We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#711

Post by urthor » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 11:55 AM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #313

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…

> “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program” Not really? It's less about arithmetic and more about inferencing data in higher dimensions than we can understand. Comparing it to traditional computation is a trap, same as treating it like a human mind. They've very different, under the surface. IMO, if this is a data problem then we should treat it like one. Simple fix - find a legal basis for which licenses a…

> Not really? It's less about arithmetic and more about inferencing data in higher dimensions than we can understand.

This is a VERY poor definition of mathematics.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#712

Post by poulpy123 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:21 PM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #531

williamcotton wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read most of the complaint. The only examples of supposed copyright infringement are isEven and isPrime functions. Here's what Copilot gives me in a Typescript file: function isPrime(n: number): boolean { for (let i = 2; i 1; } function isEven(n: number): boolean { return n % 2 === 0; } These are clearly not covered by copyright in the first place. This case is really quite pathetic.

You didn't read the relevant part of the complaint. It starts on document page 14 (PDF page 17). There's a clear footnote: > Due to the nature of Codex, Copilot, and AI in general, Plaintiffs cannot be certain these examples would produce the same results if attempted following additional trainings of Codex and/or Copilot. The offending solution from the AI included extra lines that are reasonably understood to come…

I'm all to punish GitHub copilot if it produce copyrighted code, but this example of is even is absolutely trivial and has no right to be copyrighted

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#713

Post by blackbrokkoli » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:35 PM UTC

an1sotropy wrote: post #565

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #469

I am sorry for not bringing any kind of legal perspective here, but: *Jesus Christ*, I hope I live long enough to see copyright die. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm of commanding computers to do stuff for us, right at the beginning of the first AI development which actually impresses me. And we are fucking bickering about how we were cheated out of $0.00034 because our repo from 2015 might have been used fo…

You haven’t actually thought through what kind of world it would be if there was no copyright law, have you? I don’t know what your political leanings are, but I’ve met some libertarians who are blissfully naive about the extent to which their world and worldview is buttressed by laws and the governments that enforce them, and your comment reminds me of that.

Well since you asked, I am about as far away from libertarian as you can be without making a point out of it.

That doesn't mean I must be in favor of every repressive innovation-stifling law that was ever cooked up.

You bring up the arts in another comment; ever considered why like half the people regarded as genuinely world-changing or geniuses (da Vinci, Galileo, Columbus, Machiavelli, Michelangelo) were born in the same two hundred years in the same region? Because the Italian renaissance was all about intense, free information-sharing! People freely visited each others work places and ruthlessly stole form each other, and it was accepted. Boom, you get a period of unparalleled human productivity.

And now you want to tell me that a set of weird laws who only ever benefited Disney and Elsevier are the only thing preventing humanity from ceasing to create awesome shit? Nah man, the masses will always continue creating, exactly as proven by the fact that they did in the last decades while getting continuously butt-fucked by the very laws you pretend are made to protect them...

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#714

Post by teddyh » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:36 PM UTC

WithinReason wrote: post #692

elikoga wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When searching for "console.log(isEven(50));" "// → true", which is one of the parts that the complaints is about, since this is also reproduced inside a Programming learning book: We get with cs.github.com " Showing 1 - 20 of 66 files found (in 76 milliseconds)" So, if this lawsuit succeeds in some way shape or form, does the author have a case against the 66 people that reproduced these lines in their own repositor…

You could argue that if the author pursued enforcing their licence over those 66 people their code wouldn't have ended up in the training set in the first place. IANAL but I recall that you can't invoke copyright law to selectively enforce it, copyright is only protected if the holder pursues every violation of it. Maybe it works the same for enforcing a licence.

> I recall that you can't invoke copyright law to selectively enforce it, copyright is only protected if the holder pursues every violation of it

IIRC, that is wrong. What you are describing is trademarks, not copyright.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#715

Post by poulpy123 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:37 PM UTC

>By training their AI systems on public GitHub repositories (though based on their public statements, possibly much more) we contend that the defendants have violated the legal rights of a vast number of creators who posted code or other work under certain open-source licenses on GitHub.

