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I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

thelig.ht

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Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#391

Post by travisjungroth »

breck wrote: post #381
cnma wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Above a certain level of creativity people do produce novel or exceptional things that are worthy of protection. Because naked men are a shared concept Michelangelo's David is not protect-worthy? I'm very worried that such opinions are up-voted so highly when Microsoft leeches open source code (but not its own ...). People have no respect for other people's creations. Perhaps it makes them feel better becau…

> Above a certain level of creativity people do produce novel or exceptional things that are worthy of protection. Name your very best example that will prove me wrong. It should be so simple. One example, that's all it takes. Take your time, make sure you've got a good one. I'll tell you that not once, not a single time in over 17 years, have I ever seen a single example of this argument hold up under scrutiny. Oh w…

Okay, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’m legitimately trying to understand. Do you think after that book was published it should have no copyright protection? That it should be totally legal for me to print and sell my own copies?

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#392

Post by lacker »

blibble wrote: post #89
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

there's a nice example here of it reproducing carmack's famous inverse square root function from Quake 3 (sans GPL, of course) https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 this is clearly copyright infringement, and if it isn't: it should be

I don't think it should be infringement. You can't copyright an algorithm, and Carmack's function is like six lines of code. If you just read Carmack's source code, then rewrote the same algorithm with different variable names, it would clearly not be infringement. Is it really so bad if you keep his precise variable names, comments, and indentation? How does it hurt Carmack to reproduce this tiny snippet of code exactly, rather than with a small rewrite?

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#393

Post by caconym_ »

underwater wrote: post #369
caconym_ wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright doesn't just benefit huge corporations. For instance, without it, independent artists who rely on copying for distribution (authors, musicians, etc.) would find it much more difficult to make money off their work, mostly (IMO) because large corporate entities with large investments made in publication and distribution systems could simply take content and sell it themselves with zero obligation to the origi…

The status quo for artists is pretty dismal. Across industries you have a few ultra-successful artists, a small group who can make a decent living and then a long tail of people who can't pay the rent. Gaming things out, I don't think copyright is really helping any of those artists or society as a whole. If it didn't exist, you'd still have breakout artists who make money through endorsements, live shows, and sellin…

I think it's kind of crazy to handwave away a whole class of creators who do make real money off selling their work (rather than being performers), even if it isn't big money or even enough to live on without supplemental income. And I categorically disagree that copyright isn't helping "any" of them. One counterexample is self-published authors on Amazon and similar services, many of whom do make a lot more money than a layperson might expect, and all of whom would obviously be cut off at the knees by squeaky-clean first-world aggregator-reader services the second the copyright protections of their works were revoked.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#394

Post by krono »

jefftk wrote: post #353
krono wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you make something open source, I can use your code to power my business "Open source" isn't a license. You're not allowed to just use any open source software that doesn't contain a license by default.

The standard definition of "open source" is https://opensource.org/osd , which has: "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: ... The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from b…

But if there's no license, it's not the license that restricts but common copyright law.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#395

Post by breck »

travisjungroth wrote: post #391
breck wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Above a certain level of creativity people do produce novel or exceptional things that are worthy of protection. Name your very best example that will prove me wrong. It should be so simple. One example, that's all it takes. Take your time, make sure you've got a good one. I'll tell you that not once, not a single time in over 17 years, have I ever seen a single example of this argument hold up under scrutiny. Oh w…

Okay, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I’m legitimately trying to understand. Do you think after that book was published it should have no copyright protection? That it should be totally legal for me to print and sell my own copies?

Yes. Our government should not be in the business of regulating the distribution of a sequence of words about imaginary wizards.

JK is a talented and hard working writer, and though I'm not a fan personally of those books I respect that they likely are great pieces of work, but I believe we are getting the scraps of what we could get in the Intellectually Oppressed world compared to an Intellectually free world. I'd rather have a world without cancer, a world with 100x more people able to provide medical care, a world with less pollution, than a world of artificial scarcity where a few who go along with a system of oppression get to be billionaires.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#396

Post by dspoka »

I think the reaction from software devs on how Copilot's uses their code for ML is interesting in that all the ML companies have been doing this with all other forms of produced content: texts, posts, messages, photo captions, etc. And most likely even less care went into adhering to laws or ethics. Yes code has licenses and thus more distinct legal ramifications but on the other side are people who don't really understand that every time they interact with software or produce some content, everything is gathered and harnessed to power all these companies.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#397

Post by krono »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #348
krono wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you make something open source, I can use your code to power my business "Open source" isn't a license. You're not allowed to just use any open source software that doesn't contain a license by default.

The conventional definition of "open source" is software licensed under a OSI-approved license.

Does that mean general copyright does not apply to unlicensed open source software? Do any legal precedents exist related to this?

I'm honestly curious now.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#398

Post by jefftk »

krono wrote: post #394
jefftk wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard definition of "open source" is https://opensource.org/osd , which has: "Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: ... The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from b…

But if there's no license, it's not the license that restricts but common copyright law.

If there's no license, then it's not open source. This is a term with a standard meaning, and it doesn't just mean that the source is available for reading

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#399

Post by patrickthebold »

lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

There might be a slippery slope here: suppose there's a GPL version of product X in the training set. I'm building a proprietary competitor. Then let's say copilot makes it a little bit easier and cheaper for me to build my product.

Now suppose it's 10 years from now and it's trivial to build a proprietary competitor.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#400

Post by stale2002 »

caconym_ wrote: post #387
stale2002 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What better way to promote said Progress There are a lot of better ways. Having more information being public and free, and usable by tools like this sounds like an excellent way of promoting progress.

Well, this is the current status quo. Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, while non-transformative copying is considered infringement. If you want to strip creators of (default) exclusive rights to their work, that's a different conversation than the one around whether Copilot and similar applications fall under fair u…

> Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use,

Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, and the concerns that people have about it (that it allows easier copying of code), are actually a benefit.

And the fact that it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code, is overruled by the benefit that this stuff provides.

> doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it.

You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress.

When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way.

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