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

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

#491

Post by bayindirh »

stale2002 wrote: post #340
bayindirh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are effectively cases of cryptomnesia. Disagree, outputting training data as-is is not cryptomnesia. This is not Copilot's first case. It also reproduced ID software's fast inverse square root function as-is, including its comments, but without its license. > If you don't want broad access your work, don't upload it to a public repository. It's very simple. This is actually both funny and absurd. This is why…

> I don't care. These are my terms. That sounds like a you problem, not a us problem. As of yet, no court has said that any of this is illegal. So tough luck. Go take it to the supreme court if you disagree, because right now it actually seems like people can do almost whatever they want with these AI tools. Your objection simply doesn't matter, until there is a court case that supports you. You can't do anything abo…

> That sounds like a you problem, not a us problem.

This stance allows me to do whatever do I want with any software or work you put out there, regardless of the license you attach to it, since it's your problem, not mine.

However, this is not the mode I operate ethically.

> As of yet, no court has said that any of this is illegal.

I assume this will be tested somehow, sometime. So I'm investing in popcorn futures.

> Your objection simply doesn't matter, until there is a court case that supports you. You can't do anything about it, if that doesn't happen.

You know, this goes both ways. Same will be very valid for your works, through your own reasoning.

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

#492

Post by gorgoiler »

Could there be a happy ending here, where GitHub leverage their code trawling to help @docsparse find the original pirate who stole the cstranspose IP? It would be a bold business decision by GitHub mind you. Plagiarism police is a way more negative product angle than copilot’s current pitch.

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

#493

Post by Closi »

foepys wrote: post #478
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.

It will not be GitHub that will get sued. It'll be the developers that use the code without attribution. The copyright infringement might not matter if code from individual developers is being used - they usually don't sue. But once this happens to say Oracle's copyrighted code... Well, that is going to be interesting.

Both can probably be sued - if you copy a copyrighted image from a website that claimed it was free, you are still violating the copyright if you use it as an example.

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

#494

Post by extropy »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #482
leni536 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 shor…

I still remember the days when we hand billion dollar lawsuits over 20 lines of code (Oracle vs Google).

If CoPilot makes everyone see how ridiculous that is, that's a win in my book.

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

#495

Post by polymatter »

CapsAdmin wrote: post #107

I would imagine the root problem here is people taking copyrighted code, pasting it in their project and disregarding the license. To me this seems common, especially when it comes to toy, test and hobby projects. I don't see how copilot or similar tools can solve this problem without vetting each project.

Exactly. They need to vet each project

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

#496

Post by codalan »

throwaway1851 wrote: post #411
mahogany wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a new area of development, and we’re all learning. I’m personally spending a lot of time chatting with developers, copyright experts, and community stakeholders to understand the most responsible way to leverage LLMs. Given that there have been major concerns about copyright infringements and license violations since the announcement of Copilot, wouldn't it have been better to do some more of this "learning…

> why not train it on opt-in repositories for a few years first, and iron out the kinks? Ha ha. Because then the product couldn’t be built. Better to steal now and ask forgiveness later, or better yet, deny the theft ever occurred.

If Copilot was designed with any ethics in mind, it would have been an opt-in model.

Instead, they scoured and plagiarized everyone's source code without their consent.

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

#497

Post by twaw »

ianbutler wrote: post #133
shadowgovt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Searching for the function names in his libraries, I'm seeing some 32,000 hits. I suspect he has a different problem which (thanks to Microsoft) is now a problem he has to care about: his code probably shows up in one or more repos copy-pasted with improper LGPL attribution. There'd be no way for Copilot to know that had happened, and it would have mixed in the code. (As a side note: understanding why an ML engine ou…

Yeah that's a mess, but that's way too much legal baggage for me, an otherwise innocent end user, to want to take on. Especially when I personally tend to try and monetize a lot of my work. I understand there's no way for the model to know, but it's really on Microsoft then to ensure no private, or poorly licensed or proprietary code is included in the training set. That sounds like a very tall order, but I think the…

Open source code is open source when it license is obeyed only. When license is not obeyed, e.g. copyright notice is no reproduced, it should be treated as private code, except for dual-licensed code.

