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We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

githubcopilotlitigation.com

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Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#741

Post by remram »

bmitc wrote: post #722
heavyset_go wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under. I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would…

I played around with creating an MIT license on my GitHub that explicitly forbids Copilot and other such systems that I thought I may update my projects to, because I strongly dislike the data collection. I'm not a lawyer though. Is there a GutHub terms of agreement that covers Copilot?

They claim it is fair use, therefore they can bypass copyright (and therefore license terms).

It being in GitHub has not been brought up as a factor yet (by GitHub/Microsoft), AFAIK they could use code from other places with that logic, they just don't need to.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#743

Post by renewiltord »

lbotos wrote: post #721
renewiltord wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the difference is entirely in being able to find out whether you're infringing or not? Surely that's solvable with a EULA that passes the responsibility onto the user to search?

I'm not a lawyer, but if you provide a platform that enables infringement that's different than if you provide a tool that could enable infringement. Popcorn time vs. bittorrent. And you are right the EULA could say "it's up to the end user to confirm you can use this code". But then how do you verify? That slows down "productivity" where copilot promises "speeding up" productivity.

Yep, makes sense! I guess we'll see what arguments the court finds convincing. I, for one, hope Copilot stays, but if we can delay its destruction long enough I think we'll get open-source models that will give us this for free. And then the cat will be out of the bag.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#744

Post by AnnasVirtual »

still_grokking wrote: post #566
D13Fd wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authors of code (open source or otherwise) hold a copyright in that code. The purpose of the license agreement is to set out the terms on which the authors will permit others to take actions that would otherwise infringe copyright. Using code, photographs, documents, or other material to train a model isn't copyright infringement. The person operating the model is not violating the exclusive rights of the copyright a…

> The person operating the model is not violating the exclusive rights of the copyright author: they are not making copies or derivative works. How do they not make copies? Do you know how a computer works? Ever heard of RAM? (At least the German Urheberrecht recognizes this clearly: You can't do any processing on any data with the help of a computer without at least making temporary local copies , so there are excep…

you are clearly doesn't understand how machine learning works, if machine learning ok copyrighted data becomes illegal then most of our infrastructures will be down because most of it uses machine learning, the first that will affect many people is probably google search

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#745

Post by AnnasVirtual »

Cort3z wrote: post #329
smoldesu wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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…

Who decides what constitutes an "AI program" vs just a "program"? What heuristic do we look at? At the end of the day, they have an equivalent of a .exe which runs, and outputs code that has a license attached to it.

no, you clearly don't understand Neural Network, basically it's a file containing artificial neurons and their connections

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#746

Post by AnnasVirtual »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #402
smoldesu wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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…

But it all runs on hardware we created and we know exactly what operations were implemented in that hardware. How is it not just math?

it is a math that simulate neurons firing

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#747

Post by joe_the_user »

solomatov wrote: post #621
joe_the_user wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) This "copilot is great 'cause copyright is evil" argument breaks when you look at the fact that copilot is copyrighted, closed software tool for producing closed, copyrighted software. If you trained copilot on GPL'd software and specified that copilot's output was also GPL'd maybe you'd have some reasonable claim (but even then, the attribution claim would come in). 2) So far, these tools are "better search" sche…

>2) So far, these tools are "better search" schemes, not actual intelligence. Sure, many find them very useful. But given this, the (voluntary or involuntary) providers of data ought to get credit/benefit for/from this phenomena, along with the tool creators. Especially giving the current situation is Microsoft/OpenAI selling to commercial software developers who sell to general public. What they are good at is predi…

What they are good at is predicting what's after the text. The problem of predicting what's next could be used to create a universal artificial intelligence (there's a mathematical definition for this). I.e. if you have a system which is very good at predicting what's next, you could get to very powerful AI.

The intelligence of human beings isn't unspecifically good "predicting what's next" but rather is good at particular sorts of predictions in particular contexts, often involving the person having helped create the situation. I'm fairly safe at driving because I maintain an arrange of my vehicle in a fashion that allows me to predict easily what's next as well as allowing me to adjust if my predictions are wrong. Self-driving software might predict what's next as well as me in normal circumstances but it's neither aware of larger context nor does it things to maintain "smooth traffic flow".

Opposite, being able to predict anything generically would certainly be limitless intelligence but you can't describe any system with just that. Copilot is trained with a certain window, with the transforms special element giving more context but I don't think very many people doing current research expects that become generic prediction. I think I'm describing the consensus that it's a "better Google" for finding code one can use - and Google is a pretty good resource for this - if you aren't doing something unusual or difficult.

Jeff Hawking also makes "prediction is intelligence" claim but I think your and his approach misses that human intelligence is good not by being generic but doing more specific things.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#748

Post by AnnasVirtual »

bombolo wrote: post #699
ranguna wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone, copilot because they used (for training) and generate copyrighted code for they product and people that use the product. Although users can probably get away with it because they didn't know copilot was actively generating copyrighted code.

They know now.

copilot only generate copyrighted when it seen the code many many times and that called memorization in machine learning, machine learning researchers will always try to decrease the amount of memorization in their artificial neurons

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#749

Post by AnnasVirtual »

devmor wrote: post #495
naikrovek wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copilot isn't creating derivative works: copilot users are. the human at the keyboard is responsible for what goes into the source code being written. to aid copilot users here, they are creating tools to give users more info about the code they are seeing: https://github.blog/2022-11-01-preview-referencing-public-co...

Your argument is essentially the same as the argument that the pirate bay didn't infringe copyright, it only facilitated infringement. And we all saw how well that went legally.

that is not how similar at all that is not how machine learning works OMG

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#750

Post by heavyset_go »

ahtihn wrote: post #665
heavyset_go wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under. I am more hesitant to release code on GitHub under any licenses now. Even outside of GPL-esque terms, I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license, but if Microsoft won't adhere to popular licenses like the GPL, why would…

> Innovation dies when creators can't create without someone ripping off their work against the terms they release it under. I strongly disagree. There would be more innovation if code couldn't be copyrighted or kept secret. See: all of open source. > I've considered open sourcing some of my product's components under a source available but otherwise proprietary license What's the point of that? This isn't useful to…

I'm the author of about a dozen popular AGPL and GPL projects, but please tell me how I don't understand open source.

The purpose of releasing source available but proprietary code is so that users can learn and integrate into it, and making it available lets anyone learn how it works. The only reason I even considered making the source available is balance between 1) needing to eat and 2) valuing open source enough to risk #1.

Please take your condescension elsewhere.

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