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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

#611

Post by couchand »

nickelpro wrote: post #550
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Attribution goes directly to factors 1, 3, and 4 of the fair use test.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#612

Post by joe_the_user »

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…

1) This "copilot is great 'cause copyright is evil" argument breaks when you look at the fact that copilot is copyrighted, closed software tool for producing closed, copyrighted software. If you trained copilot on GPL'd software and specified that copilot's output was also GPL'd maybe you'd have some reasonable claim (but even then, the attribution claim would come in).

2) So far, these tools are "better search" schemes, not actual intelligence. Sure, many find them very useful. But given this, the (voluntary or involuntary) providers of data ought to get credit/benefit for/from this phenomena, along with the tool creators. Especially giving the current situation is Microsoft/OpenAI selling to commercial software developers who sell to general public.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#613

Post by vharuck »

naikrovek wrote: post #359
heavyset_go wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutral nets can and do encode and compress the information they're trained on, and can regurgitate it given the right inputs. It is very likely that someone's code is in that neural net, encoded/compressed/however you want to look at it, which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute. You can easily see this happen, the regurgitation of training data, in an over fitted neural net.

> which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute when you upload code to a public repository on github.com, you necessarily grant GitHub the right to host that code and serve it to other users. the methods used for serving are not specified. This is above and beyond the license specified by the license you choose for your own code. you also necessarily grant other GitHub users the right to view this code, if the…

The relevant part of GitHub's terms of service:

"4. License Grant to Us

We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video.

This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service, except that as part of the right to archive Your Content, GitHub may permit our partners to store and archive Your Content in public repositories in connection with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault and GitHub Archive Program."

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

I don't think these terms allow using content for Copilot.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#614

Post by datacruncher01 »

I think the software is probably ok provided that, the sources are credited (ie, if co-pilot copies code from say SDL, then the relevant code sections need to be correctly attributed, the mandatory license readme copied to the project so all code is following the open source licenses used. That's literally the purpose of open source licenses. If Copilot can't be bothered to do that, then yeah it should be shut down.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#615

Post by williamcotton »

nequo wrote: post #607
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.

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

I doubt that anything other than Carmack's comments are covered. See the "Filtration" section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...

"In computer programs, concerns for efficiency may limit the possible ways to achieve a particular function, making a particular expression necessary to achieving the idea. In this case, the expression is not protected by copyright."

"Finally, material that exists in the public domain can not be copyrighted and is also removed from the analysis."

That code is specifically optimized for efficiency and there were similar approaches floating (get it?) around in the 1980s.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#616

Post by commoner »

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…

On piracy, HN users defend Sci-Hub to protest against the academic publishing industry, which involves large corporations such as Elsevier charging publishing and subscription fees that are much more than the value that these corporations bring to the actual research, review, and publication. Academics need to publish in order to survive, and they individually do not have enough power to subvert the existing academic publishing system. Since academics do not receive royalties, Sci-Hub enables academics to pay less into the same system that exploits them for profit. By supporting Sci-Hub, HN users take a populist stance by supporting individuals against the system.

The situation with Microsoft and Copilot is the exact opposite. Here, Microsoft is misusing its acquisition of GitHub to repackage the work of individual free and open source contributors into a proprietary product in violation of the authors' software licenses. These licenses do not even require Microsoft to pay. They only require attribution and redistribution under a compatible license. Supporting Microsoft's misuse of GitHub is an anti-populist stance that puts the interests of the corporation over the interests of the individuals.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#617

Post by janef0421 »

Imnimo wrote: post #47

On page 18, they show Copilot produces the following code: >function isEven(n) { > return n % 2 === 0; >} They then say, "Copilot’s Output, like Codex’s, is derived from existing code. Namely, sample code that appears in the online book Mastering JS, written by Valeri Karpov." Surely everyone reading this has written that code verbatim at some point in their lives. How can they assert that this code is derived specif…

That is likely only a brief example of the general principle underlying the lawsuit.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#618

Post by chlorion »

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…

Nobody wants to completely ban AI or training. You can have progress in this area and still respect people's intellectual property. Framing this as destroying progress is silly.

Why can't they train on the code they own, such as Windows sources for example?

Or even better, why can't they release CoPilot itself under an open source license that is compatible with the licenses of code they would like to train on?

Also, I don't think anyone cares about the monetary aspects. The idea behind the GPL style license is to make sure that code remains free, regardless of what or who uses it. Freedom in this context refers to the ability study the code, modify the code, and distribute any modifications. Without the GPL the code can be used in a proprietary product which strips those rights away from users of the product.

Copeleft uses copyright laws to attempt to guarantee freedom for users. This is the inverse of what normal copyright does, which is allow a single entity to sit on the ideas and not allow other's to benefit from them.

If we can just strip copyleft licenses from projects, we are giving up those guarantees that GPL code will remain free for all users.

The GPL is trying to do it's job here, not slow down progress. Progress would be everyone benefiting from the technology behind CoPilot, rather than just MicroSoft sitting on the project and selling it as a service.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#619

Post by nyberg »

neongreen wrote: post #341
ugh123 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attributions are fundamental to open source? I thought having source openly available was fundamental to open source (and allowed use without liability/warranty) as per apache, mit, and other licenses. If they just stick to using permissive-licensed source code then i'm not sure what the actual 'harm' is with co-pilot. If they auto-generate an acknowledgement file for all source repos used in co-pilot, and then asked…

Apparently they are using GPL-licensed code as well, see https://twitter.com/DocSparse/status/1581461734665367554 After five minutes of googling I'm still not sure if using MIT code requires an attribution, but many people claim it does, see https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/8163 as one example

MIT explicitly states that it does in the license.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#620

Post by matthewwolfe »

YoshiRulz wrote: post #608
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…

Copilot is trained on public repos. Id imagine if Microsoft doesn’t want you to use their code, that code would be in a private repo. There’s nothing stopping me from using code in a public repo, regardless of the license.
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