Copilot sells code other people wrote • Hacker News Board

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#451

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:13 PM UTC

grayfaced wrote: post #435

jimnotgym wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes read people's open source code on github and use the ideas from that to develop my own ideas. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short passages and then rework them. I also employ a team of people who may do the same. Is that fair use, yes of course it is. Is co-pilot automating that fair use, I would say so.

Or alternately, "I sometimes listen to other people's songs and use those ideas to develop my own. In fact sometimes I copy and paste short melodies and then rework them." Courts have held that it doesn't apply to music, why do you think different rules apply to code?

[deleted]

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#452

Post by shireboy » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

teakettle42 wrote: post #302

kachhalimbu wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this take. Copilot to me seems a glorified (very intelligent) auto-search-paste/autocomplete service. It is just mimicing what usual devs do which is to copy-paste code from StackOverflow/github for many mundane types of codes like for loops, mongo find queries, callback func definitions etc for JS devs for eg. The idea of auto-attribution if copilot surfaces licensed code is best because then it keeps the cop…

> It is just mimicing what usual devs do which is to copy-paste code from StackOverflow/github for many mundane types of codes like for loops, mongo find queries, callback func definitions etc for JS devs for eg. I’m genuinely disturbed to see how many people in this thread think that casual plagiarism is the norm for “usual devs”.

Again, I get the argument, just think it’s overstated. First, when referring to stack overflow and blogs, generally, that’s intentionally shared with the express purpose of people copying it- hopefully while learning from it at the same time. Second, again with some code bits it’s not really plagiarism any more than all iambic pentameter is plagiarizing Shakespeare.

Devs often look at code to see basic syntax, understand algorithms, etc. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. One should draw a line somewhere, but to say I need to attribute […somevar] every time I use it because I happened to see it one time on a blog post is silly.

A thought experiment may help: Scrape Github for all unique strings longer than X and store in a file with a timestamp and owner. How large does X have to be before attribution is required? If not length, then how do you determine whether attribution is required?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#453

Post by akagusu » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

HumanReadable wrote: post #151

Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…

> I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly available just to complain when others make use of that knowledge.

People like you should understand that publicly available code doesn't mean "do whatever you want" code.

The majority of publicly available code hosted on Github as a license that tells you what you can and what you cannot do with that code.

If someone uses this code without respecting the license, authors have the right to complain and even legally enforce the license if they want.

Now, you should know that there's nothing "cool" to take other people's work without permission.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#454

Post by Veen » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

regularfry wrote: post #424

barthvr wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because writing a book, shooting a movie, composing a song, takes time ? So either those pieces are IP-protected, and their author can make money with it, or we have to set up a basic income for everyone, and art becomes free.

It's perfectly consistent to say both that there needs to be a system to ensure creators are compensated and that the current system for doing so is terrible.

It is consistent but useless if you have no suggestion as to what would replace the current system in a way that preserves the benefits to both parties.

1. Creators get a sustainable reward for their work. They wouldn't do it otherwise. I certainly don't do it for fun.

2. Consumers get to access that work as they wish.

(Of course, this being HN, I'd expect any ideas to apply to developers as well as to writers and artists i.e. if writers have to give up copyright, so do developers, startups, and so on.)

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#455

Post by wang_li » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #165

__warlord__ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should be GitHub's/Microsoft's responsibility? No one is forcing you to use copilot. If I use grammarly, are they responsible for what am I aiming to write?

So it's my job to check my supplier, to make sure lines from co-pilot are legit. At the same time when fast fashion companies sell T-shirts made with slave labour, its not the company's responsebility to check what their suppliers are doing. And if tesla autopilot kills you and your family its not their fault either. Neoliberal morality - companies are never accountable for anything, it's heresy to suggest they shoul…

Other than the first sentence nothing you wrote is true. If a company doesn’t do due diligence on their suppliers they face fines and possibly criminal charges. The news came out the other day that the NTSB is considering whether to require Tesla to recall all their vehicles with self driving enabled. Companies of all types face huge fines and civil liability for product safety issues.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#456

Post by megous » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

redox99 wrote: post #215

zufallsheld wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to your first point, there are many repositories on github that the author of code did not upload there or where not all contributors to the code are on github or agreed to let their work be used in such a case.

