471–480 of 824 posts
If a software developer learns how to code better by reading GPL software and then later uses the skills they developed to build closed source for profit software should they be sued?
A human doesn't perfectly reproduce the same code he learned from.
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 dan…
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…
Say you publish a song and copyright it. Then I record it and save it in a .xz format. It's not an MP3, it is not an audio file. Say I split it into N several chunks and I share it with N different people. Or with the same people, but I share it at N different dates. Say I charge them $10 a month for doing that, and I don't pay you anything. Am I violating your copyright? Are you entitled to do that? To make it funni…
I hope this case will fail and establish a good precedent for all future AI litigations and may be even prevent new ones. Your code is open source - irregardless of license, one might read it as a text book and then remember or even copy snippets and re-use this somewhere else unrelated to the original application. If you don't like this, don't make your code open source. This was happening and is happening independe…
No thank you. I put a license to be followed, not to just be disregarded by an AI as "Learning material". No human perfectly reproduces their learning material no matter what, but Copilot does.
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…
Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison
The AFC test is a three-step process for determining substantial similarity of the non-literal elements of a computer program. The process requires the court to first identify the increasing levels of abstraction of the program. Then, at each level of abstraction, material that is not protectable by copyright is identified and filtered out from further examination. The final step is to compare the defendant's program to the plaintiff's, looking only at the copyright-protected material as identified in the previous two steps, and determine whether the plaintiff's work was copied. In addition, the court will assess the relative significance of any copied material with respect to the entire program.
Abstraction
The purpose of the abstraction step is to identify which aspects of the program constitute its expression and which are the ideas. By what is commonly referred to as the idea/expression dichotomy, copyright law protects an author's expression, but not the idea behind that expression. In a computer program, the lowest level of abstraction, the concrete code of the program, is clearly expression, while the highest level of abstraction, the general function of the program, might be better classified as the idea behind the program. The abstractions test was first developed by the Second Circuit for use in literary works, but in the AFC test, they outline how it might be applied to computer programs. The court identifies possible levels of abstraction that can be defined. In increasing order of abstraction; these are: individual instructions, groups of instructions organized into a "hierarchy of modules", the functions of the lowest-level modules, the functions of the higher-level modules, the "ultimate function" of the code.
Filtration
The second step is to remove from consideration aspects of the program which are not legally protectable by copyright. The analysis is done at each level of abstraction identified in the previous step. The court identifies three factors to consider during this step: elements dictated by efficiency, elements dictated by external factors, and elements taken from the public domain.
The court explains that elements dictated by efficiency are removed from consideration based on the merger doctrine which states that a form of expression that is incidental to the idea cannot be protected by copyright. In computer programs, concerns for efficiency may limit the possible ways to achieve a particular function, making a particular expression necessary to achieving the idea. In this case, the expression is not protected by copyright.
Eliminating elements dictated by external factors is an application of the scènes à faire doctrine to computer programs. The doctrine holds that elements necessary for, or standard to, expression in some particular theme cannot be protected by copyright. Elements dictated by external factors may include hardware specifications, interoperability and compatibility requirements, design standards, demands of the market being served, and standard programming techniques.
Finally, material that exists in the public domain can not be copyrighted and is also removed from the analysis.
Comparison
The final step of the AFC test is to consider the elements of the program identified in the first step and remaining after the second step, and for each of these compare the defendant's work with the plaintiff's to determine if the one is a copy of the other. In addition, the court will look at the importance of the copied portion with respect to the entire program.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Not a lawyer, so this is really definitely absolutely not legal advice and if you're looking to profit you should speak to a lawyer... for instance the lawyers who just filed the lawsuit) They're asking for two things, injunctive relief (ordering github/openai/microsoft to stop doing this) and damages. I suppose the injunctive relief really benefits anyone who doesn't want AI models to exist, because that's what it'…
> if you're looking to profit you should speak to a lawyer No, I'm just teasing... If a neural network learns how to program by reading my code, it will generate a mess with tabs and spaces mixed together.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. This is kinda smug, because it overcomplicates things for no reason, and only serves as a faux technocentric strawman. It just muddies the waters for a sane discussion of the topic, which people can participate in without a CS degree. The AI models of today are very simple to explain: its a product built from…
It's not something to dismiss but it is something that has already been addressed. Authors Guild v Google. Google Books is built upon scanning millions of books from libraries without first gaining permission from copyright holders, this was found to not be a violation of copyright. Building a product on top of copyright works that does not directly distribute those works is legal. More specifically, a computer consu…
This would be more or less analogous to Copilot linking to lines in repositories. If Copilot was doing that, there wouldn't be much outrage.
The fact that they are producing the entire relevant snippet, without attribution and in a way that does not necessitate referencing the source corpus, suggests the transgression is different. It is further amplified by the fact that the output itself is typically integrated in other copyrighted works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
Nobody is laundering away proprietary livenses, because that code is not open source and not in public github repos. And OSS capabilities are now present in copilot, which is neither free nor open. Furthermore these contributions are making their way into proprietary code and the OSS licensing becomes even further watered down. This is the epitome of what copyleft is against!
What I think GP is getting at in my understanding is that all this OSS/licensing stuff was a cautious attempt to assert a radical idea into an atmosphere of extrem secrecy: That information wants to be free.
Now we have a fat cooperation making a public statement of putting the value of advancing humanity over the value of honoring weird old Victorian ideas of "intellectual property" - which is what we are always tried to do, no?
Not that there is nothing to criticize, but I think that's a good thing on the whole.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So are you ok with it being illegal for humans to learn from copyrighted books unless they have a license that explicitly allows learning? That does not sound like a pleasant consequence.
Here's the thing - the US has well-established laws around copyright that don't consider learning from books a violation of those copyrights. This lawsuit is intended to challenge Copilot as a violation of licensing and isn't a litigation of "how people learn." Your program stole my code in violation of my license - there's a clear legal issue here. I'd pose a question to you - would it be okay for me to copy/paste y…