I don't know about the US laws in copyright so I can't comment on the legal documents but this website is not complaining that copilot is reproducing copyrighted content but it was trained on copyrighted content. I don't see how you can forbid someone or something to read and learn from something that is public (once again producing is another problem)

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#716

Post by blackbrokkoli » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:37 PM UTC

anikom15 wrote: post #586

Filligree wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm game. What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?

Someone with more money and more resources than you profiting off your work.

Fair theoretical point.

Please do name one industry, niche or platform where copyright does actually prevent this from happening in any meaningful way today.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#717

Post by teddyh » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:48 PM UTC

D13Fd wrote: post #624

chlorion wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's selfish to want people to abide by the license I released my project under? That's pure nonsense.

Your code is protected by copyright. The license allows for what would otherwise be copyright infringement. But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. It's selfish to pretend otherwise and to try to assert a copyright right that doesn't exist, for the purpose of impeding progress in a field that benefits us all.

> But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant.

Well, maybe. But even if we assume that this is true, when anyone later uses the AI to reproduce a copy of the code, a copy has been made and copyright has been infringed.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#718

Post by teddyh » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

rolenthedeep wrote: post #496

heavyset_go wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your intent is to create a competing product for profit, chances are that won't be found as fair use, given that determining fair use depends on intent and how the content is used. Using clips from a movie in a movie review is probably fair use. Using clips from a movie in knock-off of that movie for profit? Probably not fair use if it's not a parody. Copilot is not like a movie reviewer using clips to review a mo…

Interesting analogy. Consider every repo on github to be a movie. Copilot is taking individual frames out of every movie on github and composting them into a new film. I think most of us would agree that individually, each frame is copyrighted. But what if you take one frame from a million different movies and put them in an order that produces a new coherent movie? The core question we need to settle in court is: do…

The question was basically settled with music sampling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(music)#Legal_and_eth...

I.e. any use without permission is illegal.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#719

Post by blackbrokkoli » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

skydhash wrote: post #609

Filligree wrote: post #574

Earlier 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…

What do you describe is true everywhere. Books were never a get-rich-quick-scheme. There are like seven bands in all of history that get significant revenue from anything other than live shows.

But what do you mean, no incentive to create?

The Tao Te Ching was reluctantly written after the author was begged by his pupils. Most Greek philosopher's teachings were only written down after their death because other people thought that's an important job. On The Origin Of Species is a book because that was just the normal way to communicate scientific findings in Darwin's time. Da Vinci saw some fat commissions in his life, but Mona Lisa certainly never brought him any money. In fact, out of my twenty favorite artists maybe two saw anything approaching fame in their lifetime.

Please, go to some random DeviantArt page or Spotify profile or GitHub repo with 3 views and tell me why it exists when the only reason for human creation is dollars and red carpets...what a sad perspective, really

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#720

Post by plgonzalezrx8 » Fri, Nov 04, 2022, 1:35 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #717

D13Fd wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your code is protected by copyright. The license allows for what would otherwise be copyright infringement. But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. It's selfish to pretend otherwise and to try to assert a copyright right that doesn't exist, for the purpose of impeding progress in a field that benefits us all.

> But training an AI model on media (code or otherwise) is not copyright infringement, so the license is irrelevant. Well, maybe . But even if we assume that this is true, when anyone later uses the AI to reproduce a copy of the code, a copy has been made and copyright has been infringed.

This whole code thing is so nonsense to me.

If I need a code to loop over 10 lines, I'll code a for loop the same way regardless of what I'm developing.

Define for me, at what point of complexity, does code gets Copyrighted?

The things copilot is outputting is literally small chunks of code that needs a lot of cleanup afterwards. Is not like I type "Build twitter for me" and BAM, I got a working clone of twitter.