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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

#421

Post by bastardoperator »

mike_d wrote: post #298
karaterobot wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing we can say with complete certainty is that most programmers who had their code used without permission will not receive very much money at all if this class action lawsuit is decided in their favor.

I don't care about the money. I support this because it will establish case law that other companies can't ignore licenses as long as they throw AI somewhere in the chain. If "I took your code and trained an AI that then generated your code" is a legal defense, the GPL and similar licenses all become moot.

But that's not what's happening here. Also, you grant GitHub a license.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

"You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content"

Copilot displays content. Case closed.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#422

Post by an1sotropy »

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…

I think (1) you're mainly missing that copyleft vs non-copyleft is actually irrelevant for the copilot case. You also (2) may be missing the legal footing of copyleft licenses.

(1) The problem with copilot is that when it blurps out code X that is arguably not under fair use (given how large and non-transformed the code segment is), copilot users have no idea who owns copyright on X, and thus they are in a legal minefield because they have no idea what the terms of licensing X are.

Copilot creates legal risk regardless of whether the licensing terms of X are copyleft or not. Many permissive licenses (MIT, BSD, etc) still require attribution (identifying who owns copyright on X), and copilot screws you out doing that too.

(2) Whatever legal power copyleft licenses have, it is ultimately derived from copyright law, and people who take FOSS seriously know that. The point of "copyleft" licenses is to use the power of copyright law to implement "share and share alike" in an enforceable way. When your WiFi router includes info about the GPL code it uses, that's the legal of power of copyright at work. The point of copyleft licenses is not to create a free-for-all by "liberating" code.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#423

Post by deanjones »

lpolk wrote: post #408
deanjones wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no such thing as a "content display licence" or "general code licence". There is copyright (literally, the right to make copies) which broadly lies with the author, who can then grant other parties a licence to copy their content.

I'm afraid I do not believe your legal expertise is so extensive that you are able to accurately predict the judgement of "any court".

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#424

Post by mike_d »

bastardoperator wrote: post #421
mike_d wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about the money. I support this because it will establish case law that other companies can't ignore licenses as long as they throw AI somewhere in the chain. If "I took your code and trained an AI that then generated your code" is a legal defense, the GPL and similar licenses all become moot.

But that's not what's happening here. Also, you grant GitHub a license. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... "You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content" Copilot displays content. Case closed.

Feel free to keep reading the next line down:

"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"

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#425

Post by xigoi »

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 separate licence when you start using their service.

And that license explicitly states that it doesn't give them the right to sell your code.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#426

Post by heavyset_go »

metadat wrote: post #404
xigoi wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I draw some eyes in Photoshop, it won't automatically draw the Mona Lisa around it for me.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#427

Post by Aeolun »

Cort3z wrote: post #364
ugh123 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attributions are fundamental to open source? I thought having source openly available was fundamental to open source (and allowed use without liability/warranty) as per apache, mit, and other licenses. If they just stick to using permissive-licensed source code then i'm not sure what the actual 'harm' is with co-pilot. If they auto-generate an acknowledgement file for all source repos used in co-pilot, and then asked…

People would likely not share any code if they could not trust that their work would be respected, and attributed. So yes, I believe it to be fundamental to open source.

Maybe researchers that are used to hunting for publications and attributions.

If I’m sharing my code publicly, it’s because I want it to be _used_.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#428

Post by Supermancho »

rowanG077 wrote: post #413
heavyset_go wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can model all the protons, electrons and photons incredibly accurately. We can't even accurately model a receptor protein on a cell or the binding of its ligands, nor can we accurately simulate a single neuron. This is one of those hard problems in computing and medicine. It is very much an open question about how or if we can model complex biology accurately like that.

I didn't say we can simulate it. There is a massive leap from what I said to being able to simulate it.

> There is not a understood natural phenomenon which we could not capture in math.

This is a belief about our ability to construct models, not a fact. Models are leaky abstractions, by nature. Models using models are exponentially leaky.

> I didn't say we can simulate it.

Mathematics (at large) is descriptive. We describe matter mathematically, as it's convenient to make predictions with a shared modeling of the world, but the quantum of matter is not an equation. f() at any scale of complexity, does not transmute.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#429

Post by alpaca128 »

m00x wrote: post #43

The only people who gain out of class lawsuits are the lawyers. This person (a lawyer) saw an opportunity to make money and jumped on it like a hungry tiger on fresh meat.

So he gets to make money with his profession while defending OSS licenses? I don't see the big problem.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#430

Post by xigoi »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #344
r3trohack3r wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hum…

> And then if we can close that loop by taking their proprietary software From where? They aren't publishing it. That's literally the meaning of proprietary.

That's not the meaning of proprietary, but otherwise you're right.
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