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We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

githubcopilotlitigation.com

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Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#311

Post by yoyohello13 »

rowanG077 wrote: post #297
Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

The brain is also just a "complex math program". Since math is just the language we use to describe the world. I don't feel this argument has any weight at all.

So if I read the windows explorer source code, then later produced a line for line copy (without referring back to the source). Microsoft couldn't sue me?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#312

Post by bombolo »

rowanG077 wrote: post #297
Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

The brain is also just a "complex math program". Since math is just the language we use to describe the world. I don't feel this argument has any weight at all.

> The brain is also just a "complex math program"

Source?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#313

Post by smoldesu »

Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

> “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”

Not really? It's less about arithmetic and more about inferencing data in higher dimensions than we can understand. Comparing it to traditional computation is a trap, same as treating it like a human mind. They've very different, under the surface.

IMO, if this is a data problem then we should treat it like one. Simple fix - find a legal basis for which licenses are permissive enough to allow for ML training, and train your models on that. The problem here isn't developers crying out in fear of being replaced by robots, it's more that the code that it is reproducing is not licensed for reproduction (and the AI doesn't know that). People who can prove that proprietary code made it into Copilot deserve a settlement. Schlubs like me who upload my dotfiles under BSD don't fall under the same umbrella, at least the way I see it.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#314

Post by sigzero »

Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

> I’m not a lawyer, but

Should have stopped there.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#315

Post by r3trohack3r »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #286
r3trohack3r wrote: post #158

I'm not confident in this stance - sharing it to have a conversation. Hopefully some folks can help me think through this! The value of copyleft licenses, for me, was that we were fighting back against the notion of copyright. That you couldn't sell me a product that I wasn't allowed to modify and share my modifications back with others. The right to modify and redistribute transitively though the software license ga…

It looks like you're missing the entire purpose of copyleft vs public domain. The point is that copyleft source code cannot be used to improve proprietary software. That limitation is enforced with copyright. Proprietary software is closed source. You can't train your NN on it, because you can't read it in the first place. If someone takes your open source code and incorporates it into their proprietary software, the…

> If someone takes your open source code and incorporates it into their proprietary software, then they are effectively using your work for their private gain.

And then if we can close that loop by taking their proprietary software and feeding it into a NN to re-liberate it isn't that a net win for software freedom?

Today crossing the sourcecode->bytecode veil effectively obfuscates the implementation beyond most human's ability to modify the software. Humans work best in sourcecode. Nothing saying our AI overlords won't be able to work well in bytecode or take it in the other direction.

I guess what I'm saying is, today a compiler is a one-way door for software freedom. Once it goes through the compiler, we lose a lot of freedom without a massive human investment or the original source code. Maybe that door is about to become a two way door with copyright law supporting moving back and forth through that door?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#316

Post by swhalen »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #158

I'm not confident in this stance - sharing it to have a conversation. Hopefully some folks can help me think through this! The value of copyleft licenses, for me, was that we were fighting back against the notion of copyright. That you couldn't sell me a product that I wasn't allowed to modify and share my modifications back with others. The right to modify and redistribute transitively though the software license ga…

> It seems like the end goal of copyleft was to fight back against copyright, not to have copyleft.

Whether this was the original motivation depends on whom you are asking.

You may disagree, but the "Free Software" movement (RMS and the people who agree with him) essentially wants everything to be copyleft. The "Open Source" movement is probably more aligned with your views.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#317

Post by mcluck »

jacooper wrote: post #215
SurgeArrest wrote: post #196

I 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…

No thank you. I put a license to be followed, not to just be disregarded by an AI as "Learning material". No human perfectly reproduces their learning material no matter what, but Copilot does.

You mean to tell me that no one has ever perfectly replicated an example that they read somewhere? There's only so many ways to write AABB collision, fibonacci, or any number of other common algorithms. I'm not saying there aren't things to consider but I'm sure I've perfectly replicated something I read somewhere whether I'm actively aware of it or not

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#318

Post by bpicolo »

bogwog wrote: post #199
nrb wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a problem with it, so long as the material it trained on was with explicit permission/license and not potentially in violation of copyright? That's where the line is for it to be suspect IMO.

This is what I hope comes out of the lawsuit. If a company wants to sell an AI model, they need to own all of the training data. It can't be "fair use" to take other peoples' works at zero cost, and use it to build a commercial product without compensation. And maybe models trained on public data should be in the public domain, so that AI research can happen without requiring massive investments to obtain the trainin…

> It can't be "fair use" to take other peoples' works at zero cost, and use it to build a commercial product without compensation.

You just described open source software.

That's the whole heart of this lawsuit, and equally Copilot. It was trained on OSS which is explicitly licensed for free use.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#319

Post by BeefWellington »

naillo wrote: post #3

I'm kinda sceptical that this goes anywhere given that basically they say that whatever copilot outputs is your responsibility to vet that it doesn't break any copyright (obviously that goes against the promise of it and the PR but that's the small print that gets them out of trouble).

If a license requires attribution, and you reproduce the code without attribution using your editor plugin, it seems to me the infringement is on the editor plugin.

Note that even licenses like MIT ostensibly require attribution.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#320

Post by rowanG077 »

Supermancho wrote: post #303
rowanG077 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is also just a "complex math program". Since math is just the language we use to describe the world. I don't feel this argument has any weight at all.

> The brain is also just a "complex math program". This is not a fact.

Explain yourself. There is not a understood natural phenomenon which we could not capture in math. If you argue behavior of the brain cannot be modeled using a complex math program you are claiming the brain is qualitative different then any mechanism known to man since the dawn of time.

The physics that gives rise to the brain is pretty much known. We can model all the protons, electrons and photons incredibly accurately. It's an extraordinary claim you say the brain doesn't function according to these known mechanisms.

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