GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by hnbad » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:19 PM UTC

VonGallifrey wrote: post #557

hnbad wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW this in consequence means you can't legally use Copilot without becoming liable to copyright violations because it's essentially a black box and you have no insight into where the code it generates originated and even if it isn't a 1-to-1 copy it might be a "derivative work". This is why I'm gnashing my teeth whenever I hear companies being fine with their employees using Copilot for public-facing code. In terms…

> using Copilot for public-facing code Why this restriction on public-facing code? Are you OK with Copilot being used for "private"/closed source code? I get that it would be less likely to be noticed if the code is not published, but (if I understand right) is even worse for license reasons.

I don't advocate people use Copilot for anything but hobby toy projects.

I have lower expectations of the rigor with which companies police their internal codebases, though. Seeing Copilot banned for internal use too is a pleasant surprise. Companies tend to be a lot more "liberal" in what kind of legal liabilities they accept for their internal tooling in my experience.

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

#672

Post by vintermann » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:23 PM UTC

pca006132 wrote: post #626

vintermann wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, there'd be no way for the copilot model, as currently specified and trained, to know. But it IS possible to train a model for that. In fact, I believe ML models can be fantastic "code archaeologists", giving us insights into not just direct copying, but inspiration and idioms as well. They don't just have the code, they have commit histories with timestamps. A causal fact which these models could incorporat…

Ah, a plagiarism checker that can understand simple code transformation and find the original source? Sounds like a good idea for patent trolls and I have no idea about how/if copyright laws can be apply in this case. Does copying the idea but not copying the code verbatim constitutes copyright violation?

The patent troll version of the algorithm needs the victim's bank balance as input too. In fact that's probably all it needs.

It would be much more valuable for people who care about the truth.

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

#673

Post by stale2002 » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #518

stale2002 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this stance allows me to do whatever do I want with any software Actually, no it doesn't. This topic is about AI training on code. Courts have not held that this is illegal. But there are absolutely other things, that people might do with code, that break copyright law. > it's your problem, not mine. Oh, but it would be your problem as well, if you break the law, and someone else sues you for it. That's the differe…

> Courts have not held that this is illegal. Laws are just codified version of ethics. Just because it's not codified in law, it doesn't mean it's ethically correct, and I hold ethics over laws. Some people call this conscience, others call this honor. Just because it's not deemed illegal, it's not deemed ethical. These are different things. The world has worked under honor and ethical codes for a very long time, and…

> Laws are just codified version of ethics.

And a quite reasonable code of ethics is thst people do not have absolute, complete control over their intellectual property, and instead only have the ability to control it in certain circumstances.

Things like fair use, which makes this legal, exists for many very good reasons.

So yes, the code of ethics that society has decided on, includes perfectly reasonable exception, such as fair use, and it is your problem, not ours, that you have some ridiculous idea that people should have complete, 100% authoritarian control over their IP.

And no, people not having infinite control over IP, does not allow you to extend this reasonable exception, to you being able to do literally anything to other people's IP.

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

#674

Post by justshowpost » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:26 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #472

_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…

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…

[flagged]

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

#675

Post by Timwi » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:27 PM UTC

_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…

> 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.

This claim rings extremely hollow when your team refuses to do any of the obvious things that developers, experts and community stakeholders in this very thread (and the rest of this website) are telling you. You still haven't open-sourced Copilot. You still haven't trained it on Microsoft internal code such as Windows and Office. You still haven't made the model freely available for anyone to run locally. Until you do any of these things, you are not acting in the interest of the community and you are just exploiting people and their code for your own profit.

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

#676

Post by Timwi » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:29 PM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #545

briffle wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their are lots of sheets properly licensed that show the notes to play ‘stairway to heaven’. Many intro to guitar books, etc. If I publish myself playing that song without the copyright owners permission (and typically attribution) I am looking at some very, very negative outcomes. The fact that there are many copies correctly licensed (or not) does not obsolve me of anything. Curious how this any different?

