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All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

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Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#651
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I still don't see any problem with that. If it's larger sections (e.g. entire NON-TRIVIAL function bodies), those can be filtered or correctly attributed after inference. So that's just a technicality. Today copilot does what it does. I've never heard Microsoft defend anyone running afoul of some of their licensing details with "they can fix it later, it is just a technicality". I think this should go both ways? No?…

> Today copilot does what it does. It's also not a commercially released product yet, but a technical preview, so uncovering and addressing issues like that is exactly what pre-release versions are for. I'd say it succeeded greatly in sparking a discussion about these issues.

If I release a piece of software today that install Microsoft products but stripped of all attributions and without paying any licenses,

... will you defend it just because I claim it is a tech preview?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#652
post #185

If the training set contains verbatim (A)GPL code does this mean that Copilot also should be distributed by Microsoft under GPL? Because without it Copilot (as it is distributed by Microsoft) couldn't be built, wouldn't it make it a derivative work of GPL'd code (and obviously every other license)? I see a lot of people comparing human learning to machine learning in the comments, but there is a huge difference - we…

IANAL but as I understand it, ruling in the US is that machines can not produce "derived works" of copyrighted works. If it replicates (A)GPL code verbatim, it's up to the user to comply with its license.

Of course the interesting part is that the user not only has no idea what that license is but also where the code came from and if it is in fact copied verbatim. It's unlikely a court would agree that putting licensed code through a machine strips the licensing requirements of the code, of course, but that doesn't seem to be Microsoft's problem.

I think Microsoft's use of public code hosted on GitHub is covered by the terms of service but if this use includes granting a license more permissive than the license indicated on the code itself, this would probably put every GitHub user who ever committed less permissively licensed code to GitHub that they didn't control in violation of those licenses.

There's really only three ways this can go:

1) Machine learning does legally become a license-stripping black box, which would allow creating a machine generated commons by feeding arbitrary copyrighted works into sloppy AIs that mostly just replicate their input without changes.

2) Copyright law is extended to consider the output of machine learning as derived works from its inputs, massively extending the reach of copyright and creating massive headaches for everyone (e.g. depending on the exact ruling this would effectively make it impossible to reproduce a digital artwork as merely rendering it on a screen would create a derived work).

3) The original licenses are upheld and remain in effect, rendering the output of Copilot useless by creating a massive legal headache for anyone trying not to violate copyright.

I think outcome 2 is unlikely but 1 and 3 aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#653
post #595
post #551

To me, the particular use case and whether it is fair use or not, is of minor interest. A far more pressing matter is at hand: AI centralization and monopolization. Take Google as an example, running Google Photos for free for several years. And now that this has sucked in a trillion photos, the AI job is done, and they likely have the best image recognition AI in existence. Which is of course still peanuts compared…

I believe this is actually powered by OpenAI, which while large (now), is nowhere near the behemoth that Microsoft or Google is. This suggests that seeing the future a bit ahead of the rest of the world, and then assembling a motivated all-star team is (perhaps in the short term at least) one way of out-competing the "super AI" of the giants.

Last I've checked, Microsoft pretty much owns OpenAI ?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#654

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

I don't know about HN in general but my impression has been that anyone copying random code off the internet or adding dependencies without understanding the license (e.g. just blindly adding AGPL code) would be very much frowned upon in any remotely professional setting because a basic understanding of copyright and open source licensing is expected of even junior developers.

"Hackers" "playing" and ignoring copyright is fine, but Copilot isn't promoted as a toy, it's promoted as a tool for professional software development. And in that framing it is about as dangerous as an untrained intern with access to the production server.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any discussion on copyright and fair use, we should distinguish between the implications to Copilot the software itself and the implications to users of Copilot. For Copilot itself, I do see the case for fair use, though it gets fuzzy should Microsoft ever start commercializing the feature. Nevertheless it remains to be seen whether ML training fits the same public policy benefits public libraries and free debate…

>In your hypothetical, this would be akin to me going on Google books and copying snippets of copyrighted works for my own book. A book completely written by pasting passages of other books would actually be a pretty interesting transformative work.

Yeah, but a book like this would be an artistic work.

While software is in this limbo between copyrights and patents...

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#656

Ok, my curiosity has been fired here... I have conjured up two scenarios here: Let's say I use copilot to generate a bunch of code for an app, something substantial, and it regurgitates a load of bits and pieces from many sources it got from GitHub, I'd assume there won't be any attribution in it... it will be as if Copilot made the code itself (I know it sort of does but lets not split hairs!). I'm guessing the prev…

Copying/pasting code from open source projects it's considered fair use. Come on, who doesn't do that? I mean, sure you don't copy an entire file, but you tend to copy a snippet, or in the end you look at how is done and you done the exact same way (that is the same of copying it!) I would say there is not a problem in there.

If you are copy and pasting code from open source projects into your own project, then I think that is more likely to be considered copyright infringement than fair use. Fair use is generally for things like criticism, parody, teaching etc. Obviously this kind of thing would need to be judged on a case-by-case basis, but I think you are on shaky ground here.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose the standard of "substantial" = "100s of lines"? Especially since we've already seen examples of verbatim output in the dozens of lines range, that choice of standard is rather conveniently just outside what exists so far. If we find a case with 200 lines of verbatim output will you say the only reasonable standard is 1000s of lines? I don't think your argument is as strong as you're making it out…

Just a fairly arbitrary number. It's easy to produce a few lines from memory, up to 10s of lines and that's "obviously" fair use. I would be surprised if many of haven't inadvertently "copied" some GPL code in this way! This goes to the "substantial" test for fair use. Clips from a film can contain core plot points, quotes from a book can contain vital passages to understanding a character, screen captures and scrape…

A big difference is that software is both is and isn't an artistic work.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#658
post #571
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you agree that copyleft licenses are also stupid; without copyright, there's no way to prevent companies from making closed-source forks of code you wrote and intended to stay open.

Yes, sure. Without copyright there's no need for copyleft left, right?

You don't care about attribution and other moral rights ?

(I guess these are going to depend a LOT on the jurisdiction that you're in ?)

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#659
post #551

To me, the particular use case and whether it is fair use or not, is of minor interest. A far more pressing matter is at hand: AI centralization and monopolization. Take Google as an example, running Google Photos for free for several years. And now that this has sucked in a trillion photos, the AI job is done, and they likely have the best image recognition AI in existence. Which is of course still peanuts compared…

Google doesn’t have the best (publicly) available reverse image search AI. That would be Yandex. Google is actually pretty crappy at reverse image searches. https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/12/26/guid...

The point still stands though, Yandex is also a behemoth with access to a massive amount of data.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#660
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where do you draw the line? My simplistic view is that the following is legally equivalent: input -> ai network -> output input -> huffman coding -> output So, whilst: * compressing and decompressing a copyright work is permissible; * output and weights are deterministic transformations of the inputs; thus: * not eligible for copyright (lacking creativity); and * are derivative works of the inputs;

But at the same time, a compiler does a deterministic transformation of its inputs, and we still count its output as under copyright and license. copyrighted input -> compiler -> copyrighted output

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough on this point: copyright of a derivative work is distinct (but not inseparable) to the copyright of the original work.

So portions of a derivative work are covered by the original copyright, and other portions may be under a distinct copyright as a derivative work, and several copyrights may apply to a work as a whole.

In the case of a Huffman transform, the transformed work does not meet the "creativity" requirements to be eligible for copyright, over that of the original works.

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