Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

githubcopilotlitigation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 824 posts

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#541

Post by williamcotton »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #537
williamcotton wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, those comments might be considered infringement, but that's from an earlier version of Codex. Copilot does not return that code. The complaint even says so.

There are many public examples of that same effect happening (for example https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 ), and the legal team has been soliciting for more examples. Those examples are likely to come out if it does go to trial.

If this legal team was interested in this going to trial you think they would have put together a stronger case instead of risking that it won’t be heard.

There’s not even a single mention of any established legal doctrines around copyright and software, such as abstract-filter-compare, idea-expression dichotomy, etc.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#542

Post by Supermancho »

chlorion wrote: post #482
rowanG077 wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain yourself. There is not a understood natural phenomenon which we could not capture in math. If you argue behavior of the brain cannot be modeled using a complex math program you are claiming the brain is qualitative different then any mechanism known to man since the dawn of time. The physics that gives rise to the brain is pretty much known. We can model all the protons, electrons and photons incredibly accur…

I think you are mostly correct but most people don't like this explanation and choose to believe in magic or spirits or whatever instead of physical reality. For some reason the brain is "magic" and non-physical unlike other organs (and everything else that exists) to most people. It's almost impossible to convince anyone of this though and it's not even worth trying.

> most people don't like this explanation and choose to believe in magic or spirits or whatever instead of physical reality.

You have it reversed. Math is a language tool to describe things, in a limited fashion (our current modeling). One is physical matter (even if it's antimatter). If you believe that there will be a language that can describe anything, it still doesn't manifest matter by speaking that language or describing it...unless you're into magic or spirits or whatever.

This disconnect has nothing to do with how well we do or do not understand physical phenomena. I think what the OP meant to say (and probably you support) is how the "mind" or how we think, can be described with mathematical models. Maybe one day we will have a full understanding, but we're not there yet and not currently in a way that is legally compelling.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#543

Post by nickelpro »

yenwodyah wrote: post #481
nickelpro wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But Copilot has been shown to distribute (parts of) the copyrighted works used to create it. That’s the difference.

A) No it doesn't, there's nothing in the Copilot model or the plugin that represents or constitutes a reproduction of copyright code being distributed by GH/MS. The allegation is it generates code that constitutes a copyright violation. This distinction is not academic, it's significant, and represents an unexplored area of copyright law.

B) "parts of" copyright works are not themselves sufficient to constitute a copyright violation. The violation must be a substantial reproduction. While it's up to the court to determine if the alleged infringements demonstrated in the suit (I'm sure far more will be submitted if this case moves forward) meet this bar, from what I've seen none of them have.

Historically the bar is pretty high for software, hundreds or thousands of lines depending on use case. A purely mechanical description of an operation is not sufficient for copyright, you cannot copyright an implementation of a matrix transformation in isolation no matter what license you slap on the repo. Recall that the recent Google v Oracle case was litigated over tens of thousands of lines of code and found to be fair use because of the context of those lines.

I've yet to see a demonstrated case of Copilot generating code that is both non-transformative and represents a significant reproduction of the source work.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#544

Post by cdrini »

pessimizer wrote: post #508
cdrini wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard anyone saying that copilot is legal "just because it's AI." That's a pretty bad faith, reductive, and disingenuous representation. The core argument I've seen is that the output is sufficiently transformative and not straight up copying.

> The core argument I've seen is that the output is sufficiently transformative and not straight up copying. An argument that isn't made about any other type of algorithm.

I wasn't really trying to address whether the argument is valid, I was just noting the representation of the other side here is reductive to the point of being in bad faith. I find that kind of rhetoric a little frustrating since it's kind of inflammatory, and, I believe, not particularly productive towards having honest/informative disagreements and discussion.

I think if another algorithm was used instead of ML that did the same job as Copilot, then people would be making the same arguments. I think it's just the case that ML is just the first tech capable of doing what Copilot is doing.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#545

Post by still_grokking »

echelon wrote: post #528
williamcotton wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read most of the complaint. The only examples of supposed copyright infringement are isEven and isPrime functions. Here's what Copilot gives me in a Typescript file: function isPrime(n: number): boolean { for (let i = 2; i 1; } function isEven(n: number): boolean { return n % 2 === 0; } These are clearly not covered by copyright in the first place. This case is really quite pathetic.

