"Angry people brandish their fists against the incoming revolution" is also a good title.
We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
701–710 of 824 posts
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#702Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neutral nets can and do encode and compress the information they're trained on, and can regurgitate it given the right inputs. It is very likely that someone's code is in that neural net, encoded/compressed/however you want to look at it, which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute. You can easily see this happen, the regurgitation of training data, in an over fitted neural net.
> which Copilot doesn't have a license to distribute when you upload code to a public repository on github.com, you necessarily grant GitHub the right to host that code and serve it to other users. the methods used for serving are not specified. This is above and beyond the license specified by the license you choose for your own code. you also necessarily grant other GitHub users the right to view this code, if the…
Then github should make sure that people only upload stuff they are copyright owner of… which it has never done, warned about or tried to enforce.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#703Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your code is not in that thing. That thing has merely read your code and adjusted its own generative code. It is not directly using your code any more than programmers are using print statements. A book can be copyrighted, the vocabulary of language cannot. A particular program can be copyrighted, but snippets of it cannot, especially when they are used in a different context. And that is why this lawsuit is dead on…
I agree. If I read JRR Tolkien and then go and write a fantasy novel following a unexpected hero on his dangerous quest to undo evil, I haven't infringed, even if I use some of Tolkien's better turns of phrase.
Games aren't even allowed to use the word "hobbit" without paying royalties. I'm sure you completely ignore what you're talking about.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#704Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm game. What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?
Well, Linux might not exist, at least not in its current nature form, enabled by a “share and share alike” license that has meant that companies contribute to it instead of copying and closing it off from others. More generally, what is left to protect any creative work besides guarding physical access? Why would any company make any movie or tv show if it could be copied and redistributed by others endlessly the mom…
That's assuming the only way to fund the creation of something is to sell copies after the fact. And assuming that people only create for monetary compensation.
There have been creative endeavous before copyright and there would be creative endeavours after copyright. Perhaps even more since people are free to remix and share without restrictions.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#705Earlier quoted context omitted.
“Any reproduction in part or as a whole…”
Happens by accident all the time, though. Copyright laws, if enforced perfectly, would make programming simply impossible. We've been skating by on people not really enforcing them, despite the laws still being on the books, and the existence of tools like this makes that not a viable strategy. Today it's Copilot, which can be shut down, but tomorrow it'll be something developers can run at home. Bits don't have colo…
Happening by accident is one thing, selling a product based on it happening is a different thing.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#706Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm game. What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?
I'm from a country which basically ignore all copyright laws in practice. The musical scene relies on live sessions to generate any money, and the movie scene (which was never anything special) is mostly dead. That's because any media that hits the market is copied and sold everywhere. Even books, if they got popular, will get copied and sold with little enforcement, at every corner. This is mostly because the means…
> the movie scene (which was never anything special) is mostly dead
To be fair, from my experience most countries don't have much of a movie scene even with copyright and instead mostly import hollywood stuff.
> This is mostly because the means to copy requires little effort compared to the act of creating. So, there is no incentive to create because you wouldn't make a living out of it. Imagine spending two years writing a book and someone buys one and copy it to sell at 25%. He can make a profit at a lower threshold than you, so you as a creator cannot compete.
So don't compete by selling copies but by funding the creation up front. No one is claiming that abolishing copyright won't be disruptive to any existing business models - in fact, that's the point: once something becomes part of our shared culture it is ridiculous to let one entity continue to have exclusive rights so if your business model relies on continued royalties, find a better one.
Otherwise, perhaps consider continued payments to everyone who built your house, computer and whatever else you use if you think that is a great way for society to function. Don't worry, the way things are going we might get there via technical means anyway.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#707Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#708Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about codebase that were uploaded to GitHub, by someone other than the original copyright owner? e.g. I can clone the GNU codebase and publish it to GitHub. Clearly I don't own the code and do not have any rights to grant GitHub a license.
Section D.3: "If you're posting anything you did not create yourself or do not own the rights to, you agree that you are responsible for any Content you post". A lawsuit against Github has no standing for the scenario you suggest, because Github is not at fault.
Does that mean if anyone posted my open source project to GitHub, I can fill a DCMA takedown request regardless of the license I chose?
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#709Earlier quoted context omitted.
Section D.3: "If you're posting anything you did not create yourself or do not own the rights to, you agree that you are responsible for any Content you post". A lawsuit against Github has no standing for the scenario you suggest, because Github is not at fault.
Does that mean if anyone posted my open source project to GitHub, I can fill a DCMA takedown request regardless of the license I chose?
Well, I don't think it's a DCMA issue, but it does very much depend on the licence you have chosen. That's what the licence is for, to allow people to use the code that you have copyright of, and to define what they are / are not allowed to do with it.
Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot
#710Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a logical fallacy. A human is not an algorithm. We do not have to extend rights regarding novel invention to an algorithm to protect them for people.
Differentiating between a human and a machine simply because one "is not an algorithm" doesn't make a lot of sense. If it were true, people would very easily game it, by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work. Ultimately the algorithm is automating something a human could do. There is a lot of gray area to copyright law, but you can't get around that simply by offloading to an a…
>by using algorithms to automate the most trivial parts of copying someone's work
That's basically what copilot is...?