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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#841

Post by iostream25 »

Either the user-base of HN suddenly became a bunch of unethical folks who don't CARE about copyrights, usage licenses, authorship, or the future of open-source projects,

OR

This place is currently crawling with Micro$oft employees who have been instructed to swamp the place with disingenuous comments basically amounting to:

1) "fair use" is anything I want it to me

2) gimme your code NOW, because I want it, and it's MINE

3) get used to habitual violation of licenses as the new normal

4) you are ruining progress! harming kittens!

I can't see the actual HN crowd all suddenly being copilot users and fans, so that leaves me to conclude the latter.

I find Microsofts continual business model of evil to be rather threatening and annoying and they need to be checked, as they have only gotten worse with the decades. They abuse their market position to stifle any and all tech innovation. Break them up already.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#842

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

skohan wrote: post #806
schoen wrote: post #486

Here are a few thoughts I haven't formulated before: It seems clear enough to me that training AIs on copyrighted works is typically or commonly a fair use under existing law, because the AIs can and commonly do learn non-copyrightable elements and aspects of those works. It's very obvious from enormous numbers of examples that current AI systems are capable of learning much more abstract features of human culture (g…

I don't know why we should be concerned with the status quo of copy-write law at all with respect to AI. ML is categorically new in how it applies to these domains, and it's not clear to me at all that rules that apply to humans have much to do at all with rules which should apply to machines. Imo it is very simple: IP law is intended to incentivize creative work, so that it remains possible to profit from one's crea…

It is an interesting take and it reminds of the thoughts that made crypto what it is today, which made something the lines of:

"Old systems suck and our new system is great and it is new technology. Therefore old rules do not apply to it."

Not surprisingly, the moment crypto started gaining traction, everyone was quickly made to understand that rules do indeed apply even if it is a new a facet of finance regulations ( or in the case of Copilot copyright law ).

For the record, I am sympathetic to your sentiment, but you can't really expect existing interests to accept a major change if it happens to undermine someone's way of life and, possibly, alter the current legal landscape. And this may end up a much bigger change than expected and may finally usher in the era management always wanted.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#843

Post by adamhp »

bayindirh wrote: post #771
iepathos wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans do violate copyright if they use copyrighted passages directly in their work and pass it off as their own without any attribution, which is what copilot has been show to sometimes do, though not always. Copilot will sometimes offer chunks of code that can be found verbatim in open source code bases and passes it off to users without attribution. I agree it is ok to learn from copyrighted work and reproduce new…

> Microsoft will likely need to add checks to prevent copilot from offering verbatim copies of code going forward to try to avoid copyright violations here. A user once replied to one of my comment[0] about this with the following: > It's not really an issue when you're a large software corporation; you already have mechanisms in place to check for license compliance in everything that ships, including F/OSS plagiari…

I'm curious about the endgame of copyright with respect to software. At some point, enough people will have written enough code that you can't write code anymore because some fragment of it violates a copyright. Where does the line get drawn? There's only so many ways to do certain algorithms, like DFS or BFS.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#844

Post by endisneigh »

abigail95 wrote: post #564
endisneigh wrote: post #112

Copilot is trained on and returns AGPL code verbatim. It’s game over. If these licenses are not enforced it defeats the entire purpose.

That's a problem of the licensers, not for Microsoft or the CoPilot users. If you released AGPL code but never intended to ever sue anyone. Why did you release it like that? If you did and if someone is able to use your code without any damage to you, without reputation loss, and via a way they have access to the innocent infringer defense after you overcome fair use, after you sue them. How is that game over?

Microsoft is using agpl code, therefore their code is subject to it. A lack of damages doesn’t give one the right to ignore licenses. If it does, like I mentioned it defeats the entire point.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#845

Post by kevincox »

i_like_apis wrote: post #821
BowBun wrote: post #794

I'm in favor of this. You can't ingest code that says "you cannot use this without attribution", put it through a bunch of if statements that strip the license, and then say it's "AI-generated". I don't care about most of our generic CRUD apps or the 15th rewrite of a sorting algorithm, but I do care about those smart enough to advance the field and come up with novel solutions. If we take away the incentive for attr…

Totally disagree. Training is fair use. It is akin to learning. Code licenses do not restrict you from reading or learning. ML training needs to be fair use of copyrighted works, or most machine learning and AI projects will be impossible.

