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FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

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Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#71

Post by gradys »

ghoward wrote: post #38
xxpor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software licenses have barely been tested in court, let alone how they apply to code injected and combined with other code via machine learning. You're extremely overconfident about how this will actually play out. For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing fo…

You're right that code has to demonstrate creativity for copyright. But that also means that an algorithm, even a transformative algorithm, cannot change copyright because an algorithm is not creative, by definition. This means that the output of any algorithm on copyrighted code is still under the original copyright. I mean, we still apply the copyright of the original to the output of compilers, even though compile…

You sound very confident about this, whereas copyright lawyers I've read discuss this issue seem much less confident overall, but lean toward thinking this would be fair use.

What makes you so confident that this would not be ruled fair use?

(And for people not familiar - if ruled fair use, it doesn't matter what the license is because fair use is an exception to copyright itself.)

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#72

Post by ghoward »

I honestly wish I was in a position to write a whitepaper for this. However, I should not for several reasons:

* I have already made my position clear in public, [1] so I could probably be identified.

* I am not a lawyer, just some bloke who attempted to write FOSS licenses to combat ML on copyrighted code. [2]

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and...

[2]: https://yzena.com/licenses/

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#73

Post by r283492 »

lights0123 wrote: post #66

> It requires running software that is not free/libre (Visual Studio, or parts of Visual Studio Code) A little nitpicky, but the only proprietary part it requires is the plugin itself, not the IDE—Copilot runs just fine with the Free build of VS Code compiled from source from GitHub, after flipping a switch to enable WIP APIs.

I think you are wrong: https://vscodium.com/

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#74

Post by tyingq »

hartator wrote: post #48

> We already know that Copilot as it stands is unacceptable and unjust, from our perspective. So, why call for white papers? I don’t believe they will publish any papers that go against their views.

They know a couple of reasons for sure. They want more reasons, or more detail on other reasons for which they aren't as sure yet.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#75

Post by tyingq »

grepfru_it wrote: post #11
thomzane wrote: post #2

I am excited to see where these questions lead.

Something like this? [GitHub Copilot License Config Menu] Show suggestions with the following tags: - [ ] GPLv3 - [x] GPLv2 - [ ] AGPL - [x] CC-BY-SA - [x] Apache License - [x] MIT License - [ ] No License Attribution

Other picklists might be handy too, especially something that would narrow to higher quality sources.

And they need a report button with a picklist of reasons.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#76

Post by ralph84 »

Their link to why you shouldn't use GitHub[0] takes you to a page where they criticize GitHub for complying with US export controls. The FSF is a US corporation, why do they think that US export controls don't equally apply to savannah.gnu.org? And unlike FSF, GitHub has actually done the work of applying for export licenses so that developers in US-sanctioned countries can access GitHub[1].

[0] https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html#G... [1] https://github.blog/2021-01-05-advancing-developer-freedom-g...

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#77

Post by klyrs »

gradys wrote: post #68
dylan604 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is not perfectly OK with training language models on copyrighted text. It's just that evilCorps do it anyways, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. I can't do anything. At best, I could get a Twitter account and complain to the ether. The copyright holders can't do anything against the might evilCorps, but that doesn't make them okay with it. The fact you believe this is just sad, and exactly what…

Could you explain why you think training models on copyrighted text is illegal or copyright infringement or whatever else it might be?

Training the models is fine. Applying the models, which reproduces copyrighted works without proper attribution, is where it gets sticky.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#78

Post by ghoward »

gradys wrote: post #71
ghoward wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that code has to demonstrate creativity for copyright. But that also means that an algorithm, even a transformative algorithm, cannot change copyright because an algorithm is not creative, by definition. This means that the output of any algorithm on copyrighted code is still under the original copyright. I mean, we still apply the copyright of the original to the output of compilers, even though compile…

You sound very confident about this, whereas copyright lawyers I've read discuss this issue seem much less confident overall, but lean toward thinking this would be fair use. What makes you so confident that this would not be ruled fair use? (And for people not familiar - if ruled fair use, it doesn't matter what the license is because fair use is an exception to copyright itself.)