That's really no different than somebody uploading proprietary code they don't own (stolen, leaked, whatever reason etc) on Github. Github has to assume that you are allowed to do so. What are they going to do otherwise, somehow manually verify that each repository is legit? Now you might say, what about GPL code you don't own. You are allowed to redistribute it (upload to github). But because you are not the owner y…

Ok, takedown requests exists. Say Qualcomm finally wises up and asks github to takedown a copy of the millions lines of their super proprietary 4G modem firmware implementation from github. Will github retrain the model after each such takedown? :D

If not, then it's kinda stupid to argue the point about the lack of knowledge, since lack or not lack of knowledge clearly doesn't matter. Github will happily continue using confidential code even from trigger happy companies like Qualcomm for copilot.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#457

Post by gjadi » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

mroche wrote: post #429

gjadi wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can have multiple licenses in the same repository, folders with copyright exceptions, etc. It's hard enough for us human to find our way in this mess, I've little hope for an AI. But maybe it's just the first step. The final step being able to sell an AI that understands Copyright management. I'm sure there is a big market for that.

I feel like a few guidelines and standards could help simplify a baseline process: 1) Require each repository to opt-in to be learned from. 2) Require any source file used for learning to have an SPDX license heading. 3) Have a list of approved permissive licenses to avoid any proprietary or copyleft arguments. Using SPDX headings as the explicit guide would solve the problem of different code content using a differe…

Yes a standard would probably solve the issue.

But until lawyers push for a standard that would make this part of their work irrelevant, I can't see how it could happen :)

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#458

Post by FeepingCreature » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

happymellon wrote: post #436

FeepingCreature wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I don't care if closed source programmers read my GPL code! The freedom to learn is not copyleft. So long as they put independent effort into their work, they're good in my book. Shared knowledge is a vital commons, and I'm honored if I can contribute to it. Maybe this goes back to that debunked paper that claimed that transformers were only remixing input samples?

They aren't reading your code. This is a program copy/pasting code without attribution.

Again, the paper that said that transformers only copypasted input samples was highly misleading.

It seems clear to me that Codex has true understanding.

(Yes, I know that people have gotten secrets to appear in the output by prompting it in clever ways. That this happens doesn't prove that Codex doesn't understand what it's doing, it just shows that Codex doesn't understand everything.)

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#459

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #218

meheleventyone wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They own their code and it either has a license for use or is implicitly rights retained if not. If Copilot regurgitates their code, from a project that is public but with a non-permissive license they are having their IP rights violated so are totally correct in being unhappy about that. Just because you’ve made something cool doesn’t give you the right to harm others in the process. If MS or OpenAI don’t think this…

The entire point of a fair use right is that you don’t need the copyright owner’s permission to be able to exercise it. Fair use allows you to do things that the copyright owner doesn’t like. Is fair use on a massive scale still fair use? Courts generally think so, otherwise Google would have been out of business a long time ago.

> otherwise Google would have been out of business a long time ago.

I do think there are ethical questions around whether it's right for google to digitise physical books without the permission of the authors, and keep them on their servers and make money from them without recompensing the authors. That's something an individual would not get away with doing, so it seems wrong that it's OK for google.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#460

Post by 542458 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 1:26 PM UTC

aposm wrote: post #446

542458 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL. My understanding is that the general legal precedent in the US is that a) datamining text has no copyright implications (in the same way that reading a book has no copyright implications) and b) it is not a copyright violation to use a small amount of copyrighted material provided the context is sufficiently transformative. This might seem silly or unfair to you, but that is the current legal reality. But even…

I can't imagine a scenario in which any lawyer would consider granting Github the right to "analyze" code anywhere close to granting Github the right to spit out that same code verbatim without your copyright notice (even if laundered by AI).

Here's Kate Downing, an IP lawyer specializing in software license:

> According to Downing, the answer depends to a certain extent on where that code is hosted. If it’s on GitHub, there very clearly would not be copyright infringement.

> “If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.”

Downing cautions that copilot output of large chunks of code complete with comments are more questionable to use, but that for the most part it looks above board.

https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-c...

Here's an English lawyer on the same topic...

> The licence is broadly worded, and I'm confident that there is scope for argument, but if it turns out that Github does not require a licence for its activities then, in respect of the code hosted on Github, I suspect it could make a reasonable case that the mandatory licence grant in its terms covers this as against the uploader.

https://decoded.legal/blog/2021/06/github-copilot-initial-th...