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Copilot sells code other people wrote

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Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#291

Post by causi »

meheleventyone wrote: post #158
HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

They own their code and it either has a license for use or is implicitly rights retained if not. If Copilot regurgitates their code, from a project that is public but with a non-permissive license they are having their IP rights violated so are totally correct in being unhappy about that. Just because you’ve made something cool doesn’t give you the right to harm others in the process. If MS or OpenAI don’t think this…

Unfortunately the way IP law works, at least in the US, is that you can use essentially whatever you want as training data and it's up to the user to make sure none of the generated code violates licensing agreements.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#292

Post by moffkalast »

lin83 wrote: post #214
HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

> Instead of marvelling at the human ingenuity that went into creating it, they sneer at the audacity of openAI to do something without first asking their permission. Something being cool doesn't exempt it from discussion of its ethics and certainly doesn't exempt it from legal consequences. Often what people call "disruption" is often just exploiting resources/people/their work in unsustainable ways until oversight…

Moreover it's a genuine danger for non-hobbyist developers since you could be including stolen code into a market product.

Even including something banal like Linux is already problematic since it's GNU licensed, which by extension makes your entire project GNU licensed and you can't keep the exclusive rights to it.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#294

Post by nixpulvis »

HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

You should read more about peoples ideologies and philosophies of Open Source.

One big reason I support it is because it grants me the right and ability to change things I need/want to change.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#295

Post by jimnotgym »

meheleventyone wrote: post #223
zarzavat wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of a fair use right is that you don’t need the copyright owner’s permission to be able to exercise it. Fair use allows you to do things that the copyright owner doesn’t like. Is fair use on a massive scale still fair use? Courts generally think so, otherwise Google would have been out of business a long time ago.

Is this fair use? I don't think that's been established yet. And if it is why didn't MS and OpenAI train it on their private code repositories? Fair use for thee not for me isn't very in keeping with the spirit of that claim.

I sometimes read people's open source code on github and use the ideas from that to develop my own ideas. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short passages and then rework them. I also employ a team of people who may do the same. Is that fair use, yes of course it is. Is co-pilot automating that fair use, I would say so.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#296

Post by pacifika »

janandonly wrote: post #205

Isn't every programmer in history (except the gall who invents her own language and writes all her own code) simply an archeologist for other people's work? We all Duck/Google for code anyway. Why not admit and make it easier?

Copilot is doing this on an industrial scale. It’s the difference between copying sample code and outsourcing your work to a third party colkectively

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#297

Post by jhugo »

spupe wrote: post #280
jhugo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you if the AI was genuinely assisting with that task, but it isn't. It's taking inputs, ignoring their licenses, permuting them in ways that are not understandable to the user, and then outputting them. That's an entirely different task than the user reading SO or using Google and then writing their own code, because the "AI" is not capable of writing its own code at that level. Relying on this too…

> That's an entirely different task than the user reading SO or using Google and then writing their own code, because the "AI" is not capable of writing its own code at that level. I would say it's a very similar task. If I need to remember how to use a certain function, I can Google for documentation and examples, or I can tell Copilot what I want to do. The fact that the solution was presented by Copilot or a SO th…

You really seem to be ignoring the core issue by focusing on SO though. Everything on SO is fair game, but code on GitHub is under a variety of licenses, and when Copilot regurgitates it, no matter how complex and inscrutable the process is that leads it to do so, it may be causing the user of Copilot to misuse that code because it doesn't even give them the opportunity to know where it came from or what license it was released to the public under.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#298

Post by moffkalast »

tiborsaas wrote: post #288
highwaylights wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems disingenous. People don’t have a problem that AI is being used in some form to provide the service. The complaint is pretty clearly that code is being lifted from repositories without attribution or compensation, and being redistributed into other applications. How impressive the work behind copilot is or is not really isn’t relevant.

I've made use of a ton of open source tools and have not paid any attribution or compensation. By made use of, I mean I used them as their intended purposes and not their source code. I have a FOSS OS, server, CMD tools and libraries powering my ideas, it's part of the deal that I don't have to pay. If I modify them I know what I have to do, but Co-pilot is somewhere in-between the two, it's abstracting knowledge fro…

> it's not repeating non-trivial work 1:1

But that's basically all copilot does? It's just a fancy compression system with a search function.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#299

Post by redox99 »

teakettle42 wrote: post #258
redox99 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consider copying a 3 liner from stack overflow and not writing an attribution plagiarizing (regardless if technically speaking it is or isn't according to the law).

Plagiarism isn’t a legal concept, it’s an ethical one. You need to either attribute the source, or rewrite it in entirely your own words — just like when writing a paper. Confirming to the license is also required; iirc, SO requires attribution under the CC-SA license.

> Plagiarism isn’t a legal concept, it’s an ethical one.

Well if it isn't a legal but an ethical concept, then that's just your opinion, since there isn't some universal body that establishes exactly what is ethical and what isn't. And as I said in my previous comment, "I don't consider".

> You need to either attribute the source, or rewrite it in entirely your own words — just like when writing a paper.

Often times a three liner can not be changed in any way, and is the only solution to a problem. In some cases you may be able to change it only in terms of indentation and variable names (in others you can't even change that).

But assuming you can do that, it makes no sense at all just changing indentation and variable names just for the sake of changing it.

> Confirming to the license is also required; iirc, SO requires attribution under the CC-SA license.

As I said I'm not talking about the legalities.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55319570/how-can-i-raise...

Are you going to attribute that every time you use Math.pow?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#300

Post by matharmin »

meheleventyone wrote: post #223
zarzavat wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire point of a fair use right is that you don’t need the copyright owner’s permission to be able to exercise it. Fair use allows you to do things that the copyright owner doesn’t like. Is fair use on a massive scale still fair use? Courts generally think so, otherwise Google would have been out of business a long time ago.

Is this fair use? I don't think that's been established yet. And if it is why didn't MS and OpenAI train it on their private code repositories? Fair use for thee not for me isn't very in keeping with the spirit of that claim.

For public repositories, whether copying small parts of code is considered fair use is just a copyright question.

On the other hand, if you copy from private repositories, it quickly gets into the territory of stealing trade secrets.

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