Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

githubcopilotlitigation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 824 posts

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#681

Post by account42 »

codebje wrote: post #628
heavyset_go wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under. I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would…

I find your comment a bit perplexing, perhaps you can help me understand. Why do you want to release code on GitHub with an oppressive license? What's the motivation for you, and what's the benefit for anyone else in it being released? The size of code fragments being generated with these AI tools is, as far as I can tell, extremely small. Do you think you could even notice if your own implementation of sqrt, comment…

The point of copyleft licenses (which I assume are what you mean with "opressive") is to subvert copyright in order to incentivize others to share their code by providing them with something to build on if they return the favor. You cannot possibly call these licenses opressive since the default state with copyright is that you are not allowed to do much at all (at least when it comes to copying). In fact copyleft licenses allow you to do much much more than your average corp-lawyer approved proprietary license.

The problem (or A problem) with copilot is that it tries to sidestep those licenses, purpotedly allowing you to build upon the work of others without giving anything back even if the work you are building on has been published on the explicit condition that what you create with it should also be shared in the same way. While the great AI tumbler makes the legal copyright infringement argument complicated by giving you lots of small bits from lots of different sources it really does not change the moral situation: you are explicitly going against the wishes of the people that are enabling you to do what you are doing.

Beyond copyleft, this kind of disregard for other peoples wishes also applies to attribution even with more liberal licenses. Programming is already a field where proper attrubution is woefully lacking - we don't need to make it worse by introducing processes where it becomes much harder if not impossible to tell who contributed to the creation.

Now I am all for maximum code sharing. I'm all for abolishing copyright entirely and letting everyone build what they want without being shackled by so-called intellectual property. But that is not something Microsoft is doing with Copilot. What they have created is a one way funnel from OSS to proprietary software. If Microsoft had initially trained Copilot on their own proprietary sources this would have been seen very differently. But they did not. Because the way Microsoft "loves open source" is not in the way of a mutally beneficial symbiotic relationship but that of an abuser that loves taking advantage of whatever they can with giving as little back as they can get away with.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#682

Post by forgotpwd16 »

nickelpro wrote: post #454
klabb3 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. This is kinda smug, because it overcomplicates things for no reason, and only serves as a faux technocentric strawman. It just muddies the waters for a sane discussion of the topic, which people can participate in without a CS degree. The AI models of today are very simple to explain: its a product built from…

It's not something to dismiss but it is something that has already been addressed. Authors Guild v Google. Google Books is built upon scanning millions of books from libraries without first gaining permission from copyright holders, this was found to not be a violation of copyright. Building a product on top of copyright works that does not directly distribute those works is legal. More specifically, a computer consu…

>Authors Guild v Google

At which case Google paid some hundred million $ to companies and authors, created a registry collecting revenues and giving to rightsholders, provided opt-out to already scanned books, etc. Hey, doesn't sound that bad for same thing to happen with Copilot.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#683

Post by an1sotropy »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #672
opine-at-random wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd ever read even a single one of the licenses to the software I'm sure you use everyday, you'd understand. This is such an obvious and pathetic strawman. I notice often on hackernews that people don't seem to understand anything about free or open-source software outside of the pragmatics of whether they can abuse the work for free.

You read a lot into my not so serious comment. Maybe internet comment sections aren't the right place for you. But I'll bite: I know licensing, thank you. But what's copyrightable is not so easy. Licenses are not so easy. Copilot does not copy entire works and it's very questionable if a few lines of code are "piracy". It's a repeating discussion again and again, there's nothing novel about it except for the fact tha…

If you know this area of IP law then you know that LOTs of licenses, copyleft or not, require attribution (which copilot never does, and can’t do by its construction), and you know that what’s problematic is when the model output is arguably not “fair use”. Examples of that abound.

You don’t need any fundamentalism to know that copilot’s output carries huge and untested legal risk. If this lawsuit clears some of this up, that’s a big win for everyone.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#684

Post by account42 »

jelled wrote: post #532
pessimizer wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The core argument I've seen is that the output is sufficiently transformative and not straight up copying. An argument that isn't made about any other type of algorithm.

Suppose you own the rights to a jpeg. And I apply a simple algorithm that increments every hex value. So 00 becomes 01 and so on. The gibberish images it spits out would be so different then your original image that you wouldn't have any claim to them at all.