Moreover, if this case wins, it threatens to disrupt one of the biggest technological progressions of all time. AI/ML will change every field just as the Internet and smartphones did. It doesn't show any indication of peaking, either. If the US chooses the wrong path here, we'll only tie our hands behind our backs. Other countries won't be so foolish. We should be able to train on any media a child could see, hear, o…

Especially the copyright / IP obsessed USA won't go this path.

Otherwise they would create the ultimate "copyright laundry machine".[1]

I'm very sure at least Hollywood and the big music labels would not like that… ;-)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33459967

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#546

Post by D13Fd »

saurik wrote: post #535
shanusmagnus wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the resource is free and non-rivalrous, what is being extracted?

The resource is not "free": it is provided under a license that attempts to lay out the terms the entity using the resource must comply with in order to get the benefit of using their product; just because this is a non-monetary compensation doesn't mean it is "free".

Authors of code (open source or otherwise) hold a copyright in that code. The purpose of the license agreement is to set out the terms on which the authors will permit others to take actions that would otherwise infringe copyright.

Using code, photographs, documents, or other material to train a model isn't copyright infringement. The person operating the model is not violating the exclusive rights of the copyright author: they are not making copies or derivative works.

Any other result means that all AI development based on training models is going to grind to a screeching halt, because essentially all training material—text, pictures, recordings—is copyrighted.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#547

Post by lbotos »

renewiltord wrote: post #374
lbotos wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I make a piece of software that curls a random gist and then puts it into your editor am I infringing Depends on the license. If it's MIT and you serve the license, no, you are not infringing at all. A trimmed version of MIT for the relevant bits: Permission is hereby granted [...[ to any person obtaining a copy of this software [..] to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copie…

Well, `curl` will download a gist without checking its license. So curl is infringing?

The law will consider "intent". By your logic, web browsers are infringing.

Can you use curl to infringe on copyright? Yes. Is every time you use curl copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with curl? Yes.

Can you use copilot to infringe? Yes. Is every time you use copilot copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with copilot? *No*

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#548

Post by Aeolun »

dmix wrote: post #63
adlpz wrote: post #36

It feels weird saying this but, for once, I hope the big evil corporation gets to keep selling their big bad product. I find the pattern matching and repetitive code generation really helpful. And the library autocomplete on steroids, too. Meh. Tricky subject.

TabNine has absolutely improved my life as a programmer. There's something really rewarding about having a robot read your mind for entire blocks of code. It's not just functions either, one of the most common things that it helps me with daily is simple stuff like this: Typing const x = { a: 'one', b: 'two', ... } And later I'll be typing y = [ a['one'], b[' It's really amazing the amount of busy-work typing in prog…

That autocomplete was sort of ok in tabnine, but Copilot completely blows it out of the water. Resource consumption for Copilot is also much more restrained.

Which reminds me I have to cancel my tabnine subscription. Been paying them for a year without using it.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#549

Post by Filligree »

pessimizer wrote: post #508
cdrini wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard anyone saying that copilot is legal "just because it's AI." That's a pretty bad faith, reductive, and disingenuous representation. The core argument I've seen is that the output is sufficiently transformative and not straight up copying.

> The core argument I've seen is that the output is sufficiently transformative and not straight up copying. An argument that isn't made about any other type of algorithm.

Because other algorithms don't work this way, and aren't as transformative.

Is your claim that no algorithm can be transformative?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#550

Post by nickelpro »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #477
nickelpro wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At the time the suit was launched, Google search would only display snippet views. The very nature presents the attribution to the user, enabling them to separately obtain a license for the content. 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 attributio…

Attribution is irrelevant in Authors Guild, the books were not released under open source licenses where attribution is sufficient to meeting the licensing terms. Google never sought or obtained licenses from any of the publishers, and the court ruled such a license was not needed as Google's usage of the contents of the books (scanning them to build a product) did not represent a copyright infringement.

Attribution is mentioned in this filing because such attribution would be sufficient to meet the licensing terms for some of the alleged infringements.

It's an irrelevant discussion though, the suit does not make a claim that the training of Copilot was an infringement which is where Authors Guild is a controlling precedent.

Post reply on HN