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We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot

• thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
  How original is the generated code? Can the generated code be traced back to the code used for training and the original copyrights and licenses for that code? If so, what attribution(s) and license(s) should apply to the generated code?
  • dmitrygr 4y ago
    They demonstrate generated code being identical to some training code.
    • Swizec 4y ago
      How many ways are there to write many of the basic algorithms we all use though? Can I copyright "({ item }) => <li>{item.label}</li>"? Because I sure have seen that exact code written, from scratch, in many many places. I guess my question boils down to "What is the smallest copyrightable unit of code?". Because I'm certain suing a novelist for copyright infringement on a character that says "Hi, how are you?" would be considered absurd.
      • googlryas 4y ago
        No specific sources to provide, but a lot of analyses were written about this question regarding the Google v Oracle java API lawsuit.
      • spiralpolitik 4y ago
        Apple Books slaps an attribution notice on the end if you copy 4 or more words from a book. The Verve got sued by The Rolling Stones for a 4 second sample on 'Bittersweet Symphony'. Post 'Blurred Lines' you can now be sued for copying "the feel" of a song. Really what it comes down to is do you have enough resources to convince a judge or jury that X is a copy of Y? Doesn't really matter the size of X.
    • m00x 4y ago
      Just like developers have never copy-pasted code from stack overflow or Github :):):)
    • avian 4y ago
      There were well known examples of copilot reproducing exact code snippets well before this lawsuit (e.g. the Quake's fast inverse square root function). Microsoft dealt with them by simply adding the offending function names to a blocklist. In other words, if your open source project doesn't have such immediately recognizable code and didn't cause a shitstorm on Twitter, chances are copilot is still happily spewing out your exact code, sans the copyright and license info.
• RamblingCTO 4y ago
  lol @ "open-source soft­ware piracy" If I'm being honest I'm a bit annoyed at this. What's the problem and what's the point of this?
  • bpodgursky 4y ago
    Lawyers want $$$$.
    • RamblingCTO 4y ago
      Yeah I guess so. This website reads like bullshit bingo from some weird twitter dude trying to sell you his newest product: "AI needs to be fair & eth­i­cal for every­one. If it’s not, then it can never achieve its vaunted aims of ele­vat­ing human­ity. It will just become another way for the priv­i­leged few to profit from the work of the many." Blah blah. Can we get back to the hacking on stuff mentality?
      • gcmrtc 4y ago
        Looks like that lawyer guy is not new on hacking stuff: https://matthewbutterick.com/ https://matthewbutterick.com/ Not exactly the curriculum of a twitter weirdo.
        • RamblingCTO 4y ago
          Hah, funny. I've used Pollen before and think I've had contact with him a few years ago! The blah blah about AI elevating the world is still bs imho. I still disagree with his views (https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/this-copilot-is-stupid-and-wants-to-kill-me.html https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/this-copilot-is-stupid-an...) and this law suit. I wasn't actually talking about him specifically btw when saying "this sounds like a crypto bro from twitter". The overly enthusiastic AI talk reminded me of that, that's what I wanted to say.
  • finneganscat 4y ago
• buzzy_hacker 4y ago
  Copilot has always seemed like a blatant GPL violation to me.
  • m00x 4y ago
    Care to explain in legal terms why this stance is qualified?
    • buzzy_hacker 4y ago
      You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date. b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to “keep intact all notices”. c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it. —— I don’t see how one could argue that training on GPL code is not “based on” GPL code.
      • m00x 4y ago
        So if a developer reads GPL code, learns, then writes new code later on, it infringes on that license?
        • buzzy_hacker 4y ago
          A developer is a person. Copilot is software based on the GPL code. Just because you use the word “learn” does not make what a human does and software does the same thing.
  • puffoflogic 4y ago
• matthewwolfe 4y ago
  I will never understand why people push code to public repos and then complain when someone or something uses that code. Code that you want to keep private or make money off of should be private. Only publish stuff to the public that you want other people to see and learn from. All the complaints about attribution… who cares.
  • YoshiRulz 4y ago
    > All the complaints about attribution… who cares. I may not care if some guy I've never met uses my niche library without attribution. (I do care, really.) But Microsoft certainly cares if you use their code without attribution, so why shouldn't I take the same belligerent, copyright-enforcing attitude towards them? That's the main reason why people are angry, because MS has "rules for thee but not for me" by virtue of being big enough to have ~~good~~effective lawyers and lobbyists.
    • matthewwolfe 4y ago
      Copilot is trained on public repos. Id imagine if Microsoft doesn’t want you to use their code, that code would be in a private repo. There’s nothing stopping me from using code in a public repo, regardless of the license.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• bilsbie 4y ago
  Laws need to change to match technology. Did you know before airplanes were invented common law said you owned the air above your land all the way to the heavens.
  • m00x 4y ago
    Can you explain what damages you incur from Copilot?
    • jacooper 4y ago
      People not following your license ? And not making their derived works under the same license like I require?
      • m00x 4y ago
        IANAL, but I don't think those count as damages. Learning off code isn't the same as using the code as-is.
• iworshipfaangs2 4y ago
  It's also a class action, > behalf of a pro­posed class of pos­si­bly mil­lions of GitHub users... The appendix includes the 11 licenses that the plaintiffs say GitHub Copilot violates: https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/pdf/1-1-github_complaint_appendix_a.pdf https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/pdf/1-1-github_complaint...
• naillo 4y ago
  I'm kinda sceptical that this goes anywhere given that basically they say that whatever copilot outputs is your responsibility to vet that it doesn't break any copyright (obviously that goes against the promise of it and the PR but that's the small print that gets them out of trouble).
  • heavyset_go 4y ago
    Saying "it's your responsibility to not breach licenses or violate copyright" doesn't absolve your service from breaching licenses and violating copyright itself.
    • mdaEyebot 4y ago
      "It is the customer's responsibility to ensure that they only drink the water molecules which come out of their tap, and not the lead ones."
    • golemotron 4y ago
      Yet we all use web browsers that copy copyrighted text from buffer to buffer all the time. This doesn't even include all of the copying that ISPs perform. It might be fair to say that the read performed in training has the same character since no human is involved. The real copyright violation would be using a derived work.
      • ginsider_oaks 4y ago
        the actual copying isn't a problem, it's distribution. if i buy access to a PDF i'm not going to get in trouble for duplicating the file unless i send it to someone else. when someone uploads their copyrighted text to a web page they are distributing it to whoever visits that page. the browser is just the medium.
        • golemotron 4y ago
          Is that the legal standard in copyright cases?
• finneganscat 4y ago
• CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  As a non-lawyer, I am very suspicious of the claim that "Plaintiffs and the Class have suffered monetary damages as a result of Defendants’ conduct." Flagrant disregard for copyright? Sure, maybe. The output of the model is subject to copyright? Who knows! But the copyright holders being damaged in some what? Seems doubtful. The best argument I could think of would be "GitHub would have had to pay us for this, and they didn't pay us, so we lost money," but that'd presumably work out to pennies per person.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    The parallels to music sampling are somewhat humorous. Where is fair use vs misappropriation? To be discovered!