> If I publish myself playing that song without the copyright owners permission Music licensing is bonkers but AFAIR (at least in the UK) I think you're allowed to do covers without explicit permission[1] - you'll have to give the original writers/composers the appropriate share of any money you make. [1] Which is why you (used to?) get, e.g., supermarkets playing covers of songs rather than the originals because it'…

What's the appropriate share?

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

#677

Post by pretendscholar » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:32 PM UTC

_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 is a new area of development, and we’re all learning.

Is this the tact your organization would take if someone else’s code completion software was generating proprietary Microsoft’s proprietary code?

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

#678

Post by lmm » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:38 PM UTC

d1sxeyes wrote: post #547

IneffablePigeon wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “it’s really hard” argument isn’t a very good argument in my opinion? If we hold reproductions of a single repository to a certain standard, the same standard should probably apply to mass reproductions. For a single repository, it’s your responsibility to make sure it’s used according to the license. Are there slightly gray edge cases? Of course, but they’re not -that- grey. If I reproduced part of a book from a…

If someone uploads something and says 'hey, this is some code, this is the appropriate licence for it', it is their mistake, it is in violation of Github's terms of service, and may even be fraudulent. [0]. I'm also not sure that Copilot is just reproducing code, but that's a separate discussion. > If I reproduced part of a book from a source that claimed incorrectly it was released under a permissive license, I woul…

> From a civil perspective, likely the copyright owner could still claim damages from you if you were unable to reach a settlement. A court would probably determine the damages to award based on real damages (including loss of earnings for the content creator), rather than anything punitive if it's found that

There are statutory damages on top of your actual damages. $50k per act of infringement. No reason for the copyright holder to settle for less when it's an open and shut case.

> Further, most jurisdictions have exceptions for short extracts of a larger copyrighted work (e.g. quotes from a book), which may apply to Copilot.

Quotes do not automatically get an exception just because they're taken from a larger work, they might be excepted either because they were de minimis (essentially because they were too short to be copyrightable) or because they were fair use (which is a complex question that takes into account the purpose and context, which Copilot is very unlikely to satisfy because it's not quoting other code for the purpose of saying something about it).

> Where do we draw the line?

Circuit specific; some but not all circuits use the AFC test. It sounds like this code was both long enough and creative/innovative enough to be well on the wrong side of it though.

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

#679

Post by yardstick » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:41 PM UTC

lokedhs wrote: post #561

barsonme wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only work if the original was uploaded to GitHub before the copies. Like, somebody could copy from GitLab or BitBucket. And git histories don’t always help if they’re not copied over.

But copyright law doesn't really care about how you prevent infringement, just that it doesn't happen. Isn't it up to Github to come up with a way to do it, or otherwise not do it at all?

GitHub just needs to show they have taken reasonable precautions, and if a conflict is identified, that they remediate it without undue delay.

It’s not a binary all perfectly or nothing at all. The law looks at intent and so doesn’t punish mistakes or errors so long as you aren’t being malicious or reckless or negligent.

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

#680

Post by unsafecast » Mon, Oct 17, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

dark-star wrote: post #627

unsafecast wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BitTorrent doesn't automatically download a pirated copy of Lion King when you ask it for something to watch...

BitTorrent (and, to a larger degree, EDonkey) did and still do that. Who tells you that what you're downloading is indeed what you think it is. You can click on a magnet link that claims to download a Debian ISO just to find out later that it's something else entirely. To make matters worse, BitTorrent even uploads to potentially hundreds of other clients while you're still downloading, so while downloading something…

BitTorrent is certainly not a good example to follow, but I do think that copilot is more wrong.

They should definitely include disclaimers and make seeding opt-in (though I don't know how safe you are legally when you download a Lion King copy labeled Debian.iso). That said, they don't have the information necessary to tell whether what you're doing is legal or not.

Copilot _has_ that information. The model spits out code that it read. They could disallow publishing or commercially using code generated by it while they're sorting it out, but they made the decision not to.

AI is hard, but the model is clearly handing out literal copies of GPL code. Github knows this and they still don't tell you about it when you click install.