operations that people do end up having to work around.
Patents and copyrights are completely different things.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuinely one of the worst takes I've ever read. I'm not against the 'slippery slope' argument in principle, but this example is ridiculous.
Slippery slope? Are you familiar with judicial precedent? Being bound to precedents is central to common law legal systems, so I don't think the GP's take was so outlandish. "Slippery slopes" and "whataboutism" might be thought-terminating buzzwords online, but not in front of a judge.
In what way would this even remotely set a precedent for APIs?
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
TabNine has absolutely improved my life as a programmer. There's something really rewarding about having a robot read your mind for entire blocks of code. It's not just functions either, one of the most common things that it helps me with daily is simple stuff like this: Typing const x = { a: 'one', b: 'two', ... } And later I'll be typing y = [ a['one'], b[' It's really amazing the amount of busy-work typing in prog…
I don't think this is a good example of the value of these things. You can just as easily do that same thing with advanced text editor features. Sublime for example supports multi-cursor editing. Just hold alt+shift+arrow keys to add a cursor, then type in the brackets you want. Ctrl+D can be used to select the next occurrence of the current selection with multiple cursors, built-in commands from the command pallete…
Multiple cursors wont do what the parent comment is talking about without a lot more work.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#207I hope this case will fail and establish a good precedent for all future AI litigations and may be even prevent new ones. Your code is open source - irregardless of license, one might read it as a text book and then remember or even copy snippets and re-use this somewhere else unrelated to the original application. If you don't like this, don't make your code open source. This was happening and is happening independe…
> Your code is open source - irregardless of license, one might read it as a text book and then remember or even copy snippets and re-use this somewhere else unrelated to the original application.
Yes, but attribution should still be given. Just because you don't copy-paste someone else's creation doesn't mean you're licensed to use it.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet we all use web browsers that copy copyrighted text from buffer to buffer all the time. This doesn't even include all of the copying that ISPs perform. It might be fair to say that the read performed in training has the same character since no human is involved. The real copyright violation would be using a derived work.
the actual copying isn't a problem, it's distribution. if i buy access to a PDF i'm not going to get in trouble for duplicating the file unless i send it to someone else. when someone uploads their copyrighted text to a web page they are distributing it to whoever visits that page. the browser is just the medium.
Is that the legal standard in copyright cases?
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#209On page 18, they show Copilot produces the following code: >function isEven(n) { > return n % 2 === 0; >} They then say, "Copilot’s Output, like Codex’s, is derived from existing code. Namely, sample code that appears in the online book Mastering JS, written by Valeri Karpov." Surely everyone reading this has written that code verbatim at some point in their lives. How can they assert that this code is derived specif…
> Surely everyone reading this has written that code verbatim at some point in their lives Ironically their Twitter account uses a screenshot from a TV series as profile picture. I wonder how legal that is, even if meant as a joke. https://twitter.com/saverlawfirm Edit: It's been changed 2 minutes after I wrote this comment
Is there a Wayback Machine for Twitter?
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#210Maybe we just need to prompt it to include the proper licenses and attributions. /s
Eh, I don't mind Copilot being trained on my code as long as it and all projects made using it are licensed under the AGPL.