    • schappim 4y ago
      Soon we'll have to use Mechanical Turk[0] to identify existing opensource code similar to what Girl Talk did with "Feed the Animals"[1]. Unrelated, how is it that Mechanical Turk was never truely integrated w/ AWS? [0] https://www.mturk.com/ https://www.mturk.com/ [1] https://waxy.org/2008/09/girl_turk/ https://waxy.org/2008/09/girl_turk/
  • citilife 4y ago
    Say I produce a licensed library. Someone can pay me $5/year per license. I keep the code private and compile the code before sending it to customers. If you have co-pilot trained on my code base (which was private), that then reproduces near replica's of my code then they sell it for $5/year... Well, I'm eligible for damages.
    • yawnxyz 4y ago
      I don't think this is possible for co-pilot to do? (If it was, please tell me how, since that would save me $5/year across multiple libraries..!)
    • cheriot 4y ago
      > that then reproduces near replica's of my code Copying a few lines is not the same as copying the whole thing. Sharing quotes from a book is not copyright infringement.
• bpodgursky 4y ago
• abouttyme 4y ago
  I suspect this will be the first of many lawsuits over training data sets. Just because it is obscured by artificial neural networks doesn't mean it's an original work that is not subject to copyright restrictions.
  • ketralnis 4y ago
    Yeah yeah my code produces the complete works of Micky Mouse but it's it's okay because _algorithms_!
    • m00x 4y ago
      Copyright is different than patent law and license law.
    • judge2020 4y ago
      I don't know why we're treating it as anything less than a human brain. A human can replicate a painting from memory or a picture of mickey mouse and that would likely be copyright infringement, but they could also take a drawing of Mickey Mouse sitting on the beach and given him a bloody knife & some sunglasses and it'd likely be fair use of the original art. The AI can copy things if it wants, but it can also modify things to the point of being fair use, and it can even create new works with so little of any particular work that it's effectively creativity on the same level of humans when they draw something that popped into their heads.
• jeffhwang 4y ago
  Wow, this is interesting iteration in the ongoing divide between "East Coast code" vs. "West Coast code" as defined by Larry Lessig. For background, see https://lwn.net/Articles/588055/ https://lwn.net/Articles/588055/
• brookst 4y ago
  I wonder if the plaintiffs' code would stand up to scrutiny of whether any of it was copied, even unintentionally, from other code they saw in their years of learning to program? I know that I have more-or-less transcribed from Stack Overflow/etc, and I have a strong suspicion that I have probably produced code identical to snippets I've seen in the past.
  • zach_garwood 4y ago
    But have you done so on an industrial scale?
    • brookst 4y ago
      I'm just one person! Give me a team of 1000 and I'll get right on that.
• 0cf8612b2e1e 4y ago
  Is there any amount of public data/code/whatever I can make an offline backup of today in the event this gets pulled?
  • kyleee 4y ago
    That’s what I am wondering, as a contingency plan so at least a replica service can be created if copilot shuts down.
• bugfix-66 4y ago
  Ask HN: I want to modify the BSD 2-Clause Open Source License to explicitly prohibit the use of the licensed software in training systems like Microsoft's Copilot (and use during inference). How should the third clause be worded? The No-AI 3-Clause Open Source Software License Copyright (C) <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER> All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. https://bugfix-66.com/f0bb8770d4b89844d51588f57089ae5233bf67e8c0ace80303bfd66059a507c4 https://bugfix-66.com/f0bb8770d4b89844d51588f57089ae5233bf67...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • m00x 4y ago
    Get a lawyer since this is nonsense.
    • bugfix-66 4y ago
      It's literally the standard BSD 2-Clause License, word for word, with an additional third clause: 3. Use in source or binary forms for the construction or operation of predictive software generation systems is prohibited. Hardly nonsense, but obviously you aren't equipped to judge. More about the BSD licenses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses
• ISL 4y ago
  Can anyone with Copilot access give a short summary of its response to the prompts: function force=Gmmr2Array(mass1, mass2) and function [force, torque]=pointMatrixGravity(array1,array2) ? I'd love to know if some of my GPL v3 code [1, 2] has landed in the training set [1] https://github.com/4kbt/NewtonianEotWashToolkit/blob/master/matlab-src/Gmmr2Array.m https://github.com/4kbt/NewtonianEotWashToolkit/blob/master/... [2] https://github.com/4kbt/NewtonianEotWashToolkit/blob/master/matlab-src/pointMatrixGravity.m https://github.com/4kbt/NewtonianEotWashToolkit/blob/master/...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • jmcphers 4y ago
    First prompt: var G = 6.67e-11; var force = G * mass1 * mass2 / distance * distance; return force; Second prompt: % pointMatrixGravity - Calculates the gravitational force and torque on a % point mass due to a matrix of point masses. % % [force, torque]=pointMatrixGravity(array1,array2) % % Inputs: % array1 - 3xN array of point masses % array2 - 3xN array of point masses % Outputs: % force - 3x1 array of gravitational force % torque - 3x1 array of gravitational torque % % Author: David J. R. MacKay, % email:
    • ridiculous_fish 4y ago
      FYI if you use the "Open GitHub Copilot" command in VSCode you will get up to 10 different outputs for the same prompt. Intereting that my results were different than yours!
  • ridiculous_fish 4y ago
    For Gmmr2Array: https://gist.github.com/ridiculousfish/9a25f5f778d98ecd81099c273d229b88 https://gist.github.com/ridiculousfish/9a25f5f778d98ecd81099... For pointMatrixGravity: https://gist.github.com/ridiculousfish/af05137a4090e92de3a97a1cb01d9f2d https://gist.github.com/ridiculousfish/af05137a4090e92de3a97...
  • 4y ago
• an1sotropy 4y ago
  Seems important to point out that the announcement on this page (https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/) is a followup to https://githubcopilotinvestigation.com/ https://githubcopilotinvestigation.com/ previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33240341 (with 1219 comments)
• IceWreck 4y ago
  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 diffusion or (dall-e, gpt-3 whatever) And then eventually against Wine/Proton and emulators (are APIs copyrightable)
  • amelius 4y ago
    > If a machine does it, is it wrong ? What is the line between copying and machine learning ? What is the difference between a neighbor watching you leave your home to visit the local grocery store and mass surveillance? Where do you draw the line? It is pretty simple, actually.
  • whateveracct 4y ago
    > 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.
  • andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    GitHub Copilot has been proven to use code without license attribution. This doesn't need to be as controversial as it is today. If you're using code and know that it will be output in some form, just stick a license attribution in the autocomplete. In fact, did you know this is what Apple Books does by default? Say, for example, you copy and paste a code sample from The C Programming Language. 2nd Edition. What comes out? The code you copy and pasted, plus attribution.
  • TimTheTinker 4y ago
    At least in legal terms, the difference between humans and machines couldn't be more clear.
  • arpowers 4y ago
• adlpz 4y ago
  It feels weird saying this but, for once, I hope the big evil corporation gets to keep selling their big bad product. I find the pattern matching and repetitive code generation really helpful. And the library autocomplete on steroids, too. Meh. Tricky subject.
  • dmix 4y ago
    TabNine has absolutely improved my life as a programmer. There's something really rewarding about having a robot read your mind for entire blocks of code. It's not just functions either, one of the most common things that it helps me with daily is simple stuff like this: Typing const x = { a: 'one', b: 'two', ... } And later I'll be typing y = [ a['one'], b[' <-- it auto-completes the rest here ] It's really amazing the amount of busy-work typing in programming that a smart pattern matching algo could help with.
