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Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

thehftguy.com

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Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#71

Post by mrtranscendence »

unreal37 wrote: post #61
htpltr wrote: post #48

Antitrust is one thing, but by cleanroom implementation standards (one team reads the source and writes a spec, another team writes the code) CoPilot is illegal to begin with. CoPilot reads and rearranges the IP that was created by millions of people who were working very hard and did not anticipate a code laundering machine when they wrote the code and the licenses.

That's quite an extreme set of statements, and I very much doubt what you consider "illegal" is actually illegal. When you publish something for others to view (text, images, code, whatever), others are allowed to view it. You can't anticipate how others view it, with their eyes or with screenreaders to assist. You can't stop them from reading it, thinking about it, discussing it with their friends, taking notes, sum…

This isn’t about a person learning, however. This is about developing an algorithm through the inclusion of GPL licensed code, that might — and has — verbatim emitted that code. Those seem materially different to me.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#72

Post by nindalf »

unreal37 wrote: post #57
bilqis wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say they don’t

I don't understand why people just automatically doubt things that companies say when they can be sued (or would otherwise destroy their business) if they are lying about it. Seems unnecessarily pessimistic.

I'm frequently told on HN that Big Tech would willingly, flagrantly violate GDPR like its nothing. Even if the upside of collecting that info was minimal and the downside was 4% of global revenue.

I guess if they can do that, then what's a small lie about private repos between friends.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#73

Post by williamcotton »

Liquid_Fire wrote: post #42
19h wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can configure Copilot to not return code that appears verbatim in public repositories. In that case it at least won't produce code you could legitimately argue would be covered by any individuals' specific license.

But it might well give you the exact same code with a variable name changed (for example), which would be unlikely to hold up in court if a human had done it to bypass the license.

It depends on the code. You can’t copyright something functional like a for-loop. What you can copyright is the larger expressive, and arbitrary, structure of that code.

Copyright is not meant for utilitarian purposes. For that there are patents. The non-utilitarian, artistically expressive aspect of software is in how code is organized. You know, the rather arbitrary decisions that spawn hours of bike-shedding.

Copilot is most useful when it makes no creative decisions and instead follows the style and design patterns already established in the code base.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#74

Post by gumballindie »

belorn wrote: post #58
williamcotton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, if the copying is found to be fair use (which is very likely), then attribution or other requirements of a copyright license will not be required. Second, the only aspects of code that needs to follow the license are the parts of the code that are covered by copyright. That excludes anything that is functional. Since optimizations are functional and not expressive in nature then, for example, an optimized sort…

If copying by AI is generally found to be fair use then we will see this in music, porn, advertisement, in political associated situations, and other situations where authors has a history of disagreeing with how their work get used. Unstable diffusion is an ongoing test of how far fair use may be applied. I find it very likely that copyright law will be changed if training on copyrighted material becomes universally…

The actual test will happen once microsoft’s source code gets leaked and we start training our models against them. Until then we will keep hearing how using our work for free is good and that copyright is out of fashion. As soon as the tables are turned so will this narrative go away.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#75

Post by gumballindie »

elzbardico wrote: post #37

Because open source developers, either individuals or companies can't even possibly entertain the idea of the legal expenses involved in fighting a behemoth like Microsoft.

No but we can take the code offline and call it a day. Once we are “freed up” we wont be able to support the software that feed ai models.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#76

Post by williamcotton »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #71
unreal37 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite an extreme set of statements, and I very much doubt what you consider "illegal" is actually illegal. When you publish something for others to view (text, images, code, whatever), others are allowed to view it. You can't anticipate how others view it, with their eyes or with screenreaders to assist. You can't stop them from reading it, thinking about it, discussing it with their friends, taking notes, sum…

This isn’t about a person learning, however. This is about developing an algorithm through the inclusion of GPL licensed code, that might — and has — verbatim emitted that code. Those seem materially different to me.

You can without attribution verbatim copy the parts of GPL code that is not covered by copyright, such as anything purely functional, like an optimized sorting algorithm.

Copyright is for art. Patents are for utilities and tools.

The art in GPL code is in the arbitrary decisions made about how to structure that code… the class structure and not the algorithms.

You cannot copyright an algorithm and for very good reason. Think if Microsoft had the assumed powers granted by the GPL!

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#77

Post by ChatGTP »

scrollaway wrote: post #69
ChatGTP wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they do shady shit, like, by default Copilot would "sample" code for training while using it. Maybe this is no longer the default, maybe it still is, but it was the default. This type of thing erodes trust? Why should my proprietary code be used for training by default? I was really annoyed by this.

OpenAI is not the same company as GitHub, and it has always been pretty clear that chats on ChatGPT are recorded and used for training (unless you now opt out).

Not sure why you're bringing OpenAI into it. My comment and the article is about "Copilot"

I'm talking about when using "Github Copilot" and you ask for a code suggestion, it would send the "context" back to GitHub / Microsoft and use that code as training.

Your comment is interesting to me though because there does seem to be a surprisingly large amount of defending OpenAI going on. Almost seems automatic now.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#78

Post by h2odragon »

scarface74 wrote: post #65
h2odragon wrote: post #2

When I published stuff to GitHub, it had open licenses: i wanted anyone and everyone to make whatever use of it they could. I didn't foresee this use, and I'm not fond of Microsoft (to say the least); but it certainly falls into the area of things I explicitly allowed when publishing. I suspect many others who publish there feel the same way.

> i wanted anyone and everyone to make whatever use of it they could. > didn't foresee this use So you really didn’t want any use. You just wanted the use you found acceptable? So you didn’t really want it to be “open”

I didn't foresee it, i do not object to it, and probably would not have had i known beforehand.

Code i dont want others to use I dont publish.

Re: Why are there no antitrust claims vs. GitHub Copilot, when there is a precedent?

#80

Post by williamcotton »

htpltr wrote: post #48

Antitrust is one thing, but by cleanroom implementation standards (one team reads the source and writes a spec, another team writes the code) CoPilot is illegal to begin with. CoPilot reads and rearranges the IP that was created by millions of people who were working very hard and did not anticipate a code laundering machine when they wrote the code and the licenses.

Clean room implementations are there to make sure that none of the arbitrary, artistically expressive parts of the code are inadvertently copied.

Class structure, file structure, APIs…

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