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

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

#631

Post by eloisius »

elcomet wrote: post #583
esskay wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMO that doesn’t absolve Microsoft at all. If someone uploads ripped MP3s to the internet somewhere, it doesn’t mean you could aggregate them, burn CDs and sell them.

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

#632

Post by jraph »

_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…

> My biggest take-away: LLM maintainers (like GitHub) must transparently discuss the way models are built and implemented

The best way to be transparent about a software implementation is to open source the thing. If that's your take away, this is the only logical thing to do. Blogs posts would be appreciated but are not enough. We can only trust what you say, we cannot verify anything.

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

#633

Post by jefftk »

drran wrote: post #570
ShamelessC wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked for a couple of big companies with IT, you should know they are effectively all breaking the law already in this regard (except for maybe hardware companies) because it’s basically impossible to enforce and no one cares. The best way to make sure your code isn’t copied is not to publish it.

Can you name one of these big, rich, and careless companies, please?

I'll name a counterexample: Google (used to work there) is very careful with the provence of external code, to the point that for simpler things it's often easier to write something internally than use the standard external thing.

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

#634

Post by Liquid_Fire »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #543
siilats wrote: post #507

I think this will be solved like YouTube music. I as copilot user don’t mind paying 0.1cents for a good matrix transform and the code owner doesn’t mind receiving 0.1cents from thousands of users and github gets 30%

That's not compatible with the licenses used by software projects, especially GPL.

GPL doesn't prevent the copyright holder from also distributing the software under another license if they so choose.

Of course, that would have to be a decision by the copyright holders, which is possibly difficult to provide on GitHub given how easy it makes it to upload other people's work, and you would need the agreement of every contributor unless you do copyright assignment.

And you wouldn't be able to license a project using this service (i.e. with Copilot-generated code) under the GPL. But it's already unclear if you can legally do that today.

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

#635

Post by schwartzworld »

Spivak wrote: post #458
andreareina wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's too hard" isn't a valid reason for me to not follow laws and/or social norms. This is a predictable result and was predicted by many people; "oops we didn't know" is neither credible nor acceptable.

It’s not “oops we didn’t know” it’s, “someone published a project under a permissive license which included this code.” If your standard is “Github should have an oracle to the US court system and predict what the outcome of a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement for a given snippet of code would be” then it is literally impossible for anyone to use any open source code ever because it might contain infringing cod…

If someone created an AI for making movies, and it started spitting out star wars and marvel stuff, you can bet them saying "we trained it on other materials that violate copywriter" wouldn't be enough. They are banking on most devs not knowing, caring or having the ability to follow through on this.

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

#636

Post by eterevsky »

I don't think it's fair to say this it emits the same code. The code on the right is definitely implementing the same algorithm and is generally similar to the code on the left, but it's not identical. IANAL, but I think copyright wouldn't apply in this case.

Imagine a person who would want to implement the same function in their project. They could look at the open source implementation to learn how the algorithm is supposed to work, and would write their implementation. They could end up with the implementation on the right.

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

#637

Post by bamboozled »

gernb wrote: post #538
socialismisok wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Ryan! Have you ever done any reading on the Luddites? They weren't the anti technology, anti progress social force people think they were. They were highly skilled laborers who knew how to operate complex looms. When auto looms came along, factory owners decided they didn't want highly trained, knowledgeable workers they wanted highly disposable workers. The Luddites were happy to operate the new looms, they just…

what happened with auto looms is cloth became cheap which allowed more people to have clothing and expanded the fashion industry by 1000x Sure glad thse Luddites didn't get their way

It's probably also opened up a whole niche market for artisan "handwoven" fabrics.

Sadly that's probably a modern thing and not something that people wanted / cared about immediately once everyone lost their jobs.

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

#638

Post by pferde »

bmitc wrote: post #328
defasdefbe wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We built a filter to help detect and suppress the rare instances where a GitHub Copilot suggestion contains code that matches public code on GitHub. You have the choice to turn that filter on or off during setup. With the filter on, GitHub Copilot checks code suggestions with its surrounding code for matches or near matches (ignoring whitespace) against public code on GitHub of about 150 characters. If there is a m…

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.

A good first approximation of such a setting is to never publish on Github in the first place.

Of course, someone else can still upload your elsewhere-published code to GH. You cannot win.

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

#639

Post by itronitron »

svnt wrote: post #346
_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…

This doesn’t at all address the primary issue, which is one of licensing. Is it a valid defense against copyright infringement to say “we don’t know where we got it, maybe someone else copied it from you first?” If someone violated the copyright of a song by sampling too much of it and released it in the public domain (or failed to claim it at all), and you take the entire sample from them, would that hold up in a le…

I don't know whether the "Numerical Recipes" publisher actively defends their copyright of the code in the books but it would be an interesting test case.

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

#640

Post by jeppester »

Waterluvian wrote: post #167

I think people may be drastically over-valuing their code. If it was emitting an entire meaningful product, that would be something else. But it’s emitting nuts and bolts. If the issue is more specifically copyright infringement, then leverage the legal apparatus in place for that. Their lawyers might listen better. This is not a strongly held opinion and if you disagree I would love to hear your constructive thought…

Github copilot is a paid product.

It doesn't matter if I think my code is valuable, it's that Github is using everyone's code for their own profit - without opt-in, attribution, or paying a license.

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