    • bogwog 4y ago
      I don't think this is a good example of the value of these things. You can just as easily do that same thing with advanced text editor features. Sublime for example supports multi-cursor editing. Just hold alt+shift+arrow keys to add a cursor, then type in the brackets you want. Ctrl+D can be used to select the next occurrence of the current selection with multiple cursors, built-in commands from the command pallete can do anything to your current selection (e.g. convert case), etc. All of that efficiency without having to pay a monthly subscription, wasting electricity on some AI model, and worrying about the legal/moral implications.
      • dmix 4y ago
        I’ve used Vim for over a decade I know what it can do. This is automated and happens immediately without you even thinking about it. You only ever pull out the complicated Vim editing when you have a particular hard task, I’m talking about the small stuff many times a day.
      • ChrisLTD 4y ago
• hu3 4y ago
  A a GitHub user, is there a way to support GitHub against this lawsuit? Obviously not financially as Microsoft has basically YES amounts of money.
  • michaelmrose 4y ago
    If you had legal expertise and a strong opinion on the matter I suppose you could write a persuasive brief for the consideration of the court. If you have a strong opinion but aren't a legal eagle you could write to your legislators in support of legislation explicitly supporting this use case or organize the support of people more capable in that arena. If you are opinionated but lazy, no judgement here as I sit here watching TV, you could add a notation at the top of your repos explicitly supporting the usage of your code in such tools as fair use. Notably if your code is derivative of other works you have no power to grant permission for such use for code you don't own so best include some weasel words to that effect. Say. I SUPPORT AND EXPLICITLY GRANT PERMISSION FOR THE USAGE OF THE BELOW CODE TO TRAIN ML SYSTEMS TO PRODUCE USEFUL HIGH QUALITY AUTOCOMPLETE FOR THE BETTERMENT AND UTILITY OF MY FELLOW PROGRAMMERS TO THE EXTENT ALLOWABLE BY LICENSE AND LAW. NOTHING ABOUT THIS GRANT SHALL BE CONSTRUED TO GRANT PERMISSION TO ANY CODE I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO NOR ENCOURAGE ANY INFRINGING USE OF SAID CODE. Years from now when such cases are being heard and appealed ad nauseam a large portion of repos bearing such notices may persuade a judge that such use is a desired and normal use. You could even make a GPLesque modification if you were so included where you said. SO LONG AS THE RESULTING TOOLING AND DATA IS MADE AVAILABLE TO ALL Note not only am I not your lawyer, I am not a lawyer of any sort so if you think you'll end up in court best buy the time of an actual lawyer instead of a smart ass from the internet.
• m00x 4y ago
  The only people who gain out of class lawsuits are the lawyers. This person (a lawyer) saw an opportunity to make money and jumped on it like a hungry tiger on fresh meat.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • alsodumb 4y ago
    This. I've seen so many class action lass suits where at the end of the day the highest gain per Capita always ends up going to the lawyers. Fuck this guy and everyone trying to make money from this.
  • tasuki 4y ago
    I have quite a bit of respect for Matthew Butterick. I don't think he's just a lawyer looking to earn a quick buck. He cares about software and wants to make the world a better place. > But nei­ther Matthew Butterick nor any­one at the Joseph Saveri Law Firm is your lawyer This is curious. None of them are my lawyers, but surely at least some of them are someone's lawyers? Isn't it wrong to put such a blanket disclaimer on a website which might well be read by their clients?
  • alpaca128 4y ago
    So he gets to make money with his profession while defending OSS licenses? I don't see the big problem.
• Imnimo 4y ago
  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 specifically from Mastering JS, or that Karpov has any copyright to that code?
  • williamcotton 4y ago
    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-Comparison_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari... Think about how absurd this is. So if Microsoft was the first company to write and publish an isEven function then no one else can legally use it?
    • eurasiantiger 4y ago
      Does that mean any perfectly optimal function is copyright-free?
      • bawolff 4y ago
        Any function devoid of "creativity" is. No choices equal no creativity. As a note the same applies to logos. Very simple logos that are only some lines and shapes, do not have copyright (in usa)
        • squokko 4y ago
          Logos can still have trademark without having copyright as creativity is not a requirement of trademarks.
• warbler73 4y ago
  It seems obvious that AI models are derivative works of the works they are trained on but it also seems obvious that it is totally legally untested whether they are derivative works in the formal legal sense of copyright law. So it should be a good case assuming we have wise and enlightened judges who understand all nuances and can guide us into the future.
• awestroke 4y ago
  If this leads anywhere I'll be pissed. I love CoPilot.
  • an1sotropy 4y ago
    copilot is great, and ignorance is bliss, isn't it The situation that this lawsuit is trying to save you from is this: (1) copilot blurps out some code X that you use, and then redistribute in some form (monetized or not); (2) it turns out company C owns copyright on something Y that copilot was trained on, and then (3) C makes a strong case that X is part of Y, and that your use of X does not fall under "fair use", i.e. you infringed on the licensing terms that C set for Y. You are now in legal trouble, and copilot put you there, because it never warned that you X is part of Y, and that Y comes with such and such licensing terms. Whether we like copilot or not, we should be grateful that this case is seeking to clarify some things are currently legally untested. Microsoft's assertions may muddy the waters, but that doesn't make law.
    • awestroke 4y ago
      It's pretty obvious when it does emit copyrightable code, and you mostly have to really try to make that happen. Have you even used copilot yourself?
  • yamtaddle 4y ago
    I expect I'd love it but I've been holding off until I find out whether MS lets devs on their core products use it. If not, it's a pretty clear sign they consider it radioactive.
• herpderperator 4y ago
  The title of the submitted PDF document: "Microsoft Word - 2022-11-02 Copilot Complaint (near final)"[0] I've noticed this a lot and it's quite funny seeing what the actual filename of the document was. Does this just get included as metadata by default when you export to PDF? [0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/pdf/1-0-github_complaint.pdf https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/pdf/1-0-github_complaint...
  • bombcar 4y ago
    In word you can go to document properties or whatever and set the Title and some other fields to control what gets into the PDF.
  • senkora 4y ago
    It does, yes. It’s very annoying and I have occasionally stripped it off of PDFs I’ve made, using exiftool.
  • mirekrusin 4y ago
    They should use github instead of sending "(final, 2nd revision, really final, amended)" emails.
    • D13Fd 4y ago
      If only you could, with Word docs. Sadly you can't in any meaningful way.
  • tasuki 4y ago
    The typography on that document is not great. Perhaps they should read Matthew Butterick's book?
• fancyfredbot 4y ago
  If a software developer learns how to code better by reading GPL software and then later uses the skills they developed to build closed source for profit software should they be sued?
  • Phrodo_00 4y ago
    Depends on how closely they reuse the code. Writing it verbatim or nearly? Yes.
  • jacooper 4y ago
    A human doesn't perfectly reproduce the same code he learned from.
    • throwaway675309 4y ago
      A person with eidetic memory absolutely could do so.
  • buzzy_hacker 4y ago
    Copilot is not a person, it is a piece of software.
