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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#551

Post by jakelazaroff »

dmix wrote: post #520
jakelazaroff wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be sad if someone succeeded in shutting down CoPilot for this kind of copyright stuff. It is genuinely useful. I don't care that it reproduces copyrighted content. Sure — in the same way that hacking into a competitor's GitHub account and copying their private source code is "genuinely useful" to you. As the person benefitting from unlawfully using their source code, of course you wouldn't care that it rep…

> in the same way that hacking into a competitor's GitHub account That's like comparing grand-theft auto to someone stealing a pack of gum from a convenience store. It's not a useful analogy. The latter is still a problem, but we don't need to be FUDy about it. And OPs right, this will keep happening until we come up with better ways of solving this problem. Whether that's educating companies on the legal (and moral)…

OP can correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't seem particularly interested in solving anything. They literally said "I don't care that it reproduces copyrighted content." So the problem, as I see it, is the people who see the laundering of open source and proprietary code as a draw, rather than a drawback.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#552

Post by BeefWellington »

ClassAndBurn wrote: post #380
PythagoRascal wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is learning from it just as a human reader would I don't see how that invalidates the copyright/license argument. So, instead of just a straight up license violation it's a license violation via plagiarism. That argument wouldn't hold up even if it was a human that caused the violation. You can't just paraphrase someones licensed work and then lie about looking at and pretend you made it yourself, which is basic…

It learns the same way a human does by learning patterns. It is not illegal to comprehend how to accomplish tasks by reading other people's source code. The arguments against my point always assume perfect memory of everything this model is consumed. This is the plagiarism position. In reality, some patterns are more common than others and generate a code that looks nearly identical. I can’t speak for the reasons for…

> It learns the same way a human does by learning patterns. It is not illegal to comprehend how to accomplish tasks by reading other people's source code.

It remains to be seen whether ML is true "learning" in the sense of developing a skill the way a human does over time.

It is however irrelevant to the manner in which this model operates today.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#553

Post by junofan »

schoen wrote: post #486

Here are a few thoughts I haven't formulated before: It seems clear enough to me that training AIs on copyrighted works is typically or commonly a fair use under existing law, because the AIs can and commonly do learn non-copyrightable elements and aspects of those works. It's very obvious from enormous numbers of examples that current AI systems are capable of learning much more abstract features of human culture (g…

They’re clearly producing derivative works.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#554

Post by iepathos »

schoen wrote: post #486

Here are a few thoughts I haven't formulated before: It seems clear enough to me that training AIs on copyrighted works is typically or commonly a fair use under existing law, because the AIs can and commonly do learn non-copyrightable elements and aspects of those works. It's very obvious from enormous numbers of examples that current AI systems are capable of learning much more abstract features of human culture (g…

Humans do violate copyright if they use copyrighted passages directly in their work and pass it off as their own without any attribution, which is what copilot has been show to sometimes do, though not always. Copilot will sometimes offer chunks of code that can be found verbatim in open source code bases and passes it off to users without attribution. I agree it is ok to learn from copyrighted work and reproduce new different work from a human or a machine learning algorithm, but it isn't ok to pass along exact copies as your own without attribution. Microsoft will likely need to add checks to prevent copilot from offering verbatim copies of code going forward to try to avoid copyright violations here.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#555

Post by wilsonnb3 »

bern4444 wrote: post #405
anon2020dot00 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few snippets of code is not a product. If there was an open-source money-making product and someone builds a competing product using considerable help from CoPilot then that is a stronger case for damages then if someone just used some snippets of code in their own product. But at that point, it would be just like someone cloning the Github code without following the license and in that case, it should become obvio…

Music samples are a natural parallel. You cannot sample music without permission no matter how short the sample may be. Similarly you cannot steal a snippet of someone else's code without permission or the correct licensing.

Eh music sampling is a unique case because of the dual intellectual property concerns (the composition and the recording).

I can’t use a snippet from a recording no matter how short but I can use a tiny snippet of a composition. You can’t copyright a single note.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#556

Post by bamboozled »

resonious wrote: post #475
armchairhacker wrote: post #37

One issue I see with Copilot is that they get free access to all open-source data on GitHub, but using GitHub APIs to download the data yourself isn't possible (rate limiting). This is an unfair advantage. Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. I would love to see a lawsuit which requires GitHub to provide their full Copilot dataset.

Anyone can start their own GitHub competitor and do whatever they want with the source code that ends up on it. GitHub pays the bills and lets us freely upload whatever we want to their service, so it seems a bit entitled to complain about what features or data they provide or don't provide.

I pay for Github because I thought it was a nice, reputable service who wouldn't go through my stuff without asking me first.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#557

Post by thrillgore »

scarface74 wrote: post #114
esskay wrote: post #44

I do have to wonder if Copilot will last. It's going to become a legal minefield and I can't imagine for a second that Micrsoft will want to be in the crosshair for another antitrust case.

Yes because it turned out so badly the last time. Microsoft went from being one of the three most valuable companies in the US in 2000 to being one of the three most valuable companies in 2022. Also back then, Microsoft had 90%+ share of the PC operating system market and was bundling IE in its operating system. I’m glad the DOJ forced MS to change its ways.

So they turned around and started buying everyone else. GitHub, Nokia, Activision. They're back to their old shit.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#558

Post by wilsonnb3 »

nmilo wrote: post #138

Good bye and good riddance. Even just the idea that GitHub should be allowed to train their proprietary AI on other people's work is insane. Much less distribute that AI in a paid package which lets you spit out other people's code verbatim. Anyone who supports open-source and the (ab)use of copyright law to create free works should be vehemently opposed to Copilot.

> Even just the idea that GitHub should be allowed to train their proprietary AI on other people's work is insane.

You explicitly agree to this when you upload code to GitHub.

FOSS folks shouldn’t have sold their soul to the proprietary devil but they did and now they have to deal with it.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#559

Post by remram »

skytrue wrote: post #350

It's always interesting to see the buzz that occurs when Copilot is brought up as a topic. This place is called "HackerNews", yet routinely people forget that a "hacker" is somebody using technology to overcome novel problems. Doesn't GitHub Copilot fall into this category? Why is there such an outcry over a technology that has been in the public's hands for less than a year? I'm almost certain that the team responsi…

I think it's cool that Copilot exists and it's a worthwhile scientific discovery. However Microsoft is re-selling this to companies and claiming that they can use that and owe nothing to the authors of the code, whose license terms they can ignore, and that is where the problem lies.

When a hacker finds a new way to get into systems or root their phone it's cool. When someone uses that technology to steal money or personal information or encrypt your files it's criminal.

Nothing new in this case.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#560

Post by Springtime »

A bit meta but anyone know why the submission title contains unicode between various characters?

It's hidden on both Chromium/Firefox when viewing the page but when saving the page it reveals them in the text field, eg: `GitHub Copi_lot inves_ti_ga_tion`

Plugging the title into a unicode converter shows they're 'soft hyphen' characters

GitHub Copi [0x00AD] lot inves [0x00AD] ti [0x00AD] ga [0x00AD] tion

Edit: apparently they're for indicating to formatters where character breaks should be, though I can't understand the consistency here.

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