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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

#741

Post by MichaelCollins »

logifail wrote: post #740
MichaelCollins wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can click on a magnet link that claims to download a Debian ISO just to find out later that it's something else entirely This is just fear mongering, the same exact thing can happen with a web browser, I click a link to view an image of a cat but... oops, it was actually a Getty copyrighted picture of a dog! Oh nooooo. On the web that sort of thing is actually common, but bit torrent? I have never downloaded a…

> I click a link to view an image of a cat but... oops, it was actually a Getty copyrighted picture of a dog! Oh nooooo Sorry, what? Downloading copyrighted content is very, very rarely the problem. It's the uploading (the sharing!) of copyrighted content where you actually get into trouble.

If you actually care, then simply configure your client to leech. Every client I've ever used or heard of supports this.

But more to the point, getting tricked into seeding a copyrighted movie by a torrent masquerading as a Debian ISO isn't something that actually happens. That's absurd FUD.

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

#742

Post by bamboozled »

concordDance wrote: post #669
bamboozled wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I’m working on a side project and it’s hosted on GitHub, does this mean the code (which I consider precious and my own) can just be stolen and injected into my competitors codebase who is using co-pilot? If this is the case, I can imagine people migrating of GitHub very quickly. I can also imagine some pretty nice lawsuits opening up.

A good rule of thumb is if you're worried about code being copied you really shouldn't put it on github. Even if most large companies respect copyright, that small studio in Russia certainly won't.

How would the small studio access my private repo ?

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

#743

Post by an1sotropy »

jeroenhd wrote: post #165
an1sotropy wrote: post #3

This is a huge and looming legal problem. I wonder if what should be a big uproar about it is muted by the widespread acceptance/approval of github and related products, in which case its a nice example of how monopolies damage communities.

I think it won't become a legal problem until Copilot steals code from a leaked repository (i.e. the Windows XP source code) and that code gets reused in public. Only then will we see an answer to the question "is making an AI write your stolen code a viable excuse". I very much approve of the idea of Copilot as long as the copied code is annotated with the right license. I understand this is a difficult challenge bu…

> I very much approve of the idea of Copilot as long as the copied code is annotated with the right license.

I agree, but I somehow doubt that will ever happen. Partly because MS is motivated to muddy the waters and shift norms towards allowing more of this kind of license-defying copying (because they make money from a product that does just that), and partly because the market for the most part doesn't think clearly about these issues. Many commenters here seem really fuzzy on the fact that nearly all code is, with or without an explicit statement as such, copyrighted (thanks, Berne convention), that that copyright (with or without documentation) is owned by someone, and that it is licensing which grants use of copyrighted work under specific circumstances. So as you say, the real problem is losing information about the license.

I'm grateful that the author of some LGPL'd code has triggered this discussion, since its a more consequential license w.r.t. code reuse.

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

#745

Post by an1sotropy »

_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…

Ryan - one word you avoided using in your reply is "license". The fact that Copilot is reproducing code without attribution is not the legal show-stopper here has much as the fact Copilot is reproducing code without documenting what license it falls under.

If your hope is that saying "it came out of our ML model" somehow removes Copilot from the well-established legal framework of licensing, I think you're wrong, and you are creating a minefield that I and others choose to stay well clear of. The revenue from Copilot, and the rest of MS, can probably pay your legal bills, but certainly not mine.

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

#746

Post by b3morales »

robertlagrant wrote: post #664
CPLX wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see this argument over and over again but it’s the exception that proves the rule. Most of the time when it’s made it’s just papering over yer another situation where a surplus is being squeezed out of a transaction by a parasitic manager class using principal-agent problem dynamics. The people who invented this stuff are always trying to tell you they’ve invented the cotton gin or something when in fact they’ve…

What was described wasn't the principal-agent problem. If I'm an employee and my job becomes simpler or more productive through an automation investment by someone else, I don't think I deserve part of the increased profit unless I'm part of a profit-sharing agreement that would also see me absorb losses.

In the case of Copilot, the automation "investment" rides directly on the back of a large pile of code. And the creators of that code are receiving none of the fruits of this "investment".

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

#747

Post by b3morales »

minhazm wrote: post #404
svnt wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t at all address the primary issue, which is one of licensing. Is it a valid defense against copyright infringement to say “we don’t know where we got it, maybe someone else copied it from you first?” If someone violated the copyright of a song by sampling too much of it and released it in the public domain (or failed to claim it at all), and you take the entire sample from them, would that hold up in a le…

It does address it, although not that clearly. This happens all the time with news media. They will post a picture and say they got permission from X person, but X person actually didn't even own the copyright in the first place. That doesn't make any of it okay, but it does mean that the organization has legal cover in this case and the worst that will happen is that they'll have to take the content down. In GitHub'…

Turn the parties in this argument around and see if you think it still holds.

J. Random Hacker acquires and uses a copy of some of GitHub's, or Microsoft's source. When sued, the defense says that the code was not taken directly from GH/MS, just copied from a newsgroup where it had been posted. Does this get J. off the hook?

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

#748

Post by bjourne »

yardstick wrote: post #483
leni536 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, than Github is just "washing its hands". Not at all reassuring for copyright holders and users of copilot.

What’s the most github could reasonably be expected to do? Identify if multiple licenses are found for the same code then maybe it should be flagged for review or the most restrictive license applied.

The point is that CoPilot should not emit a word-for-word copy of someone else's work because that is called plagiarism.

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

#749

Post by logifail »

LtWorf wrote: post #573
mahogany wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a new area of development, and we’re all learning. I’m personally spending a lot of time chatting with developers, copyright experts, and community stakeholders to understand the most responsible way to leverage LLMs. Given that there have been major concerns about copyright infringements and license violations since the announcement of Copilot, wouldn't it have been better to do some more of this "learning…

And why not train it on microsoft windows and office code?

> And why not train it on microsoft windows and office code?

As a thought experiment, if one were to train a model on purely leaked and/or stolen source code, would the use of model step effectively "launder" the code and make later partial reuse legit?

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

#750

Post by kmeisthax »

lofatdairy wrote: post #394
xani_ wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. The reason doesn't really matter...

GP is just highlighting why this is so common and often a challenging edge case. If you ask it for something that's exactly in its dataset, the "best" solution that minimizes loss will be that existing code. Thus, it's somewhat intrinsic to applying statistical learning to text completion. This means MS really shouldn't have used copyleft code at all, and really shouldn't be selling copilot in this state, but "luckil…

Suing Microsoft for training Copilot on your code would require jumping over the same hurdle that the Authors Guild could not: i.e. that it is fair use to scan a massive corpus[0] of texts (or images) in order to search through them.

My real worry is downstream infringement risk, since fair use is non-transitive. Microsoft can legally provide you a code generator AI, but you cannot legally use regurgitated training set output[1]. GitHub Copilot is creating all sorts of opportunities to put your project in legal jeopardy and Microsoft is being kind of irresponsible with how they market it.

[0] Note that we're assuming published work. Doing the exact same thing Microsoft did, but on unpublished work (say, for irony's sake, the NT kernel source code) might actually not be fair use.

[1] This may give rise to some novel inducement claims, but the irony of anyone in the FOSS community relying on MGM v. Grokster to enforce the GPL is palpable.

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