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We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

githubcopilotlitigation.com

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Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#601

Post by chlorion »

D13Fd wrote: post #560
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #469

I am sorry for not bringing any kind of legal perspective here, but: *Jesus Christ*, I hope I live long enough to see copyright die. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm of commanding computers to do stuff for us, right at the beginning of the first AI development which actually impresses me. And we are fucking bickering about how we were cheated out of $0.00034 because our repo from 2015 might have been used fo…

Wow, thank you. This is exactly right. The entire response to this suit on this site is mind-blowing to me. Everyone is up in arms that someone trained an AI model that could potentially spit out tiny, twisted fragments of public, open-source code. This response is nothing but selfish behavior that runs counter to the core principles of open source development and the free software movement.

It's selfish to want people to abide by the license I released my project under? That's pure nonsense.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#603

Post by commoner »

D13Fd wrote: post #465
Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

Correct legally, morally, or both? Legally a copyright claim seems weak, but they didn't assert one. Some of their claims look stronger than others. The DMCA claim in particular strikes me as strong-ish at first glance, though. Morally I think this class action is dead wrong. This is how innovation dies. Many of the class members likely do not want to kill Copilot and every future service that operates similarly. Bey…

For a long time, Microsoft has used software licenses to reap profits from Windows and Office, the two products that enabled Microsoft to capture near-monopolies in their respective markets.

Now, Microsoft is violating other people's software licenses to repackage the work of numerous free and open source software contributors into a proprietary product. There is nothing moral about flouting the same type of contract that you depend on every day, for the sake of generating more money.

Either the entire Copilot dataset needs to be made available under a license that would be compatible with the code it was derived from (most likely AGPLv3), or Windows and Office need to be brought into the commons. Microsoft cannot have it both ways without legal repercussions.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#604

Post by YoshiRulz »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #484
krono wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers plant their crops out in the open too. Should Boston Dynamics be allowed to have their robots rob those fields empty and sell the produce without having to at least pay the farmer? They'd be walking and plucking just like any human would be. Some source code might be published but not open source licensed. At least some such code has been taken with complete disregard of their licenses and/or other legal prot…

This is literally the "you wouldn't steal a car" meme. To spell it out: No, this analogy does not hold. "Stealing" data does not deprive the owner of anything, so it should not be treated remotely the same as physical stealing (usually not even of potential revenue, as piracy studies show).

While there might not be damages in the literal sense to the owners of the scraped repos, MS is making money from Copilot subscriptions, so what they're doing is closer to selling bootleg copies of a film than giving away pirated copies.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#605

Post by truetraveller »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #469

I am sorry for not bringing any kind of legal perspective here, but: *Jesus Christ*, I hope I live long enough to see copyright die. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm of commanding computers to do stuff for us, right at the beginning of the first AI development which actually impresses me. And we are fucking bickering about how we were cheated out of $0.00034 because our repo from 2015 might have been used fo…

Nope. It's about a fairness. Until Microsoft/Google/Apple/BigCorp all release their software/designs/maps, count me in favor of copyright for the small guy. And I'm someone who especially hates copyright/patents.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#606

Post by mbreese »

D13Fd wrote: post #465
Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

Correct legally, morally, or both? Legally a copyright claim seems weak, but they didn't assert one. Some of their claims look stronger than others. The DMCA claim in particular strikes me as strong-ish at first glance, though. Morally I think this class action is dead wrong. This is how innovation dies. Many of the class members likely do not want to kill Copilot and every future service that operates similarly. Bey…

> Morally I think this class action is dead wrong. This is how innovation dies.

This legal challenge is coming one way or another. I think it’s better to get it out of the way early. At least then we will know the rules going forward, as opposed to being in some quasi-legal gray area for years.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#607

Post by nequo »

williamcotton wrote: post #524
Cort3z wrote: post #270

I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my ow…

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.

I have only skimmed. But lines 23 and 24 on page 23 also reference Copilot's autocompletion of Quake III's `Q_rsqrt`[1] and mention that it is under GPL2.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#608

Post by YoshiRulz »

matthewwolfe wrote: post #598

I will never understand why people push code to public repos and then complain when someone or something uses that code. Code that you want to keep private or make money off of should be private. Only publish stuff to the public that you want other people to see and learn from. All the complaints about attribution… who cares.

> All the complaints about attribution… who cares.

I may not care if some guy I've never met uses my niche library without attribution. (I do care, really.) But Microsoft certainly cares if you use their code without attribution, so why shouldn't I take the same belligerent, copyright-enforcing attitude towards them? That's the main reason why people are angry, because MS has "rules for thee but not for me" by virtue of being big enough to have ~~good~~effective lawyers and lobbyists.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#609

Post by skydhash »

Filligree wrote: post #574
an1sotropy wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t actually thought through what kind of world it would be if there was no copyright law, have you? I don’t know what your political leanings are, but I’ve met some libertarians who are blissfully naive about the extent to which their world and worldview is buttressed by laws and the governments that enforce them, and your comment reminds me of that.

I'm game. What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?

I'm from a country which basically ignore all copyright laws in practice. The musical scene relies on live sessions to generate any money, and the movie scene (which was never anything special) is mostly dead. That's because any media that hits the market is copied and sold everywhere. Even books, if they got popular, will get copied and sold with little enforcement, at every corner.

This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#610

Post by goatlover »

rowanG077 wrote: post #330
bombolo wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The brain is also just a "complex math program" Source?

The physics that gives rise to the brain is pretty much known. We can model all the protons, electrons and photons incredibly accurately.

There's certainly no model of a brain at the level of protons, electrons and photons. That's way beyond our level of mathematical understanding or computational ability. Biology isn't understood at the level of physics.
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