391–400 of 824 posts
The title of the submitted PDF document: "Microsoft Word - 2022-11-02 Copilot Complaint (near final)"[0] I've noticed this a lot and it's quite funny seeing what the actual filename of the document was. Does this just get included as metadata by default when you export to PDF? [0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/pdf/1-0-github_complaint...
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Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. It is not directly using your code any more than programmers are using print statements. A book can be copyrighted, the vocabulary of language cannot. A particular program can be copyrighted, but snippets of it cannot, especially when they are used in a different context. And that is why this lawsuit is dead on…
Neutral nets can and do encode and compress the information they're trained on, and can regurgitate it given the right inputs. It is very likely that someone's code is in that neural net, encoded/compressed/however you want to look at it, which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute. You can easily see this happen, the regurgitation of training data, in an over fitted neural net.
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The common practice in copyright cases is to calculate damages based on the theoretical cost that the infringer would have paid if they have bought the rights in the first place. This method was used during the piratebay case to calculate damages caused by the sites founders. They did not actually calculate damages in terms of lost movie tickets or estimates vs actually sales number of sold game copies. When it came…
"Using such calculations they would likely estimate the man hours based on number of lines of code and multiply that with the average salary of a programmer." The average salary of a programmer in which country? So much programming is outsourced these days, and in some places programmers are very cheap.
If the court wanted to distinguish between Microsoft using their own programmers to generate code vs taking code from github users, then the salary in question would likely be that of Microsoft programmers. It would then be used to illustrate how a legal training data would look like compared to an illegal one.
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This is demonstrably false. It is a system outputting character-for-character repository code.[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33457517
If I use Photoshop to create an image that is identical to a registered trademark, is the rights violation my fault or Adobe’s fault?
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It's worth reading the passage in its entirety and how a court would interpret it: > We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it > This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service, except that as part of the right to archive Your Conten…
"as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time."
"This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content" is unambiguously clear.
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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 syste…
It's the two words, "government enforcement", that bothers me. If your party is in control the words sound fine, otherwise, they sound ominous.
AKA a vast majority of the non-legislative government workers.
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Copyleft wouldn’t need to exist without copyright because there would be no proprietary software to fight against. Sure, there would be software with code not published, but if it was ever leaked which it often is, you could do whatever you want with it. But in a world where copyright does exist, copyleft is a tool to fight back.
Yes, but we aren't here talking about whether copyright should exist. We're talking about whether Copilot violates it.
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This is demonstrably false. It is a system outputting character-for-character repository code.[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33457517
If I use Photoshop to create an image that is identical to a registered trademark, is the rights violation my fault or Adobe’s fault?
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…
Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. It is not directly using your code any more than programmers are using print statements. A book can be copyrighted, the vocabulary of language cannot. A particular program can be copyrighted, but snippets of it cannot, especially when they are used in a different context. And that is why this lawsuit is dead on…
This is kinda smug, because it overcomplicates things for no reason, and only serves as a faux technocentric strawman. It just muddies the waters for a sane discussion of the topic, which people can participate in without a CS degree.
The AI models of today are very simple to explain: its a product built from code (already regulated, produced by the implementors) and source data (usually works that are protected by copyright and produced by other people). It would be a different product if it didn't have used the training data.
The fact that some outputs are similar enough to source data is circumstantial, and not important other than for small snippets. The elephant in the room is the act of using source data to produce the product, and whether the right to decide that lies with the (already copyright protected) creator or not. That's not something to dismiss.