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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

#541

Post by hnbad »

olliej wrote: post #511
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'…

Yeah, so if a news agency publishes a picture without knowing where it came from, the originator can sue them for violating copyright. There is no “I don’t know who owns the IP” defense: the image has a copyright, a person owns that copyright, publishing the image without licensing or purchasing the copyright, is a violation. The fine is something like $100k per offense for a business.

FWIW this in consequence means you can't legally use Copilot without becoming liable to copyright violations because it's essentially a black box and you have no insight into where the code it generates originated and even if it isn't a 1-to-1 copy it might be a "derivative work".

This is why I'm gnashing my teeth whenever I hear companies being fine with their employees using Copilot for public-facing code. In terms of liability, this is like going back from package managers to copying code snippets of blogs and forum posts.

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

#542

Post by dark-star »

svnt wrote: post #346
_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…

This doesn’t at all address the primary issue, which is one of licensing. 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?” If someone violated the copyright of a song by sampling too much of it and released it in the public domain (or failed to claim it at all), and you take the entire sample from them, would that hold up in a le…

> 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?”

If you do something, it's ultimately you who has to make sure that it is not against the law. "I didn't know" is never a good defense. If you pay with counterfeit cash, it is you who will be arrested, even if you didn't know it was counterfeit. If you use code from somewhere else (no matter if it's by copy/pasting or by using Copilot), it is you who has to make certain that it doesn't infringe on any copyright.

Just because a tool can (accidentally) make you break the law, doesn't mean the tool is to blame (cf. BitTorrent, Tor, KaliLinux, ...)

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

#543

Post by ben-schaaf »

siilats wrote: post #507

I think this will be solved like YouTube music. I as copilot user don’t mind paying 0.1cents for a good matrix transform and the code owner doesn’t mind receiving 0.1cents from thousands of users and github gets 30%

That's not compatible with the licenses used by software projects, especially GPL.

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

#544

Post by OJFord »

_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…

> We’ve found this happens in 150 characters that match public data. If you’re not already using the filter, I recommend turning it on by visiting the Copilot tab in user settings.

How is that a solution though? OP isn't upset that he's regenerated his own work via Copilot, he's upset that others can unknowingly & without attribution.

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

#545

Post by zimpenfish »

briffle wrote: post #424
_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…

Their are lots of sheets properly licensed that show the notes to play ‘stairway to heaven’. Many intro to guitar books, etc. If I publish myself playing that song without the copyright owners permission (and typically attribution) I am looking at some very, very negative outcomes. The fact that there are many copies correctly licensed (or not) does not obsolve me of anything. Curious how this any different?

> If I publish myself playing that song without the copyright owners permission

Music licensing is bonkers but AFAIR (at least in the UK) I think you're allowed to do covers without explicit permission[1] - you'll have to give the original writers/composers the appropriate share of any money you make.

[1] Which is why you (used to?) get, e.g., supermarkets playing covers of songs rather than the originals because it's cheaper.

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

#546

Post by soft_dev_person »

gernb wrote: post #538
socialismisok wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 happened with auto looms is cloth became cheap which allowed more people to have clothing and expanded the fashion industry by 1000x Sure glad thse Luddites didn't get their way

I can guess the modern slaves producing our cheap clothes would have an opinion on that.

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

#547

Post by d1sxeyes »

IneffablePigeon wrote: post #524
d1sxeyes wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know GH didn't? Maybe they only included repos with LICENSE.MD files which followed a known permissive licence? What if a particular piece of code is licensed restrictively, and then (assuming without malice) accidentally included in a piece of software with a permissive license? What if a particular piece of code is licensed permissively (in a way that allows relicensing, for example), but then included i…

The “it’s really hard” argument isn’t a very good argument in my opinion? If we hold reproductions of a single repository to a certain standard, the same standard should probably apply to mass reproductions. For a single repository, it’s your responsibility to make sure it’s used according to the license. Are there slightly gray edge cases? Of course, but they’re not -that- grey. If I reproduced part of a book from a…

If someone uploads something and says 'hey, this is some code, this is the appropriate licence for it', it is their mistake, it is in violation of Github's terms of service, and may even be fraudulent. [0].

I'm also not sure that Copilot is just reproducing code, but that's a separate discussion.

> If I reproduced part of a book from a source that claimed incorrectly it was released under a permissive license, I would still be liable for that misuse. Especially if I was later made aware of the mistake and didn’t correct it.

I don't believe that's correct in the first instance (at least from a criminal perspective). If someone misrepresents to you that they have the right to authorise you to publish something, and it turns out they don't have that right, you did not willingly infringe and are not liable for the infringement from a criminal perspective[1]. From a civil perspective, likely the copyright owner could still claim damages from you if you were unable to reach a settlement. A court would probably determine the damages to award based on real damages (including loss of earnings for the content creator), rather than anything punitive if it's found that

Further, most jurisdictions have exceptions for short extracts of a larger copyrighted work (e.g. quotes from a book), which may apply to Copilot.

This is my own code, I wrote it myself just now. Can I copyright it?

``` function isOdd (num) { if (num % 2 === 0) { return true; } else { return false; } } ```

What about the following:

``` function isOddAndNotSunday (num) { const date = new Date(); if (num % 2 === 0 && date.getDay() > 0) { return true; } else { return false; } } ```

Where do we draw the line?

[0]: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... [1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506

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

#548

Post by soft_dev_person »

dark-star wrote: post #542
svnt wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t at all address the primary issue, which is one of licensing. 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?” If someone violated the copyright of a song by sampling too much of it and released it in the public domain (or failed to claim it at all), and you take the entire sample from them, would that hold up in a le…

> 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?” If you do something, it's ultimately you who has to make sure that it is not against the law. "I didn't know" is never a good defense. If you pay with counterfeit cash, it is you who will be arrested, even if you didn't know it was counterfeit. If you use code from somewhere else…

Yet, plenty of tools of this caliber have been made illegal (in some parts of the world).

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

#549

Post by efdee »

sngz wrote: post #451
carom wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is the largest disrespect to open source software I have ever seen. It is a derivative work of open source code and it is not released under the same license. It is also capable of laundering open source code. Congratulations for working on the "extinguish" phase of embrace, extend, extinguish for open source.

I really wonder what all those people who said Microsoft acquisition of Github was a good thing for opensource think now. I'm sure there will still be mental gymnastics involved.

Claiming Github's Copilot is Microsoft's "Extinguish" step against open source _is_ the mental gymnastics.

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

#550

Post by ecmascript »

I have used Co-pilot when it was in beta and I use Tabnine at this very moment. From my experience Githubs Co-pilot genereates a lot bigger chunks of code and it have always felt like they're just copied from somewhere.

I would never pay for Co-pilot since its Microsoft who owns Github and now my fears about the product seems to have been proven.

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