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Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

theregister.com

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Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#41

Post by Brian_K_White »

pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

That just means github can display the code, and you can see the code, but that does not mean you can then profit from or redistribute (profit or no) the code without attribution.

Amazon has the rights to publish a book, and you have the right to receive a copy of the book, but neither of those gives you the right to re-publish the book under your own name.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#42

Post by [deleted] »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #41
pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

That just means github can display the code, and you can see the code, but that does not mean you can then profit from or redistribute (profit or no) the code without attribution. Amazon has the rights to publish a book, and you have the right to receive a copy of the book, but neither of those gives you the right to re-publish the book under your own name.

[deleted]

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#43

Post by [deleted] »

anonymoushn wrote: post #35
polishTar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fast inverse square root is now part of the public domain. Also, even if this weren’t the case you can’t sue for damages to other people (they’d need to bring their own suit)

Is the particular implementation that the model spits out 70+ years old?

[deleted]

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#44

Post by [deleted] »

simion314 wrote: post #22
pledess wrote: post #20

I thought "the Copilot coding assistant was trained on open source software hosted on GitHub and as such would suggest snippets from those public projects to other programmers without care for licenses" was explicitly allowed by the GitHub Terms of Service: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each User of GitHub a non…

That will work if I upload only my code, but there are many open source projects where there are more then one author and GithHub did not acquired the rights from all the authors, the uploader to GitHub might not even be the author too.

[deleted]

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#45

Post by munificent »

> Indeed, last year GitHub was said to have tuned its programming assistant to generate slight variations of ingested training code to prevent its output from being accused of being an exact copy of licensed software.

If I, a human, were to:

1. Carefully read and memorize some copyrighted code.

2. Produce new code that is textually identical to that. But in the process of typing it up, I randomly mechanically tweak a few identifiers or something to produce code that has the exact same semantics but isn't character-wise identical.

3. Claim that as new original code without the original copyright.

I assume that I would get my ass kicked legally speaking. That reads to me exactly like deliberate copyright infringement with willful obfuscation of my infringement.

How is it any different when a machine does the same thing?

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#46

Post by votepaunchy »

201984 wrote: post #36
zdragnar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the person didn't have your permission or permission from the license to agree to github's terms, then you sue the person who uploaded it to GitHub. You don't get to go after GitHub because you have no contractual relationship with them. At best, you can get an injunction forcing them to take it down, though getting them to un-train copilot may not be feasible. At best you'd get a small cash offer, since you're un…

So hypothetically, if a developer publishes GPL software on Codeberg, and someone uploads it to GitHub, could the original developer file takedowns against the Github copy? I'm curious if Github's ToS make uploading GPL software you don't own a copyright violation.

No, because the GPL is already more permissive than the GitHub TOS.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#47

Post by voxic11 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #28
daedrdev wrote: post #4

> The anonymous programmers have repeatedly insisted Copilot could, and would, generate code identical to what they had written themselves, which is a key pillar of their lawsuit since there is an identicality requirement for their DMCA claim. However, Judge Tigar earlier ruled the plaintiffs hadn't actually demonstrated instances of this happening, which prompted a dismissal of the claim with a chance to amend it. I…

Huh. There have definitely been well publicized examples of this happening, like the quake inverse square root

You can't copyright a mathematical operation. Only a particular implementation of it, and even then it may not be copyrightable if its a straightforward and obvious implementation.

That said the implementation doesn't appear to be totally trivial and copilot apparently even copies the comments which are almost certainly copyrightable in themselves.

https://x.com/StefanKarpinski/status/1410971061181681674 https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/dbe4ddb1...

However a twitter post on its own isn't evidence a court will accept. You would need the original poster to testify that what is seen in the post is actually what he got from copilot and not just a meme or joke that he made.

Also the plaintiffs in this case don't include id-Software and there is some evidence that id-Software actually stole the fast inverse sqrt code from 3dfx so they might not want to bring a claim here anyways.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#48

Post by voxic11 »

[deleted] wrote: post #43
anonymoushn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the particular implementation that the model spits out 70+ years old?

[deleted]

But copilot distributed it (allegedly) without complying with the GPL license (which requires any distribution to be accompanied by the license) so it still would be an instance of copyright infringement. https://x.com/StefanKarpinski/status/1410971061181681674

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#49

Post by CuriouslyC »

vkou wrote: post #40
CuriouslyC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure wish I could non-consent to people observing me in the world, I'd like to move through society invisibly and only show myself when it benefitted me. Unfortunately, the only answer is to stay inside if I don't want people to see me.

> I sure wish I could non-consent to people observing me in the world, You aren't allowed to use photos featuring a non-consenting person to, for instance promote a product. You are allowed to use photos including a non-consenting person. There's a lot of complicated law, differing between different jurisdictions to cover this question, and to balance the needs of the public with commercial desires. It's not as simpl…

I'm sure that the people who are being constantly victimized by paparazzi would like to know those rules that you just quoted, and have them be enforced.

Re: Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit

#50

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

satvikpendem wrote: post #19
klyrs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to think for oneself will diminish rapidly in an environment that rewards one for not doing so. Smart people still exist. They just aren't online.

From Plato's dialogue Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b: Socrates: I heard, then, that at Naucratis, in Egypt, was one of the ancient gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. He it was who invented numbers and arithmetic and geometry and astronomy, also draughts and dice, and, most important of all, letters. Now the king of all Egypt at that time was the god…

That's great!

They nailed us, what, four thousand years ago?

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