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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

#91

Post by EMIRELADERO »

Barrin92 wrote: post #60
IceWreck wrote: post #34

I am not against this lawsuit but I'm against the implications of this because it can lead to disastrous laws. A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? What is the line between copying and machine learning ? Where does overfitting come in ? Today they're filing a lawsuit against copilot. Tomorrow it will be against stable diffusio…

>A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. No it isn't, at least not automatically which is why infringement of licenses exists at all, the fact that you have a brain doesn't change that and never has. If you reproduce someone's code you can be in hot water, and that should be the case for an operator of a machine. It's also why the concept of a clean room implementa…

I think the commenter you replied to was talking about using the functional, non-copyrightable elements of the copyrighted code. Clean-room is not even required by case law. There's precedent that explicitly calls it out as inefficient.

More important, the rule urged by Sony would require that a software engineer, faced with two engineering solutions that each require intermediate copying of protected and unprotected material, often follow the least efficient solution (In cases in which the solution that required the fewest number of intermediate copies was also the most efficient, an engineer would pursue it, presumably, without our urging.) This is precisely the kind of “wasted effort that the proscription against the copyright of ideas and facts . . . [is] designed to prevent.” (Sony v. Connectix)

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#92

Post by whateveracct »

IceWreck wrote: post #34

I am not against this lawsuit but I'm against the implications of this because it can lead to disastrous laws. A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? What is the line between copying and machine learning ? Where does overfitting come in ? Today they're filing a lawsuit against copilot. Tomorrow it will be against stable diffusio…

> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ?

Just because both activities are calling "learning" does not mean they are the same thing. They are fundamentally, physically different activities.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#93

Post by m00x »

elil17 wrote: post #67
sedatk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it Actually, we were forbidden to look at open source code at Microsoft (circa 2009) because it might influence our coding and violate licenses.

That demonstrates that copyright laws are already stifling innovation.

Yeah, that's a good argument to fully disprove this as a loss to society, and instead as a gain.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#94

Post by eurasiantiger »

williamcotton wrote: post #58
Imnimo wrote: post #47

On page 18, they show Copilot produces the following code: >function isEven(n) { > return n % 2 === 0; >} They then say, "Copilot’s Output, like Codex’s, is derived from existing code. Namely, sample code that appears in the online book Mastering JS, written by Valeri Karpov." Surely everyone reading this has written that code verbatim at some point in their lives. How can they assert that this code is derived specif…

There is no way in hell that isEven is covered by copyright. "In computer programs, concerns for efficiency may limit the possible ways to achieve a particular function, making a particular expression necessary to achieving the idea. In this case, the expression is not protected by copyright." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari... Think about how absurd this is. So if Microsoft was the first…

Does that mean any perfectly optimal function is copyright-free?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#95

Post by bawolff »

IceWreck wrote: post #34

I am not against this lawsuit but I'm against the implications of this because it can lead to disastrous laws. A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? What is the line between copying and machine learning ? Where does overfitting come in ? Today they're filing a lawsuit against copilot. Tomorrow it will be against stable diffusio…

> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ?

You can learn from it, but if you start copying snippets or base your code on it to such an extent that its clear your work is based on it, things start to get risky.

For comparison, people have tried to get around copyright of photos by hiring an illustrator to "draw" the photo, which doesn't work legally. This situation seems similar.

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#98

Post by lelandfe »

Imnimo wrote: post #47

On page 18, they show Copilot produces the following code: >function isEven(n) { > return n % 2 === 0; >} They then say, "Copilot’s Output, like Codex’s, is derived from existing code. Namely, sample code that appears in the online book Mastering JS, written by Valeri Karpov." Surely everyone reading this has written that code verbatim at some point in their lives. How can they assert that this code is derived specif…

They determined the other `isEven()` function was cribbed from Eloquent Javascript because of matching comments. I wonder if the complaint just left off telltale comments from that Mastering JS one?

Re: We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

#100

Post by EMIRELADERO »

sedatk wrote: post #56
IceWreck wrote: post #34

I am not against this lawsuit but I'm against the implications of this because it can lead to disastrous laws. A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it. Thats fair use. If a machine does it, is it wrong ? What is the line between copying and machine learning ? Where does overfitting come in ? Today they're filing a lawsuit against copilot. Tomorrow it will be against stable diffusio…

> A programmer can read available but not oss licensed code and learn from it Actually, we were forbidden to look at open source code at Microsoft (circa 2009) because it might influence our coding and violate licenses.

That was out of abundance of caution, not based on any legal precedent.

In fact, the little precedent that exists over learning from copyrightable code is in favor of it.

More important, the rule urged by Sony would require that a software engineer, faced with two engineering solutions that each require intermediate copying of protected and unprotected material, often follow the least efficient solution (In cases in which the solution that required the fewest number of intermediate copies was also the most efficient, an engineer would pursue it, presumably, without our urging.) This is precisely the kind of “wasted effort that the proscription against the copyright of ideas and facts . . . [is] designed to prevent.” (Sony v. Connectix)

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