GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 05, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

Dracophoenix wrote: post #148

cxr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most recent Oracle vs. Google case has already settled a major point: APIs don't violate copyright. And as Github co-pilot is API (A self-modifying one, but an API nonetheless), Microsoft has a good defense That's a wild misconstrual of what the courts actually ruled in Oracle v. Google. (And to the reader: don't take cues from people banging out poorly reasoned quasi-legal arguments in off-the-cuff comments.)

Straight from the horse's mouth [1]: pg.2 'This case implicates two of the limits in the current Copyright Act. First, the Act provides that copyright protection cannot extend to “any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery . . . .” 17 U. S. C. §102(b). Second, the Act provides that a copyright holder may not prevent another person from making a “fair use” of a copyrigh…

Post by nerpderp82 » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

abecedarius wrote: post #452

visarga wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the smarter the agent gets, the less direct the derivation and the harder to explain it at some point it should be different enough to stand on its own, right? then we have no problem with copyrights

Yeah, also in principle. But the cleanroom approach isn't technically required for humans either -- it became standard because the legal notion of a derived work is very fuzzy and gradually changing, and lawsuits are expensive and chancy, so you want a process that's provably not infringing. "Yeah I learned some general ideas from this code, but I didn't derive any of my code from theirs" seems to be a logical rats-n…