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

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 806 posts

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

#581

Post by cerved »

shadowgovt wrote: post #111
ianbutler wrote: post #85

I just tested it myself on a random c file I created in the middle of a rust project I'm working on, it reproduced his full code verbatim from just the function header so clearly it does regurgitate proprietary code unlike some people have said, I do not have his source so co-pilot isn't just using existing context. I've been finding co-pilot really useful but I'll be pausing it for now, and I'm glad I have only been…

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…

> There'd be no way for Copilot to know that had happened

All lines are associated to a commit, which has author/commit date. A reasonable guess as to which snippet was made first can be done

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

#582

Post by robertlagrant »

_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…

> If similar code is open in your VS Code project, Copilot can draw context from those adjacent files

I'm concerned that "draw context from" is a euphemism. Does it mean it uses code that's only on your laptop to train its AI?

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

#583

Post by elcomet »

esskay wrote: post #560
_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…

Hi Ryan, thanks for posting here. So I had something similar happen to the OP a couple of days ago. I'm on friendly terms with a competing codebase's developer and have confirmed the following with them, both mine and it are closed source and hosted on github. Halfway through building something I was given a block of code by copilot, which contained a copyright line with my competitors name, company number and email…

> Those details have never, ever been published in a public repository.

The most simple answer would be that this is false, it was published somewhere but you are not aware of it.

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

#584

Post by rocqua »

kitsune_ wrote: post #554
yardstick wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it's possible for video and audio content (ContentID, YT), then I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for OSS.

Do we want that though? I personally believe copyright as implemented today is harmful. The fact that code largely is able to dodge this could be seen as arguing we should be laxer with copyright, rather than arguing for strict enforcement of copyright on code.

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

#585

Post by bmitc »

leni536 wrote: post #476
bmitc wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is for people using Copilot. I’d like a setting that tells GitHub to not scan my code at all. And I am curious about that sneaking into the terms in between me signing up and paying and them taking code for free. I have also never heard of “public code” being used in that way.

> I’d like a setting that tells GitHub to not scan my code at all. What about people forking/mirroring your code? Or people merely contributing code? There is no one-to-one correspondence between copyright holders and Github users. Copilot should just comply with the license, that's it.

It seems they don't comply with licenses. And it's not possible to fork or mirror to private repositories.

It would be a lot less trouble for everyone if it was just a per repository setting.

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

#586

Post by theteapot »

ISL wrote: post #408
theteapot wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. Sounds like MS has devised a massive automated code laundering racket.

Seems more like a massive class-action copyright target, potentially at ($50k/infraction) x (the number of usages).

Both.

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

#587

Post by bamboozled »

ianbutler wrote: post #85

I just tested it myself on a random c file I created in the middle of a rust project I'm working on, it reproduced his full code verbatim from just the function header so clearly it does regurgitate proprietary code unlike some people have said, I do not have his source so co-pilot isn't just using existing context. I've been finding co-pilot really useful but I'll be pausing it for now, and I'm glad I have only been…

So I’m working on a side project and it’s hosted on GitHub, does this mean the code (which I consider precious and my own) can just be stolen and injected into my competitors codebase who is using co-pilot?

If this is the case, I can imagine people migrating of GitHub very quickly. I can also imagine some pretty nice lawsuits opening up.

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

#588

Post by robertlagrant »

LtWorf wrote: post #573
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…

And why not train it on microsoft windows and office code?

That is a rather good question.

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

#589

Post by concordDance »

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.

Copyright infringement is not theft in the most important sense that matters. Theft is normally negative sum, copyright infringement is almost always positive sum.

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

#590

Post by concordDance »

cycomanic wrote: post #468
danielheath wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is responsibility of the entity (Microsoft in this case) publishing the code to make sure that they have the right to publish. The Linux kernel generally requires non anonymous contributions for that reason. As a guarantee that the person has the right to contribute.

> It is responsibility of the entity (Microsoft in this case) publishing the code to make sure that they have the right to publish.

This would basically kill github as an idea. I like the ability to be able to push some personal project to github and don't really give a fuck about technical copyright violations and I think the same is true for 90% of developers.

Post reply on HN