Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
1–10 of 173 posts
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#2These agree with my conclusions- it's fair use or permitted by license, but that it remains untested (as the GPL does in a larger sense) by law.
I guess in about 5 years we'll see Softbank v. GitHub CoPilot in the supreme court deciding whether ML can make transformative work.
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#3“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.”
I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like this in that area:
"This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content. It also does not grant GitHub the right to otherwise distribute or use Your Content outside of our provision of the Service"
I'm omitting other language, but if you read that area of the TOS, they seem to have purposefully scoped down their license-to-use for hosting, backups, etc.
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#4I find the first argument, that if you're project is in GitHub then they have the right to train in it, weak. Plenty of projects are hosted elsewhere but have been mirrored by random users (e.g. not the copyright holder) to GitHub
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#5These agree with my conclusions- it's fair use or permitted by license, but that it remains untested (as the GPL does in a larger sense) by law. I guess in about 5 years we'll see Softbank v. GitHub CoPilot in the supreme court deciding whether ML can make transformative work.
Often times legal issues are more a question of finding a plaintiff with enough money to sue rather than the letter of the law.
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#6well a lot of people in here don't like these conclusions
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#7These agree with my conclusions- it's fair use or permitted by license, but that it remains untested (as the GPL does in a larger sense) by law. I guess in about 5 years we'll see Softbank v. GitHub CoPilot in the supreme court deciding whether ML can make transformative work.
Google v Oracle took 11 years to reach conclusion.
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#8“If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.” I don't know if it's really that straightforward. The TOS includes snippets like th…
What about open source projects where the uploader and github users are not the only copyright holders? As a user i can't grant github any random license for the code, if I maintain for example Linux or python or any other old project there.
The ONLY available terms are those given by the license, surely?
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#9It would be nice if we moved from a copyright discussion to an ethical one, since it could be years until the law is even tested.
Is it ethical to do this, when some licenses are clearly chosen because of e.g. attribution or sharing improvements? Did Microsoft/GitHub consider the ethical implications, for example a chilling effect on code being open sourced in future (i.e. people choosing not to open source stuff so it doesn't get gobbled up by Copilot et al.)?
Re: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot
#10> If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features. So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.
This doesn't sound right. Alice writes code, and releases it under some restrictive license (GPL, something source-available, etc). Bob uploads it to GitHub, correctly labeled as GPL. Regardless of GitHub's TOS, Bob isn't able to give GitHub any additional rights to the code beyond what Alice gave him.
I think the later discussion about whether this falls under Fair Use is the important question.