I have a feeling you did not read the FAQ of the licenses. I don't blame you, but they explain my position.

Here's the relevant quote:

> GitHub is arguing that using FOSS code in Copilot is fair use because using data for training a machine learning algorithm has been labelled as fair use. [1]

> However, even though the training is supposedly fair use, that doesn’t mean that the distribution of the output of such algorithms is fair use.

My licenses say, basically, "Sure, training is fair use, but distributing the output is not."

The licenses specifically say that the copyright applies to any output of any algorithm that uses the source code code as all or part of its input.

Now, I have not gotten a lawyer to look at my licenses yet (it's in the works), so don't use them yourself. But because everyone keeps saying that training is fair use, I'm fairly confident that only training is fair use.

Of course, it might not be, but that would take more court cases and more precedent. I wanted to poison the well now [2] to make companies nervous about using a model that was partially trained with code licensed under my licenses.

[1]: https://valohai.com/blog/copyright-laws-and-machine-learning...

[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and...

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#79

Post by dylan604 »

gradys wrote: post #68
dylan604 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is not perfectly OK with training language models on copyrighted text. It's just that evilCorps do it anyways, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. I can't do anything. At best, I could get a Twitter account and complain to the ether. The copyright holders can't do anything against the might evilCorps, but that doesn't make them okay with it. The fact you believe this is just sad, and exactly what…

Could you explain why you think training models on copyrighted text is illegal or copyright infringement or whatever else it might be?

My explanation will not be popular here on HN, but I'm never one to shy away. Especially when asked directly.

Buying a book, buying an audio CD, or buying a DVD/Blu-ray is granting the holder permission to read,listen,view that product as a single instance. You can lend them out, but that's all you're really allowed to do with them. The text,audio/video is not owned by you to do with as you please. People obviously do not like that, and argue making copies/backups is their right. Maybe that's acceptable, but we can agree posting them on torrents and sharing in any other manner from a copy made from the thing you have is not.

Saying that, training a model on someone's copyrighted text is not part of the agreement of the usage of said text whether it's a copyrighted magazine, newspaper, or book. If the people doing the training reach out to the copyright holders and get specific permission to use their copyrighted material in such a manner, then go ahead. The fact that people feel like they can do anything without the common courtesy of asking for permission is troubling to me that we've lost something as a society. There's no acknowledgment that someone has created something by their own work so that the creator can do with it as they please. A large portion of people believe that because it was created they deserve/should be able to/etc do what ever they want with someone else's creation. Including getting paid for derivitave works from the original creation.

Re: FSF-calls for white papers on philosophical and legal questions around Copilot

#80

Post by gkbrk »

slownews45 wrote: post #39
blendergeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is anyone building strong communities on AGPLv3 / GPLv3? I feel the momentum shifted towards Apache / MIT style licenses unfortunately. While the corporate momentum switched to Apache/MIT licenses, there are strong communities built on AGPLv3/GPLv3. * Nextcloud - file hosting (AGPLv3) * Source Hut - git hosting (AGPLv3) * StreetComplete - OpenStreetMap editing (GPLv3) * F-Droid - Free Software "app store" for andro…

(A)GPLv3 actually has seen some real growth corporate side -> it's used commonly by proprietary tech companies as sort of a poison license (Microsoft had some of these like SSPL). The way this works is all contributors are required to sign a CLA -> the corporate developer can then use their code under ANY license, and most importantly can integrate into propriatery products or sell to others. The code is then release…

> The code is then released as an AGPLv3 [...] but the only company with the rights to make money off it is the corp dev.

Actually anyone that has the AGPL code can sell and/or make money from it. People regularly buy GPL software and pay monthly subscriptions to hosted AGPL software.

If you can't compete without having some code as "trade secrets"; that's your failed business model, not a fault of the license.

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