  • thomastjeffery 4y ago
    If a software developer writes a program to remember a million lines of GPL code, then uses that dataset to "generate" some of that code, then they are essentially violating that license with extra steps. The extra steps aren't enough to exhonorate them. It's just a convoluted copy operation. Is just like how a lossy encoding of a song is still - with respect to copyright - a copy of that song. The data is totally different, and some of the original is missing. It's still a derivative work. So is a remix. So is a reperformance.
• protomyth 4y ago
  I really feel that Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith[0] is going to have a big effect on this type of thing. They are basically relying on their AI magic to make it transformative. I'm starting to think the era of learning from material other people own without a license / permission is going to end quickly. 0) https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/andy-warhol-foundation-for-the-visual-arts-inc-v-goldsmith/ https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/andy-warhol-foun...
• cothrowaway88 4y ago
  Made a throwaway since I guess this stance is controversial. I could not care less about how copilot was made and what kind of code it outputs. It's useful and was inevitable. I'm 1000% on team open source and have had to refer to things like tldrlegal.com many times to make sure I get all my software licensing puzzle pieces right. Totally get the argument for why this litigation exists in the present. Just saying in general my friends I hope you have an absolutely great day. Someone will be wrong on the internet tomorrow, no doubt about it. Worry about something productive instead. This one has the feel of being nothing more than tilting at windmills in the long run.
• eurasiantiger 4y ago
  Maybe we just need to prompt it to include the proper licenses and attributions. /s
  • tmtvl 4y ago
    Eh, I don't mind Copilot being trained on my code as long as it and all projects made using it are licensed under the AGPL.
• foooobaba 4y ago
  If github or google indexes source code using a neural net to help you find it, given a query, is that also illegal? If you think of copilot as something that helps you find code you’re looking for, is it all that different, and if so, why? In this case, wouldn’t the users of copilot be the ones responsible for any copyrighted code they may have accessed using copilot?
  • lbotos 4y ago
    The crux of the issue: Is the code that is being generated being used in a way that it's license allows? That's it. I'm confident that this problem would go away if copilot said: //below output code is MIT licensed (source: github/repo/blah) And yes, the "users" are responsible, but it's possible that copilot could be implicated in a case depending on how it's access is licensed. Stable diffusion has this same problem btw, but in visual arts "fair use" is even murkier. For code, if you could use the code and respect the license, why wouldn't you? Copilot takes away that opportunity and replaces it with "trust us".
    • foooobaba 4y ago
      This makes sense, it produces chunks not the whole source where a search engine would also give you the license.
  • leni536 4y ago
    Both services already accept DMCA notices to take content down.
    • foooobaba 4y ago
      True, that’s another good point.
• arpowers 4y ago
  The proper way to think about these LLM is similar to plagiarism. Seems to me the underlying data should be opt-in from creators and licenses should be developed that take AI into consideratiin.
• Yahivin 4y ago
  Copilot does include the licenses... Start off a comment with // MIT license Then watch parts of various software licenses come out including authors' names and copyrights!
• machiste77 4y ago
  bruh, come on! you're gonna ruin it for the rest of us
• bergenty 4y ago
• Entinel 4y ago
  I don't have a comment on this personally but I want to throw this out there because every time I see people criticizing Copilot or Dall-E someone always says "BUT ITS FAIR USE! Those people don't seem to grasp that "Fair Use" is a defense. The burden is not on me to prove what you are doing is not fair use; the burden is on you to prove what you are doing is fair use
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• xchip 4y ago
  LOL we look like taxi drivers fighting Uber. If Kasparov uses chess programs to be better at chess maybe we can use copilot to be better developers? Also, anyone, either a person or a machine, is welcome to learn from the code I wrote, actually that is how I learnt how to code, so why would I stop others from doing the same?.
  • jacooper 4y ago
    No human perfectly reproduces the learning material they used. If that was true, one might as well just higher engineers from Twitter and make a new platform from the code they remember!
    • blackbrokkoli 4y ago
      Well, we humans do it occasionally. You probably remember a few specific code snippets in your lang of choice because they kept annoying you/you love them/you wrote them a lot. So if I would put you in the exactly right situation, you would indeed reproduce code verbatim. So does Copilot. I am not trying to insinuate that Copilot works like a human, but it is literally the same situation.
  • elefantastisch 4y ago
    Judging by the majority opinion in this thread, it seems pretty clear GitHub could have asked and gotten enough people to opt-in to have no problem training their model. They probably would have been thrilled to do it and proud of being included in the training data. But the preference of the majority does not override the conditions placed by people who prefer not to participate.
• clusterhacks 4y ago
  Did Microsoft use the source code of Windows (in whole or in part) as training input to Copilot?
  • az226 4y ago
    Microsoft didn't do the training. Open AI did. They only public code.
• renewiltord 4y ago
  It doesn't make sense. If I make a piece of software that curls a random gist and then puts it into your editor am I infringing or are you infringing when you run it or are you infringing when you use that file and distribute it somewhere?
  • lbotos 4y ago
    > If I make a piece of software that curls a random gist and then puts it into your editor am I infringing Depends on the license. If it's MIT and you serve the license, no, you are not infringing at all. A trimmed version of MIT for the relevant bits: Permission is hereby granted [...[ to any person obtaining a copy of this software [..] to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, [...] subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > are you infringing when you run it Depends on the license > are you infringing when you use that file and distribute it somewhere Depends on the license ---- When copilot gives you code without the license, you can't even know!
    • renewiltord 4y ago
      Well, `curl` will download a gist without checking its license. So curl is infringing?
      • lbotos 4y ago
        The law will consider "intent". By your logic, web browsers are infringing. Can you use curl to infringe on copyright? Yes. Is every time you use curl copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with curl? Yes. Can you use copilot to infringe? Yes. Is every time you use copilot copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with copilot? *No*
        • lbotos 4y ago
          my response above about intent is wrong, but the rest still holds imo.
• EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  I think it's a great time to explain why this won't hit AI art such as Stable Diffusion, even if GitHub loses this case. The crux of the lawsuit's argument is that the AI unlawfully outputs copyrighted material. This is evident in many tests with many people here and on Twitter even getting verbatim comments out of it. AI art, in the other hand, is not capable of outputting the images from its training set, as it's not a collage-maker, but an artificial brain with a paintbrush and virtual hand.
  • az226 4y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/better-than-jpeg-researcher-discovers-that-stable-diffusion-can-compress-images/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/bette... Want to say that again?
  • PuddleCheese 4y ago
    These models can actually output images that can be extremely close to the material present in training models: - https://i.imgur.com/VikPFDT.png https://i.imgur.com/VikPFDT.png I also don't know if I would anthropomorphize ML to that degree. It's a poor metaphor and isn't really analogous to a human brain, especially considering our current understanding, or lack thereof, of the brain, and even the limited insight we have into how some of these models work from the people who work on them.