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

#498

Post by bayindirh »

psychphysic wrote: post #212
bayindirh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are effectively cases of cryptomnesia. Disagree, outputting training data as-is is not cryptomnesia. This is not Copilot's first case. It also reproduced ID software's fast inverse square root function as-is, including its comments, but without its license. > If you don't want broad access your work, don't upload it to a public repository. It's very simple. This is actually both funny and absurd. This is why…

It's funny to say id's fast inverse square root. Conway certainly didn't come up with the algorithm or the magic number. But your reasoning boils down to I don't like it so it mustn't be that way. That's never been necessarily true. At any rate piracy is rampant so clearly a large body of people don't think even a direct copies is morally wrong. Let alone something similar. You're acting as though there are constant…

> It's funny to say id's fast inverse square root. Conway certainly didn't come up with the algorithm or the magic number.

I'm not claiming that they did. What I said is, Copilot emitted the exact implementation in IDs repository, incl. all comments and everything.

> But your reasoning boils down to I don't like it so it mustn't be that way. That's never been necessarily true.

If you interpret my comment with that depth and breadth, I can only say that you are misinterpreting completely. It's not about my personal tastes, it's about ethical frameworks and social contracts.

> At any rate piracy is rampant so clearly a large body of people don't think even a direct copies is morally wrong. Let alone something similar.

I believe if you listen to a street musician for a minute, you owe them a dollar. Scale up from there. BTW, I'm a former orchestra player, so I know what making and performing music entails.

> You're acting as though there are constant won and lost cases over plagiarism. Ed Sheeran seems to defend his work weekly. Every case that goes to court means reasonable minds differ on the interpretation of plagiarism legally.

When there's a strict license on how a work can be used, and the license is violated, it's a clear case. That AI is just a derivation engine, and the license that derivations carry the same license. I don't care if you derive my code. I care you derive my code and hide the derivations from public.

It's funny that you're defending close-souring free software at this point. This is a neat full-circle.

> So what's your point?

All research and science should be ethical. AI research is not something special which allows these ethical norms and guidelines (which are established over decades if not centuries) to be suspended. If medicine people act with quarter of this lassiez faire attitude, they'd be executed with a slow death. If security researchers act with eighth of this recklessness, their career are ruined.

> That's all you got to hold back the tide of AI?

As I aforementioned, I'm not against AI. It just doesn't excite me as a person who knows how it works and what it does, and the researchers' attitude is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

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

#499

Post by olliej »

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.

There are dozens of companies that ship Linux and other GPL code without providing sources, get used to it!

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

#500

Post by stale2002 »

bayindirh wrote: post #491
stale2002 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care. These are my terms. That sounds like a you problem, not a us problem. As of yet, no court has said that any of this is illegal. So tough luck. Go take it to the supreme court if you disagree, because right now it actually seems like people can do almost whatever they want with these AI tools. Your objection simply doesn't matter, until there is a court case that supports you. You can't do anything abo…

> That sounds like a you problem, not a us problem. This stance allows me to do whatever do I want with any software or work you put out there, regardless of the license you attach to it, since it's your problem, not mine. However, this is not the mode I operate ethically. > As of yet, no court has said that any of this is illegal. I assume this will be tested somehow, sometime. So I'm investing in popcorn futures. >…

> this stance allows me to do whatever do I want with any software

Actually, no it doesn't. This topic is about AI training on code.

Courts have not held that this is illegal.

But there are absolutely other things, that people might do with code, that break copyright law.

> it's your problem, not mine.

Oh, but it would be your problem as well, if you break the law, and someone else sues you for it.

That's the difference. AI training is not against the law. Other things, that you are imagining in your head right now, very well could be, and you could lose.

> Same will be very valid for your works

Not if what you are hypothetically doing breaks the law, and AI training doesn't break the law.

So that the difference, which makes the reasoning legitimate.

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