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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

#401

Post by heavyset_go »

naikrovek wrote: post #359
heavyset_go wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute when you upload code to a public repository on github.com, you necessarily grant GitHub the right to host that code and serve it to other users. the methods used for serving are not specified. This is above and beyond the license specified by the license you choose for your own code. you also necessarily grant other GitHub users the right to view this code, if the…

It's served under the terms of my licenses when viewed on GitHub. Both attribution and licenses are shared.

This is like saying GitHub is free to do whatever they want with copyrighted code that's uploaded to their servers, even use it for profit while violating its licenses. According to this logic, Microsoft can distribute software products based on GPL code to users without making the source available to them in violation of the terms of the GPL. Given that Linux is hosted on GitHub, this logic would say that Microsoft is free to base their next version of Windows on Linux without adhering to the GPL and making their source code available to users, which is clearly a violation of the GPL. Copilot doing the same is no different.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#402

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

smoldesu wrote: post #313
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 a…

But it all runs on hardware we created and we know exactly what operations were implemented in that hardware. How is it not just math?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#403

Post by NicoleJO »

drvortex wrote: post #308
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…

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…

You're wrong. See exposed code. https://justoutsourcing.blogspot.com/2022/03/gpts-plagiarism...

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#404

Post by metadat »

xigoi wrote: post #394
adriand wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Photoshop can't produce copyrighted images on its own.

To play devil's advocate: Co-Pilot can't reproduce copyrighted work without appropriate user input.

Just trying to demonstrate a point- this analogy seems flawed.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#405

Post by pevey »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #346
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…

At this point we are back in the territory that the idea and the expression of the idea are inseparable, therefore the conclusion will be that copyright protection does not apply to code. Personally I think this has the potential to blow up in everyones faces.

If it does end up that way, I feel like the trickle away from github will become a stampede. And that would be unfortunate. Having such a good hub for sharing and learning code is useful, but only if licenses are respected. If not, people will just hunker down and treat code like the Coke secret recipe. That benefits no one.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#406

Post by kyruzic »

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.

No it's actually not.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#407

Post by albertzeyer »

I really don't understand how there can be a problem with how Copilot works. Any human just works in the same way. A human is trained on lots and lots of of copyrighted material. Still, what a human produces in the end is not automatically derived work from all the human has seen in his life before.

So, why should an AI be treated different here? I don't understand the argument for this.

I actually see quite some danger in this line of thinking, that there are different copyright rules for an AI compared to a human intelligence. Once you allow for such arbitrary distinction, it will get restricted more and more, much more than humans are, and that will just arbitrarily restrict the usefulness of AI, and effectively be a net negative for the whole humanity.

I think we must really fight against such undertaking, and better educate people on how Copilot actually works, such that no such misunderstanding arises.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#408

Post by lpolk »

deanjones wrote: post #389
mldq wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the standard content display license that everyone uses. Even in your quoted text I don't see any hint that snippets can be shown without attribution or the code license. It also says they can't sell the code, which CoPilot is doing. Also, in a very high number of cases it isn't the author who uploads. Repeating your line of argumentation (which occurs in every CoPilot thread) does not make it true.

It's irrelevant whether it's standard or not. Again, the terms in the code licence (including attribution) do not apply to Github, because that is not the licence under which they are using the code. You grant them a separate licence when you start using their service. If someone who isn't the author has uploaded code which they do not have a right to copy, they are liable, not Github. This is also clear from the Git…

You grant them a content display license, not a general code license.

> It's almost as if these highly paid lawyers know what they're doing.

Sure, they wrote the content display license long before CoPilot even existed. Any court will see the intent and not interpret these terms as a code re-licensing.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#409

Post by njharman »

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…

Say you read a bunch of code, say over years of developer career. What you write is influenced by all that. Will include similar patterns, similar code and identical snippets, knowingly or not. How large does snippet have to be before it's copyright? "x"? "x==1"? "if x==1\n print('x is one')"? [obviously, replace with actual common code like if not found return 404].

Do you want to be vulnerable to copyright litigation for code you write? Can you afford to respond to every lawsuit filed by disgruntled wingbat, large corp wanting to shut down open source / competing project?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#410

Post by Aeolun »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #328
drvortex wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 demonstrably false. It is a system outputting character-for-character repository code.[1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33457517

Ok, cool. Presumably that is because it’s smart enough to know that there is only one (public) solution to the constraints you set (like asking it to reproduce licensed code).

Now, while you may be able to get it to reproduce one function. One file, and definitely the whole repository seems extremely unlikely.

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