  • jrochkind1 4y ago
    Eh... I don't know. It sounds to me like you are saying because the code example outputs exact lines, it's a copyright violation; but the image AI's necessarily don't output exact copies of even portions of pre-existing images, that's not how they work. But I don't think copyright on visual images actually works like that, that it needs to be an exact copy to infringe. If I draw my own pictures of Mickey Mouse and Goofy having a tea party, it's still a copyright infringement if it is substantially similar to copyright depictions of mickey mouse and goofy. (subject to fair use defenses; I'm allowed to do what would otherwise have been a copyright infringement if it meets a fair use defense, which is also not cut and dry, but if it's, say, a parody it's likely to be fair use. There is probably a legal argument that Copilot is fair use.... the more money Github makes on it, the harder it is though, but making money off something is not relevant to whether it's a copyright violation in the first place, but is to fair use defense). (yes, it might also be a trademark infringement; but there's a reason Disney is so concerned with copyright on mickey expiring, and it's not that they think there's lots of money to be spent on selling copies of the specific Steamboat Willy movie...) > There is actually no percentage by which you must change an image to avoid copyright infringement. While some say that you have to change 10-30% of a copyrighted work to avoid infringement, that has been proven to be a myth. The standard is whether the artworks are “substantially similar,” or a “substantial part” has been changed, which of course is subjective. https://www.epgdlaw.com/how-can-my-artwork-steer-clear-of-copyright-infringement/ https://www.epgdlaw.com/how-can-my-artwork-steer-clear-of-co... I think Stable Diffusion etc are quite capable of creating art that is "substantially similar" to pre-existing art.
• rafaelturk 4y ago
  Like everything legally related: This is not about open source fairness, protecting innovation, it's all about making money.
• celestialcheese 4y ago
  Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this feels like it's more a law firm and individual looking to profit and make their mark in legal history rather than an aggrieved individual looking for justice. Programmer/Lawyer Plaintiff + upstart SF Based Law Firm + novel technology = a good shot at a case that'll last a long time, and fertile ground to establish yourself as experts in what looks to be a heavily litigated area over the next decade+.
  • sam345 4y ago
    yes, of course that's what it is. plaintiffs if they win will get a few pennies, lawyers will get a lot.
  • glerk 4y ago
    • jacobr1 4y ago
      It is a little different. The first patent troll that blazed the trail gets both more credit (for ingenuity) and blame (for the deleterious impact) in my opinion. I'll give the same internet points to these guys.
    • vesinisa 4y ago
      How come? When people contributed code publicly they attached a license how the code may be used. Is training an AI model on this allowed? I think there's a fair, important and novel legal question to be examined here. Patent trolls usually file lawsuits that are just unmerited, but rely simply on the fact that mounting a defence is more expensive than settling.
    • blackbrokkoli 4y ago
      Yes but this time it is about the is-even() function I have written in 2012 so they are right! /s Snark aside, I do agree with you. For me the most surprising thing is really the amount of people siding with them on HN...
    • theamk 4y ago
• 60secs 4y ago
  This is why we can't have nice dystopias.
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• ggerganov 4y ago
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  • omnimus 4y ago
    Always consider that maybe you don't fully understand what it actually does.
  • pvg 4y ago
    Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • sirsinsalot 4y ago
    That's not really right. Copilot isn't just "displaying" something. Copilot has mined the collective efforts of developers in an effort to produce derivative works, without permission, re-distributing that value without giving anything back. It'd be like suing Adobe because photoshop comes bundled with a your holiday photos, without permission, and uses those to in a "family photos" filter. Large scale mining of value and then selling it without due credit or reward for those you stole that value from is plain theft.
• r3trohack3r 4y ago
  I'm not confident in this stance - sharing it to have a conversation. Hopefully some folks can help me think through this! The value of copyleft licenses, for me, was that we were fighting back against the notion of copyright. That you couldn't sell me a product that I wasn't allowed to modify and share my modifications back with others. The right to modify and redistribute transitively though the software license gave a "virality" to software freedom. If training a NN against a GPL licensed code "launders" away the copyleft license, isn't that a good thing for software freedom? If you can launder away a copyleft license, why couldn't you launder away a proprietary license? If training a NN is fair use, couldn't we bring proprietary software into the commons using this? It seems like the end goal of copyleft was to fight back against copyright, not to have copyleft. Tools like copilot seem to be an exceptionally powerful tool (perhaps more powerful than the GPL) for liberating software. What am I missing?
  • zeven7 4y ago
    The only thing you're missing is that some people lost the plot and think it is all about copy left.
  • jhkl 4y ago
  • flatline 4y ago
    Nobody is laundering away proprietary livenses, because that code is not open source and not in public github repos. And OSS capabilities are now present in copilot, which is neither free nor open. Furthermore these contributions are making their way into proprietary code and the OSS licensing becomes even further watered down. This is the epitome of what copyleft is against!
    • yjk 4y ago
      Indeed, the ability to 'launder away' proprietary licenses when source is available means that companies in the future (that would otherwise provide source under a non-permissive license) will shift in favour of not providing source code at all.
• SighMagi 4y ago
  I did not see that coming.
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• atum47 4y ago
  Forgive my ignorance, but who is going to benefit from this lawsuit? I have a lot of code on GitHub, can I, for instance, expect a check in the mail in case of a win?
  • gpm 4y ago
    (Not a lawyer, so this is really definitely absolutely not legal advice and if you're looking to profit you should speak to a lawyer... for instance the lawyers who just filed the lawsuit) They're asking for two things, injunctive relief (ordering github/openai/microsoft to stop doing this) and damages. I suppose the injunctive relief really benefits anyone who doesn't want AI models to exist, because that's what it's asking for. The damages will go the members of the class certified for damages, with more going to the lead plaintiffs (those actually involved in the suit) and some going to the lawyers. They're asking for the following class definition for damages > All persons or entities domiciled in the United States that, (1) owned an interest in at least one US copyright in any work; (2) offered that work under one of GitHub’s Suggested Licenses; and (3) stored Licensed Materials in any public GitHub repositories at any time during the Class Period.
    • atum47 4y ago
      > if you're looking to profit you should speak to a lawyer No, I'm just teasing... If a neural network learns how to program by reading my code, it will generate a mess with tabs and spaces mixed together.
      • gpm 4y ago
        No worries, I put that disclaimer in because it's illegal for me to give legal advice and because I want to discourage people from thinking random internet comments are good at properly stating the law, not because I'm that worried that someone will actually decide to stake a bunch of money based on analysis in my comments ;)
• barelysapient 4y ago
  MSFT to $0 anyone?
• foooobaba 4y ago
  It seems like we should come to agreement on what the license is intended for, given that when the licenses were created in a time before AI like this existed. If the authors did not intend their code to be used like this, should we not respect it? Also, does it make sense to create new licenses which explicitly state whether using it for AI training is acceptable or not - or are our current licenses good enough?
• SurgeArrest 4y ago
  I hope this case will fail and establish a good precedent for all future AI litigations and may be even prevent new ones. Your code is open source - irregardless of license, one might read it as a text book and then remember or even copy snippets and re-use this somewhere else unrelated to the original application. If you don't like this, don't make your code open source. This was happening and is happening independent of any license all over the world by majority of developers. What Copilot and similar tools did was to make those snippets accessible for extrapolation in new applications. If these folks win - we again throw progress under the bus.
  • Etheryte 4y ago
    > Your code is open source - irregardless of license, one might read it as a text book and then remember or even copy snippets and re-use this somewhere else unrelated to the original application. Yes, but attribution should still be given. Just because you don't copy-paste someone else's creation doesn't mean you're licensed to use it.
