GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#481

Post by Vetch » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:21 AM UTC

nightski wrote: post #471

fireant wrote: post #464

This exact code can be found 1000 times on github and many of those are MIT licensed https://github.com/search?q=%22cs+*cs_transpose+%28%22&type=... . Copilot, or any other developer or person, has no way of knowing where the original implementation came from or it's original license. The cat is out of the bag, get used to it.

Or just don't use Github.

This scenario is specific to neither github nor copilot. It will always happen for any combination of a code generating LLM trained on all publicly available code.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#482

Post by helsinkiandrew » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:22 AM UTC

leni536 wrote: post #448

minhazm wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does address it, although not that clearly. This happens all the time with news media. They will post a picture and say they got permission from X person, but X person actually didn't even own the copyright in the first place. That doesn't make any of it okay, but it does mean that the organization has legal cover in this case and the worst that will happen is that they'll have to take the content down. In GitHub'…

If that's true, than Github is just "washing its hands". Not at all reassuring for copyright holders and users of copilot.

That code seems to appear in thousands of repositories on GitHub, I’m sure some of them haven’t copied the license.

The vast majority of people who would use a matrix transform function they got from code completion (or from a GitHub or stack overflow search) probably don’t care what the license is. They’ll just paste in the code. To many developers publicly viewable code is in the public domain. Code pilot just shortens the search by a few seconds.

Microsoft should try todo better (I’m not sure how), but the sad fact is that trying to enforce a license on a code fragment is like dropping dollar bills on the sidewalk with a note pinned to them saying “do not buy candy with this dollar”

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#483

Post by yardstick » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:25 AM UTC

leni536 wrote: post #448

minhazm wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does address it, although not that clearly. This happens all the time with news media. They will post a picture and say they got permission from X person, but X person actually didn't even own the copyright in the first place. That doesn't make any of it okay, but it does mean that the organization has legal cover in this case and the worst that will happen is that they'll have to take the content down. In GitHub'…

If that's true, than Github is just "washing its hands". Not at all reassuring for copyright holders and users of copilot.

What’s the most github could reasonably be expected to do? Identify if multiple licenses are found for the same code then maybe it should be flagged for review or the most restrictive license applied.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#484

Post by amanuonsense » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:26 AM UTC

williamcotton wrote: post #76

ghoward wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what's different about the photograph or the recording? They are still their own separate works! If a painter paints a person for commission, and then that person also commissions a photographer to take a picture of them, is the photographer infringing on the copyright of the painter? Absolutely not; the works are separate. If a recording artist records a public domain song that another artist performs li…

I'm not sure sure that originality is that different between a human and a neural network. That is to say that what a human artist is doing has always involved a lot of mixing of existing creations. Art needs to have a certain level of familiarity in order to be understood by an audience. I didn't invent 4/4 time or a I-IV-V progression and I certainly wasn't the first person to tackle the rhyme schemes or subject ma…

> I'm not sure sure that originality is that different between a human and a neural network.

It is, yes. For example, a neural network can't invent a new art style on its own, or at least existing models can't, they can only copy existing art styles, invented by humans.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#485

Post by atchoo » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

Thorrez wrote: post #383

Filligree wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a human drew that, it would not be copyright violation.

Why? Obviously it wouldn't be a copyright violation because the original one is old enough to no longer by copyrighted. But other than age?

The photograph of the art, which will be more recent, might have copyright protections.

It looks like it wouldn't in the UK, probably wouldn't in the US but would in Germany. The cases seem to hinge on the level of intellectual creativity of the photograph involved. The UK said that trying to create an exact copy was not an original endeavour whereas Germany said the task of exact replication requires intellectual/technical effort of it's own merit.

https://www.theipmatters.com/post/are-photographs-of-public-...

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#486

Post by dmix » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:32 AM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #472

_ryanjsalva wrote: post #313

Howdy, folks. Ryan here from the GitHub Copilot product team. I don’t know how the original poster’s machine was set-up, but I’m gonna throw out a few theories about what could be happening. If similar code is open in your VS Code project, Copilot can draw context from those adjacent files. This can make it appear that the public model was trained on your private code, when in fact the context is drawn from local fil…

Hey Ryan! Have you ever done any reading on the Luddites? They weren't the anti technology, anti progress social force people think they were. They were highly skilled laborers who knew how to operate complex looms. When auto looms came along, factory owners decided they didn't want highly trained, knowledgeable workers they wanted highly disposable workers. The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just…

What alternative are you suggesting?

