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

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

#701

Post by tablespoon »

faeriechangling wrote: post #146
tablespoon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can slow this, you can't stop it whatsoever. It's about as ultimately futile as an effort as trying to stop piracy. ... But STOPPING the use of these tools? Go ahead and try, won't happen. So? No one needs to stop it totally . The world isn't black and white, pushing it to the fringes is almost certainly a sufficient success. Outlawing murder hasn't stopped murder, but no one's given up on enforcing those laws…

Cyberpunk sure, but fantasy? Not at all.

> Cyberpunk sure, but fantasy? Not at all.

The fantasy is the idea that doing what you describe will matter.

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

#702

Post by rtkwe »

rfrec0n wrote: post #430
Spivak wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a copyright violation to commission an artist to make you something in the style of another artist and it’s also not copyright infringement for the artist you hired to look at that artist’s work to learn what that style means. And it’s also not always infringement to draw another artist’s work in your own style same as reimplementing code. If you “trace” another artists work the hammer comes down though. For…

Right, but what if you commission an artist to create a work similar to an already existing piece of art and the artist decides that the most efficient way to do that is to just place the original piece of art in a photocopier, crops out the copyright notice and original artist's signature, and sells you the resulting print?

That's a violation but not what SD is doing. It's not copying it's recreating a similar (sometimes extremely similar image).

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

#703

Post by tablespoon »

robertlagrant wrote: post #580
socialismisok wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But - the only reason anyone makes money (other than tax money) is because they're useful to someone else. Almost all of the clothing industry companies make money from large numbers of people buying their clothes. So they are useful to us. Similarly, the reason Europe put 30% of its populace "out of work" by industrialising agriculture is why we don't have to all go work in fields all day. It is a massive net positi…

> But - the only reason anyone makes money (other than tax money) is because they're useful to someone else. Almost all of the clothing industry companies make money from large numbers of people buying their clothes. So they are useful to us.

No, that's not true. Capitalists make money from simply owning things, not because they're necessarily doing anything useful.

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

#704

Post by sidewndr46 »

rfrec0n wrote: post #432
CapsAdmin wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what is nonsense, how it works? Your response seems to be for something entirely different. But anyway, how I see stable diffusion being different is that it's a tool to generate all sorts of images, including copyrighted images. It's more like a database of *how to* generate images rather than a database *of* images. Maybe there isn't that much of a difference when it comes to copyright law. If yo…

A tool can't be held accountable and can't infringe on copyright or any other law for that matter. It's more of a product. It seems to me like it's a gray area that's just going to have to be decided in court. Like did the company that sells the tool that can very easily be used to do illegal things take enough reasonable measures to prevent it from being accidently used in such a way? In the case of Copilot, I don't…

The DMCA disagrees. Specific methods of "circumvention" which inevitably take the form of a software tool are prohibited. Tools and their authors can be held accountable.

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

#705

Post by fencepost »

Spivak wrote: post #469
fencepost wrote: post #259

Seems simple enough to start addressing. Don't sue Microsoft, subpoena them as part of your suit against unnamed companies violating the license. Request information on all public and private repositories that were generated in part using Copilot and which contain relevant code from which the licensing info has been stripped. After all, Microsoft may not itself be infringing so there may not be a cause of action agai…

> Request information on all public and private repositories that were generated in part using Copilot and which contain relevant code from which the licensing info has been stripped. No court is ever going give you that subpoena nor would it even be possible to comply with it even if granted. You might get “show me all the repositories used in the training data for Copilot that contain that snippet.”

No court is ever going give you that subpoena nor would it even be possible to comply with it even if granted.

Quite possible, but the details could be tweaked to be more viable. The underlying message of "your tools have done us wrong and we're going to drag your customers who benefitted in" could still get through.

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

#706

Post by cowtools »

Spivak wrote: post #458
andreareina wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's too hard" isn't a valid reason for me to not follow laws and/or social norms. This is a predictable result and was predicted by many people; "oops we didn't know" is neither credible nor acceptable.

It’s not “oops we didn’t know” it’s, “someone published a project under a permissive license which included this code.” If your standard is “Github should have an oracle to the US court system and predict what the outcome of a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement for a given snippet of code would be” then it is literally impossible for anyone to use any open source code ever because it might contain infringing cod…

I am going to make a robot that burns your house down. You might think this is unethical, but what you expect me to do? Implement an oracle to the US court system?

You might think it's unreasonable to build such a house-burning robot, but you have to realize that I actually designed it as a lawn-mowing robot. The robot will simply not value your life or property because its utility function is descended from my own, so may burn your house down in the regular course of its duties (if it decides to use a powerful laser to trim the grass to the exact nanometer). Sorry neighbor.

What do you expect me to do? NOT build this robot? How dare you stand in the way of progress!

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

#707

Post by dogleash »

_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…

The topic of code generation that's near-identical or overwhelmingly-similar to existing code has come up a number of times. While the problem is obvious, it's a bit opaque and poorly communicated.

How has your team defined, specified and clearly articulated these issues with generation?

How do you test your generation to distinguish between fixing a problem vs reducing obvious true positives (i.e. unintentionally making the problem less visible without eliminating it)?

Without some communication on those fronts (which maybe I've just not seen yet), I'm not surprised that you get pushback against your product from people feel like you're taking a cover-our-ass-and-YOLO approach.

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

#708

Post by jonnycomputer »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #5

Microsoft should just train it on all their proprietary code instead. See how sanguine they are about it then.

Maybe open-source licenses might need to be revised to disallow this sort of thing, e.g. by saying that any thing trained on GNU data must also carry that license.

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

#709

Post by MSFT_Edging »

cdogl wrote: post #591
krageon wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The luddites were right. Everything is worse because they did not win, which is obvious if you spend a second thinking about what them not winning means: more concentrated wealth, more disenfranchised workers.

It’s difficult for me to see how 2022 is worse than 1816 all things considered.

https://theweek.com/feature/briefing/1016752/the-real-cost-o...

Maybe not right this moment but our actions have consequences in the future.

For those who only see the next quarter, they're stoked.

For those who understand infinite growth is impossible and would simply like a livable world, they're horrified.

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

#710

Post by MSFT_Edging »

robertlagrant wrote: post #592
soft_dev_person wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can guess the modern slaves producing our cheap clothes would have an opinion on that.

It's true that a lot of the fashion industry appears to be pretty disgusting. But that doesn't mean that it would be better if fewer of the steps were automated.

Local communities would be stronger and more resilient with more local crafts-people providing meaningful labor within said communities.

Currently, everything is extraction and the US is rotting from the inside out because of it.

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