    • shagie 4y ago
      Is it the role of the tool (in this case copilot) to include the license information? Or is it the responsibility of the organization using the code to make sure that it wasn't copied from somewhere? What if, instead of a tool, you had a random consultant do some work, and it was found out that he asked a ton of stuff on Stack Overflow and copied the CC-BY-SA 4.0 answers into his work? What if it was then found out that one of those answers was based on copying something from the Linux kernel? Who is responsible for doing the license check on the code before releasing the product?
      • alpaca128 4y ago
        > Or is it the responsibility of the organization using the code to make sure that it wasn't copied from somewhere? Do you know whether the code you got from Copilot has an incompatible license? No, so if you plan to use Copilot for serious projects you need it to include sources/licenses either way. In fact that would be a very helpful feature as it would let you filter licenses.
• deleted 4y ago
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• solomatov 4y ago
  The most important part of this is not whether the lawsuit will be won or lost by one of the parties, but what is the legality of fair use in machine learning, and language models. There's a good chance that it gets to Supreme Court and there will be a defining precedent to be used by future entrepreneurs about what's possible and what's not. P.S. I am not a lawyer.
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  If Microsoft is so confident in the legality and ethics of Copilot, and that it doesn't leak or steal proprietary IP... they should go train it on the MS Word and Windows and Excel source trees. What's that? They don't want to do that? Why not?
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  • blackbrokkoli 4y ago
    Did they make a statement that they did not want to do that? Because if not I would offer the very mundane explanation that the Copilot team probably just couldn't be bothered hitting up the other software teams and jumping through 3,046 internal red tape compliance steps to make their product 0.001% better (I am pretty sure the code base of all of GH dwarfs MS code base quite a lot) I can't believe I am actually defending fucking Microsoft, but just want to say there isn't a conspiracy everwhere...
  • az226 4y ago
    I have no doubt they will -- but the specific models will be used for Microsoft engineers. There will be a Copilot for Enterprise that trains on customers' private code.
• elcomet 4y ago
  This is why we can't have nice things. Copilot is the best thing that happened in developper tools since a long time, it increased a lot my productivity. Please don't ruin it.
  • theamk 4y ago
    Write a whole bunch of code and permit copilot learning on it! Then it would be great even without violating others' copyrights.
    • puffoflogic 4y ago
      How would you "permit copilot learning on it"? Say, what if you could upload that code to a certain website and grant the website owner the necessary license to share your work with others (via copilot)? It sounds like that would work!
• Cort3z 4y ago
  I’m not a lawyer, but here is why I believe a class action lawsuit is correct; “AI” is just fancy speak for “complex math program”. If I make a program that’s simply given an arbitrary input then, thought math operations, outputs Microsoft copyright code, am I in the clear just because it’s “AI”? I think they would sue the heck out of me if I did that, and I believe the opposite should be true as well. I’m sure my own open source code is in that thing. I did not see any attributions, thus they break the fundamentals of open source. In the spirit of Rick Sanchez; It’s just compression with extra steps.
  • rowanG077 4y ago
    The brain is also just a "complex math program". Since math is just the language we use to describe the world. I don't feel this argument has any weight at all.
    • Supermancho 4y ago
      > The brain is also just a "complex math program". This is not a fact.
      • rowanG077 4y ago
        Explain yourself. There is not a understood natural phenomenon which we could not capture in math. If you argue behavior of the brain cannot be modeled using a complex math program you are claiming the brain is qualitative different then any mechanism known to man since the dawn of time. The physics that gives rise to the brain is pretty much known. We can model all the protons, electrons and photons incredibly accurately. It's an extraordinary claim you say the brain doesn't function according to these known mechanisms.
        • bqmjjx0kac 4y ago
          > There is not a understood natural phenomenon which we could not capture in math. If all you have is a hammer... The nature of consciousness is an open question. We don't know whether the brain is equivalent to a Turing machine.
• VoodooJuJu 4y ago
  As celestialcheese says [1], it seems like a manufactured case for the purpose of furthering someone's legal career rather than seeking remittance for any violations made by Copilot. But I like to put on my conspiracy hat from time to time, and right now is one such time, so let's begin... Though the motivations behind this case are uncertain, what is certain is that this case will establish a precedent. As we know, precedents are very important for any further rulings on cases of a similar nature. Could it be the case that Microsoft has a hand in this, in trying to preempt a precedent that favors Copilot in any further litigation against it? Wouldn't put it past a company like Microsoft. Just a wild thought I had. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33457826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33457826
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• karaterobot 4y ago
  Does everybody credit the author when using Stack Overflow code? I have, but don't always. Not that I'm trying to steal, I just don't take the time, especially in personal projects. This isn't exactly the same thing, but it seems to me that three of the biggest differences are: 1. Stack Overflow code is posted for people to use it (fair enough, but they do have a license that requires attribution anyway, so that's not an escape) 2. Scale (true; but is it a fundamental difference?) 3. People are paying attention in this case. Nobody is scanning my old code, or yours, but if they did, would they have a case? I dunno. I'm more sympathetic to visual artists who have their work slurped up to be recapitulated as someone else's work via text to image models. Code, especially if it is posted publicly, doesn't feel like it needs to be guarded. I'm not saying this is correct, just saying that's my reaction, and I wonder why it's wrong.
• spir 4y ago
  The part of GitHub Copilot to which I object is that it's trained on private repos. Where does GitHub get off consuming explicitly private intellectual property for their own purposes?
• Cloudef 4y ago
  Unless the copilot spits out complete programs or libraries that are 1:1 to someone elses who cares? Caring about random small code snippets is dumb.
• deanjones 4y ago
  This will fail very quickly. The licence that project owners publish with their code on Github applies to third parties who wish to use the code, but does not apply to Github. Authors who publish their code on Github grant Github a licence under the Github Terms: https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-terms-of-service https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... Specifically, sections D.4 to D.7 grant Github the right to "to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our database and make backups; show it to you and other users; parse it into a search index or otherwise analyze it on our servers; share it with other users; and perform it, in case Your Content is something like music or video."
  • acdha 4y ago
    I don’t see that being “quickly” - they’d have to get a judge to agree that passing your code off without attribution for other people to use as their own work is a normal service improvement. Given that it’s a separate feature with different billing terms, I’m skeptical that it’s anywhere near the given that you’re portraying it as.
    • deanjones 4y ago
      "Without attribution" is a condition of the licence that applies to third-parties. It is not a condition of the licence that applies to Github.
      • TAForObvReasons 4y ago
        It's worth reading the passage in its entirety and how a court would interpret it: > We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it > 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, except that as part of the right to archive Your Content, GitHub may permit our partners to store and archive Your Content in public repositories in connection with the GitHub Arctic Code Vault and GitHub Archive Program. If Copilot is straight-up reproducing work, and it is a service that users have to pay to use, then it seems like Copilot is "sell[ing] your content" and thus the license does not apply. More generally, a court is likely to look at the plain English summary and judge. Copilot is not an integral part of "the service" as developers understood it before Copilot existed.