I encourage you to go get a copy of the latest hollywood blockbuster, apply your transformation, share it on the internet and see if the courts agree with your copyright hack.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#685

Post by afiori »

zarzavat wrote: post #635
joe_the_user wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a software systematically engages in copyright violation but only haphazardly corrects those violations, those haphazard correct aren't evidence the problem has vanished.

If Copilot is committing widespread infringements of their copyright, then surely they will be able to find examples of such infringement to submit in their lawsuit. I assume they want some kind of broad relief, such as an injunction to take down copilot. They are not going to get it, they are not going to get anything at all, if they can’t even provide examples of violating code.

In filing a lawsuits you make plausible allegations and claims, it is not the place to present evidence.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#686

Post by RamblingCTO »

an1sotropy wrote: post #683
RamblingCTO wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read a lot into my not so serious comment. Maybe internet comment sections aren't the right place for you. But I'll bite: I know licensing, thank you. But what's copyrightable is not so easy. Licenses are not so easy. Copilot does not copy entire works and it's very questionable if a few lines of code are "piracy". It's a repeating discussion again and again, there's nothing novel about it except for the fact tha…

If you know this area of IP law then you know that LOTs of licenses, copyleft or not, require attribution (which copilot never does, and can’t do by its construction), and you know that what’s problematic is when the model output is arguably not “fair use”. Examples of that abound. You don’t need any fundamentalism to know that copilot’s output carries huge and untested legal risk. If this lawsuit clears some of this…

Yes, you're right. But my point also was that it's not so easy when it's just a few lines, isn't it? Especially since this is an international issue and the definitions of copyrightable work is not easily definable.

> You don’t need any fundamentalism to know that copilot’s output carries huge and untested legal risk. If this lawsuit clears some of this up, that’s a big win for everyone.

I agree with that! I also see this as the only proper takeaway that I think is ok. The rest is making money off this thing. But the US has a different law suit culture anyway, which I find weird.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#687

Post by account42 »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #645
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…

Who should be sued? Microsoft who produces an application known as "Copilot" which itself contains nobody else's code but Microsoft's? OR the person who USES Copilot, to produce code which contains somebody else's copyrighted code? Using Copilot is a bit like using a shotgun, can be very illegal depending on what you shoot at. Creating and distributing the app Copilot is like creating and selling a shotgun.

Microsoft produces a service known as "Copilot" which does contain other people's code. That the Copilot network contains other peoples code is not in question since it has been demonstrated to output other people's code and Microsoft even added (very limited) filters to detect if it ooutputs other people's code.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#688

Post by account42 »

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

You could have read the MIT license in its entirity in less than five minutes. It is very clear that the preserving attribution is a required condition. Other permissive licenses even explicitly require attribution in binaries / documentation.

MIT License:

Copyright

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#689

Post by account42 »

Filligree wrote: post #561
Cort3z wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear; I cannot prove that they have used my code, but for the sake of argument, lets assume so. They would have directly used my code when they trained the thing. I see it as an equivalent of creating a zip-file. My code is not directly in the zip file either. Only by the act of un-zipping does it come back, which requires a sequence of math-steps.

But there is no equivalent of "unzipping" for Copilot. This is a generative neural network. It doesn't contain a copy of your code; it contains weightings that were slightly adjusted by your code. Getting it to output a literal copy is only possible in two cases: - If your code solves a problem that can only be solved in a single way, for a given coding style / quality level. The AI will usually produce the same resu…

There is no guarantee that a ML network only produces the input data under those two conditions. But even for

> If 'your' code has actually already been replicated hundreds of times over, such that the AI was over-trained on it. In that case it's a copyright violation... but how come you never went after the hundreds of other violations?

Replication is not a violation if the terms of the license are followed. Many open source projects are replicated hundreds of times with no license violation - that doesn't mean that you can now ignore the license.

But even if they did violate the license, that doesn't give you the right to do it too. There is no requirement to enforce copyright consistently - see e.g. mods for games which are more often than not redistributing copyrighted content and derivatives of it but usually don't run into trouble because they benefit the copyright owner. But try to make your own game based on that same content and the original publisher will not handle it in the same way as those mods. Same for OSS licenses: The original author does not lose any rights to sue you if they have ignored technical license violations by others when those uses are acceptable to the original author.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#690

Post by m00x »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #285
m00x wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to explain in legal terms why this stance is qualified?

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date. b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added u…

So if a developer reads GPL code, learns, then writes new code later on, it infringes on that license?
Post reply on HN