Things turned out pretty great economy-wise for people in the UK. So that's a poor example even if Luddites didn't hate technology. Not working on the technology wouldn't have done the world any favours (nor the millions of people who wore the more affordable clothes it produced).

I personally think it'd be rewarding to make developers lives easier, essentially just saving the countless hours we spend googling + copy/pasting Stackoverflow answers.

Co-pilot is merely just one project in this technological development, even if a mega-corp like Microsoft doesn't do it ML is here to stay.

If you're concerned that software developers job security is at all at risk from co-pilot than you greatly misunderstand how software engineering works.

Auto-completing a few functions you'd copy/paste otherwise (or rewrite for the hundredth time) is a small part of building a piece of software. If they struggle with self-driving cars, I think you'll be alright.

At the end-of-the-day there's a big incentive for Github et al to solve this problem, a class action lawsuit is always an overhanging threat. Even if co-pilot doesn't make sense as a business and these pushback shut it down I doubt it will go away.

I'm personally confident the industry will eventually figure out the licensing issues. The industry will develop better automated detection systems and if it requires more explicit flagging, no-one is better positioned to apply that technologically than Github.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#487

Post by cycomanic » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

_ryanjsalva wrote: post #313

Howdy, folks. Ryan here from the GitHub Copilot product team. I don’t know how the original poster’s machine was set-up, but I’m gonna throw out a few theories about what could be happening. If similar code is open in your VS Code project, Copilot can draw context from those adjacent files. This can make it appear that the public model was trained on your private code, when in fact the context is drawn from local fil…

>Instead, the translation service understands language patterns (i.e. syntax, semantics, common phrases). In the same way, Copilot translates from English to Python, Rust, JavaScript, etc.

The statement that language models actually understand syntax and semantics is still subject of significant debate. Look at all discussion around "horse riding astronaut" for stable diffusion models and the prompts with geometric shapes which clearly show that the language model does not semantically understand the prompt.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#488

Post by Marazan » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

danielheath wrote: post #427

binarymax wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Later in the thread he stated the code was not on the machine he tested copilot with. Copilot training data should have been sanitized better. In addition: any code that is produced by copilot that uses a source that is licensed, MUST follow the practices of that license, including copyright headers.

Right - but if someone pushes the same code to github and changes the licence file to say "public domain", what's the legally correct way to proceed? What's the morally correct way to proceed?

If you want a massive corpus of training data theb you can create it by hand like grandpappy used to do rather than just thieving it whilst telling yourself it is fine.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#489

Post by Vetch » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #460

judge2020 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it a valid defense against copyright infringement to say “we don’t know where we got it, maybe someone else copied it from you first?” I mean, in humans it's just referred to as 'experience', 'training', or 'creativity'. Unless your experience is job-only, all the code you write is based on some source you can't attribute combined with your own mental routine of "i've been given this problem and need to emit cod…

> > Is it a valid defense against copyright infringement to say “we don’t know where we got it, maybe someone else copied it from you first?” > I mean, in humans it's just referred to as 'experience', 'training', or 'creativity'. Unless your experience is job-only, all the code you write is based on some source you can't attribute combined with your own mental routine of "i've been given this problem and need to emit…

With high probability, what's happened here is this code is an important piece of code-infrastucture in that it's copied into a fair number of places. Which means humans are copying it without attribution or downstream of someone who did while relevant license is not propagated anywhere near as reliably.

It doesn't change licensing issue but it does mean people are already copying and using copyrighted code without respecting original license and no AI involved.

There should be a way to reverse engineer code LLMs to see which core bits of memorized code they build on. Another complex option is a combination of provenance tracking and semantic hashing on all functions in code used for training. Another option (non-technical) is a rethinking of IP.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#490

Post by polymatter » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 6:36 AM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #458

andreareina wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's too hard" isn't a valid reason for me to not follow laws and/or social norms. This is a predictable result and was predicted by many people; "oops we didn't know" is neither credible nor acceptable.

It’s not “oops we didn’t know” it’s, “someone published a project under a permissive license which included this code.” If your standard is “Github should have an oracle to the US court system and predict what the outcome of a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement for a given snippet of code would be” then it is literally impossible for anyone to use any open source code ever because it might contain infringing cod…

Exactly, the chain of custody is absolutely required for this to be legal because no oracle can exist. It must be able to attribute exactly who contributed the suspect code. It must be able to handle the edge case where some humans might publish code without permission.

Either that or we effectively get rid of software copyright as copilot can be used (or even claim to be used) to launder code of license restrictions. Eg No I didn't copy your code, I used copilot and it copied your code so I did nothing wrong.