• nullc 4y ago
  I think if this is successful it will be very bad for the open world. Large platforms like github will just stick blanket agreements into the TOS which grant them permission (and require you indemnify them for any third party code you submit). By doing so they'll gain a monopoly on comprehensively trained AI, and the open world that doesn't have the lever of a TOS will not at all be able to compete with that. Copilot has seemed to have some outright copying problems, presumably because its a bit over-fit. (perhaps to work at all it must be because its just failing to generalize enough at the current state of development) --- but I'm doubtful that this litigation could distinguish the outright copying from training in a way that doesn't substantially infringe any copyright protected right (e.g. where the AI learns the 'ideas' rather than verbatim reproducing their exact expressions). The same goes for many other initiatives around AI training material-- e.g. people not wanting their own pictures being used to train facial recognition. Litigating won't be able to stop it but it will be able to hand the few largest quasi-monopolisits like facebook, google, and microsoft a near monopoly over new AI tools when they're the only ones that can overcome the defaults set by legislation or litigation. It's particularly bad because the spectacular data requirements and training costs already create big centralization pressures in the control of the technology. We will not be better off if we amplify these pressures further with bad legal precedents.
  • az226 4y ago
    GitHub already has this in TOS -- that is the irony of the lawsuit, it is actually in GitHub's favor this happens. GitHub can in such a case jack up the price 10x as the sole provider.
• pmarreck 4y ago
  This will fail. Copilot is too good, and only suggests snippets or small functions, not entire classes for example.
• albertzeyer 4y ago
  I really don't understand how there can be a problem with how Copilot works. Any human just works in the same way. A human is trained on lots and lots of of copyrighted material. Still, what a human produces in the end is not automatically derived work from all the human has seen in his life before. So, why should an AI be treated different here? I don't understand the argument for this. I actually see quite some danger in this line of thinking, that there are different copyright rules for an AI compared to a human intelligence. Once you allow for such arbitrary distinction, it will get restricted more and more, much more than humans are, and that will just arbitrarily restrict the usefulness of AI, and effectively be a net negative for the whole humanity. I think we must really fight against such undertaking, and better educate people on how Copilot actually works, such that no such misunderstanding arises.
  • trention 4y ago
    >So, why should an AI be treated different here? I don't understand the argument for this. Because the AI is not a human and only humans have rights, including the right to learn.
    • x-complexity 4y ago
      > >So, why should an AI be treated different here? I don't understand the argument for this. > Because the AI is not a human and only humans have rights, including the right to learn. Okay then: Who counts as 'human'? What's the qualifier for being a 'human'? ------ (The following questions all point to the same underlying question.) Are you human if you have only one leg or 8 fingers due to a genetic deformity? What about albinism or sickle cell disease? If someone had robotic implants, are they human? Is it inhuman to have an artificial leg? What about both legs? Same scenario as above, but both arms & legs are replaced. Are they human? Same as above, but now everything below the torso has been replaced. Same question. Same question, but now everything below the neck. If someone were to successfully transplant their brains into a robot body, are they still human? Someone embeds a neural implant into their brain: Still human? Same question, now multiple neural implants. Same question, but now the brain-to-implant ratio is 2:1. Brain mass & neural count hasn't changed since then. Same question, but with the brain-to-implant ratio now 3:1. 4:1. 5:1. 6:1. 8:1. 10:1. 15:1. 20:1. 30:1. 50:1. 100:1. 200:1. 500:1. 1000:1. The neural count now starts to decrease because of regular cell degradation. What's the percentage point before they're considered non-human? 90%? 80%? 70%? 60%? 50%? 40%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? 2%? 1%? 0.5%? 0.2%? 0.1%? 0.01%? 0.001%? ------ Where is the dividing line between 'human' and 'non-human'?
• layer8 4y ago
  Copilot reminds me of the Borg: You will be assimilated. We will add your technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile.
• sensanaty 4y ago
  I personally hope they win, and win big. Anything that ruins Micro$oft's day is a boon to mine.
• topher6345 4y ago
  Is it not in the agency of the developer to hit the save button? It seems like GitHub Copilot can spit out copyrighted works all day but the person running the text editor has to "choose" which Copilot output to actually save/commit/deploy. Does it really matter that much "how" the text in your text editor gets there? You write it yourself or copy/paste it or have Copilot generate it. Ultimately the individual that "approved" it to be saved to the disk is the one violating the copyright, Copilot is just making a "suggestion".
• falcolas 4y ago
  Crackpot Theory: Copilot (and by association many ML tools) is a form of probabilistic encryption. Once encoded, it's virtually impossible to pull the code (plaintext) directly out of the raw ML model (the cyphertext), yet when the proper key is input ('//sparse matrix transpose'), you get the relevant segment of the original function (the plaintext) back. We've even seen this with stable diffusion image generation, where specific watermarks can be re-created (decrypted?) deterministically with the proper input.
  • az226 4y ago
    This is not crackpot -- this is literally how it works. Here's an example that points to this, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/better-than-jpeg-researcher-discovers-that-stable-diffusion-can-compress-images/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/bette... Anybody looking at the source image and the generated result would say they are the same.
• stovenctl 4y ago
  The comparison I would draw is it's a statistics based search engine for code. Sometimes the query is the first half of a small statement that we can fill in with common patterns. Useful, fair. Sometimes the query is a signature like `fn fast_inv_sqrt` that copies someone's code and doesn't attribute it.
• throwaway675309 4y ago
  How much code is necessary to be considered a copyright infringement from an existing code base? For example let's say I'll take a single frame of animation from a cartoon, The frame contains a mountain, house, and a couple characters although those characters are not integral to the actual cartoon maybe they're extras (villagers and not named characters something like Mickey Mouse for example) I draw a picture of a lake with a cabin next to it, then start to draw a frontiersman but I trace one of his arms from a villager of that previous frame of animation... Number one am I in danger of copyright infringement (have I hit some arbitrary threshold), and number two: am I causing monetary losses for the cartoon?
• blackbrokkoli 4y ago
  I am sorry for not bringing any kind of legal perspective here, but: *Jesus Christ*, I hope I live long enough to see copyright die. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm of commanding computers to do stuff for us, right at the beginning of the first AI development which actually impresses me. And we are fucking bickering about how we were cheated out of $0.00034 because our repo from 2015 might have been used for training. I am also deeply disappointed in HackerNews; where is that deep hatred of patent trolls and smug satisfaction whenever something gets cracked or pirated now?
  • an1sotropy 4y ago
    You haven’t actually thought through what kind of world it would be if there was no copyright law, have you? I don’t know what your political leanings are, but I’ve met some libertarians who are blissfully naive about the extent to which their world and worldview is buttressed by laws and the governments that enforce them, and your comment reminds me of that.
    • Filligree 4y ago
      I'm game. What terrible outcome will we see from a lack of copyright law?
      • anikom15 4y ago
        Someone with more money and more resources than you profiting off your work.
        • account42 4y ago
          So same as with copyright then.
        • blackbrokkoli 4y ago
          Fair theoretical point. Please do name one industry, niche or platform where copyright does actually prevent this from happening in any meaningful way today.
• hjroberts 4y ago
  Whether it is legally wrong or not to scan OSS code (I think it is wrong), there has been a time-honored precedent for disallowing automated scanning: robots.txt This is exactly what is needed for source code, and the default (no robots.txt) should be "disallow". The fact that the Web has considered this moral issue should be a strong hint for the AI people not to take a purely legal stance but consider the OSS community that they are so heavily using.