I agree that training is fair use. I don't agree that when the model spits out verbatim or near-identical copies of copyright code that somehow the copyright is striped or that the usage of it is somehow fair use.

I believe that the vast majority of code that copilot produces is fine. But we have also seen clear examples of copyright violation.

The biggest problem is that it is basically impossible for the user to tell which is which.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#846

Post by jeltz »

dkyc wrote: post #727
dgellow wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems clear enough to me that training AIs on copyrighted works is typically or commonly a fair use under existing law Which laws are considered in this case? I understand that fair use is a US concept. For example how does that apply to my projects, published and licensed by a European living in a European country? I would expect the majority of GitHub contributors to not be based in the US, so what laws should…

From GitHub’s Terms of Service [0]: > Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the cou…

I have code of mine which has been uploaded to GitHub without my permission (other than it being licensed under GPL or MIT, no contributor agreement). I cannot see how that would be covered.

Additionally copyright infringement can be a criminal matter in my country and the Swedish prosecutors have certainly not signed these agreements.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#847

Post by enlyth »

mkr-hn wrote: post #529

A sizable, possibly plurality cohort of fully adult tech people is young enough to not know about United States v. Microsoft Corp. This would explain a lot of comments I see on this topic. If you don't know Microsoft's history, a lot of what more informed people are worried about seems overblown. Copilot was Microsoft's first test of people's trust after the GitHub acquisition. It's going very, very, very poorly. The…

Or some of us do, and just have our own opinions. I literally don't care if someone steals my code, and I think the current state of digital copyright is nonsense that does not benefit society in any way.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#848

Post by nix0n »

kmeisthax wrote: post #568

If Copilot itself is infringing then so is GPT-3, DALL-E 2, NovelAI, and Stable Diffusion. There's no legal argument that would solely target one application of this technology, and you can't build generative AI using current ML tools without relying on a very large corpus of public data. All AI is built on free-riding[0]. While there is no US case law that explicitly says "training AI is fair use", the Second Circui…

> If Copilot itself is infringing then so is GPT-3, DALL-E 2, NovelAI, and Stable Diffusion.

I genuinely think that all of them are. But that's not why I'm against them.

We've seen the effects that text and image generators have on the bottom segment of content generation (SEO pages). As the technology matures, it'll displace more and more, in both arts and engineering.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#849

Post by nix0n »

Plasmoid wrote: post #188
planetsprite wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any law where the penalty is a fine only exists for the poor. Any regulation where the penalty is in the millions only exists for small businesses.

I guess that's true. If you consider laws to be strictly transactional then you can totally do the crime if you're willing to do the time. I'm just not convinced by the idea that any penalty less than death isn't a penalty.

Any penalty less than the profit, isn't an effective penalty, and won't act as a deterrent.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (USA) has a history of giving million-dollar fines for crimes that produced billions in profit and/or took billions away from victims. And the lack of deterrence has been reflected in the actions of the US financial industry.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#850

Post by justinclift »

jeltz wrote: post #846
dkyc wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From GitHub’s Terms of Service [0]: > Except to the extent applicable law provides otherwise, this Agreement between you and GitHub and any access to or use of the Website or the Service are governed by the federal laws of the United States of America and the laws of the State of California, without regard to conflict of law provisions. You and GitHub agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the cou…

I have code of mine which has been uploaded to GitHub without my permission (other than it being licensed under GPL or MIT, no contributor agreement). I cannot see how that would be covered. Additionally copyright infringement can be a criminal matter in my country and the Swedish prosecutors have certainly not signed these agreements.

The way GitHub is acting here, it seems to be a case of "if no-one takes us to court and sticks through to the end, then we can do whatever the hell we want". aka "Most people complaining are just making noise".

CoPilot doesn't seem to be a terrible implementation, instead it seems to be relying on it operating in a grey area. So they're going for broke, to try and get wide enough adoption that it becomes a fait accompli.

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