• throwaway675309 4y ago
  Even if this succeeds, you've already lost. 1. The ability to be able to run and train these models is going to eventually be perfectly plausible on a home machine. 2. It's only a matter of time before models, e.g. a popular model scraped from all of the code on GitHub, is a publicly available torrent. 3. People will be able to just run it locally as an integrated plug-in in jet brains or VS code. 4. You'll never know if somebody has lifted their code in violation of a license anymore than you would be able to tell if somebody used code from stack overflow without attribution in any commercial endeavor. The End.
  • kevincox 4y ago
    Just because some people get away with copyright infringement doesn't mean that copyright infringement is now legal. I don't think 1-3 matter at all. The point is that GitHub is selling a tool that can commit copyright infringement. This lawsuit is trying to get them to pay the consequences for the infringement that they have enabled.
• gcau 4y ago
  As much as I love the little guy beating the big evil company, I hope the lawsuit doesn't cause anything to happen to copilot. Maybe some changes, like better protection against emitting 1:1 licensed code or opting out your code from training.
• amelius 4y ago
  Can Copilot reproduce Numerical Recipes in C? (asking because I know the authors were kinda famous for being very litigious).
• rolenthedeep 4y ago
  Consider each repo on github to be a movie. What copilot does is to search for sequences of frames from any movie which line up to create a new coherent movie. Individually, each frame is protected by the copyright of the movie it belongs to. But what happens if you take a million frames from a million different movies and just arrange them in a new way? That's the core question here. Is the new movie a new copyrightable work, or is it plagiarizing a million other works at once? Is it legal to use copyrighted works in this way? The other question is if it is right to use copyrighted works this way. Is this within the spirit of open source software? Or is this just a bad corporation taking advantage of your good will? I'm not sure where I stand on this, it's a complicated problem for sure. Definitely interested to see how this plays out in court.
  • az226 4y ago
    Fair use.
• omegacharlie 4y ago
  Think some of the negativity about Copilot may be the perception that if an individual or small startup attempted training an ML model from public source-code and commercialised a service from it they would be drowning in legal issues from big companies not happy with their code used in such a product. In addition just because code is available publicly on GitHub does not necessarily mean it is permissively licensed to use elsewhere, even with attribution. Copyright holders not happy with their copyrighted works publicly accessible can use the DMCA to issue take-downs that GitHub does comply with but how that interacts with Copilot and any of its training data is a different question. As much as the DMCA is bad law rather funny seeing Microsoft be charged in this lawsuit with the less known provision against 'removal of copyright management information'. Microsoft does have more resources to mount at defence so it will probably end up different compared to a smaller player facing this action.
• still_grokking 4y ago
  I hope MS used a lot of AGPL code to train Copilot… This would be fun. But no matter how this goes, in case training AI with copyrighted inputs is "fair use" that'll end up as the ultimate "copyright laundry machine" like this "joke" project here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220104214929/https://fairuseify.ml/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220104214929/https://fairuseif... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796124 (302 points, 151 comments)
• scoot 4y ago
  The editorialized title isn't correct. The lawsuit is against GitHub for Copilot not against GitHub Copilot, which is not a "legal person". A better shortening if the original title is simple "We’ve filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing GitHub Copi­lot"
• jasonladuke0311 4y ago
  Merits of the case aside, I'm befuddled that a company with a legal team like Microsoft approved this product. Is their assumption that this would bring in more revenue than potentially defending it in court? The math doesn't make sense to me.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  I find this whole subject exhausting. The only reason I’m glad there is a lawsuit is that we can finally put this thing to rest when either party wins.
• reachableceo 4y ago
  Let me (start or join the call) for federal investigation and the filing of criminal complaints in all relevant locales. Grand theft , interstate wire fraud and conspiracy for same. This is a criminal matter as well as civil. Intentional and knowing violation of the law. We must not let our work be taken!
• marmada 4y ago
  All these people whining about copyright need to consider: is the issue Copilot, or is the issue copyright.
• User23 4y ago
  Copilot is clearly a derivative work. So is every other similar model. How is this even up for discussion?
• i_like_apis 4y ago
  I love that this is going to loose.
• kgarten 4y ago
  on a tangent ... beautiful typography, I love Matthew Butterick's work on legible fonts an his guide to practicle typography. all the best with the lawsuit.
• datacruncher01 4y ago
  I think the software is probably ok provided that, the sources are credited (ie, if co-pilot copies code from say SDL, then the relevant code sections need to be correctly attributed, the mandatory license readme copied to the project so all code is following the open source licenses used. That's literally the purpose of open source licenses. If Copilot can't be bothered to do that, then yeah it should be shut down.
• mezbot 4y ago
  This issue seems to have an obvious solution that I fail to see anyone mention: Treat copilot simply as a tool, let it be trained on whatever without any consent requirements. However the outputs should be subject to copyright as with any other code produced by a human. Then on a case by case basis courts can decide if infringement has occurred. The idea of banning copilot or other AI models as a whole just seems like a collective case of sour grapes because innovation and automation is finally threatening some people who only expected these things to affect the working class
• vlovich123 4y ago
  Can someone explain to me Microsoft’s decision here to use GPL code in the training set? It would seem like sticking to non-attribution / non-viral licenses would have kept them in the clear. Was that an insufficient size data set?
  • az226 4y ago
    It only trains on the GPL code, it doesn't reproduce entire code files verbatim. So it's fair use.
    • vlovich123 4y ago
      Except when it does
• jjgon1781 4y ago
  I am surprise in the amount of people that in favor in copilot being train with copyright data.
• HeavyStorm 4y ago
  "Angry people brandish their fists against the incoming revolution" is also a good title.
• poulpy123 4y ago
  >By train­ing their AI sys­tems on pub­lic GitHub repos­i­to­ries (though based on their pub­lic state­ments, pos­si­bly much more) we con­tend that the defen­dants have vio­lated the legal rights of a vast num­ber of cre­ators who posted code or other work under cer­tain open-source licenses on GitHub. I don't know about the US laws in copyright so I can't comment on the legal documents but this website is not complaining that copilot is reproducing copyrighted content but it was trained on copyrighted content. I don't see how you can forbid someone or something to read and learn from something that is public (once again producing is another problem)
• bkuhn 4y ago
  In case folks here were curious, we at the Software Freedom Conservancy have asked the Plaintiffs to endorse the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL enforcement: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/04/class-action-lawsuit-filing-copilot/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/nov/04/class-action-laws... … & of course we again ask Microsoft's GitHub to start respecting FOSS licenses, cooperate with the community, & retract their incorrect claim that their behavior is “fair use”. A few more links to our work on this issue: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/03/github-copilot-copyleft-gpl/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/03/github-copilot-co... https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/feb/23/committee-ai-assisted-software-github-copilot/ https://sfconservancy.org/news/2022/feb/23/committee-ai-assi...
• nuc1e0n 4y ago
  My own view is that it is not legal for humans to produce derivatives of copyrighted works currently. So therefore it is probably already not legal to train an artificial intelligence using copyrighted works to in order to produce derivatives either.
• garfieldnate 4y ago
  If GitHub ends up having to tweak their product to avoid ethical/legal concerns, I actually imagine it could still be pretty cool. Right now Copilot is a black box that spits out code with no attributes; what if they worked on instead making it a glass box, where it always brings up snippets of other projects along with their licensing info so that you can decide how to incorporate the ideas fairly yourself? Or they could still output the same code suggestions, but always include attribution and license data along with it. Making the product more transparent would probably make more people comfortable with using it, anyway.