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>Copyright doesn't just benefit huge corporations. For instance, without it, independent artists who rely on copying for distribution (authors, musicians, etc.)

>Copyright doesn't just benefit huge corporations. For instance, without it, independent artists who rely on copying for distribution (authors, musicians, etc.) would find it much more difficult to make money off their work, That doesn't look like it's the point to me. ""[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right , to their respective Writings and Discoveries." " As I read that, copyright is there to 'promote progress', not to maximize gains. No doubt there is a million linear feet of case law that got us where we are. Honestly, I rather like this whole question of copilot. I solidly appreciate the brilliance of github as a honeypot.

caconym_ 5y ago
> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right , to their respective Writings and Discoveries. What better way to promote said Progress than by making sure said Authors and Inventors can make enough money off their work to keep doing it? As written, it's a roundabout way to get at the instrumentality of capital, but if that's not what they had in mind then I'm not sure what they were getting at. Without copyright, a creator's rights to their own work aren't diminished; it's just that everyone else's are expanded to the same level. (I'd love to know if I'm way off base about this. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm sure it's been discussed to death.) > Honestly, I rather like this whole question of copilot. I solidly appreciate the brilliance of github as a honeypot. I think it's really cool, and I'd probably use it myself. As much as my favorite kinds of programming (e.g. writing experimental text editors) might not benefit from it, in my day job I sure would love to spend less time filling in boilerplate and looking up mundane API details. I don't mean to single Github out in my mention of big corporations benefiting from copyright law. Scraping vast quantities of copyrighted data to build new products is a common business model at this point, and--like other new IP-related paradigms enabled by modern information technology--I think it deserves a fresh look, being mindful of just what it is we're trying to accomplish with copyright law. As you say, it's not always obvious, even in written law.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > What better way to promote said Progress There are a lot of better ways. Having more information being public and free, and usable by tools like this sounds like an excellent way of promoting progress.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    Well, this is the current status quo. Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, while non-transformative copying is considered infringement. If you want to strip creators of (default) exclusive rights to their work, that's a different conversation than the one around whether Copilot and similar applications fall under fair use. Both have been touched on in this subthread, but your comment seems to be conflating them in a way that doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, and the concerns that people have about it (that it allows easier copying of code), are actually a benefit. And the fact that it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code, is overruled by the benefit that this stuff provides. > doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it. You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress. When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way.
      - caconym_ 5y ago
        > Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, Does it weaken copyright? Like I mentioned, it seems like it's probably allowed under existing law. > it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code I don't really buy this. The outputs of Copilot seem transformative enough that they won't by themselves meaningfully compete with the applications built from the sources in the training set. It seems to me that people are objecting to it more as "theft" on ethical grounds alone. I don't really have a strong opinion either way on that front, but if I did it would be based on principle and not some theoretical material harm, because I think the latter is marginal at best. > You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress. In fields where creators make money by selling access to copies of their work, what is a better way of promoting progress? People need places to live, and things to eat, and other things, and all of that costs money. If working in these creative fields becomes even less lucrative than it already is, fewer people will be able to do it, and for less time, because they will have to spend more of their time making money in other ways. In tech, many of us are privileged to have a fair amount of spare money and time. Don't forget that not everybody enjoys that privilege, and please try not to attach a negative-valued concept of "profit" to the necessities of survival. > When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way. Again, this is a very tech-centric view. I can't imagine (for instance) the average novelist being particularly happy to have the exclusivity of their rights to their own work curtailed to enable the creation of some tool, using their work as an input, for generating prose. And such objections would be absolutely correct, if anybody was actually talking about doing that. Fortunately, nobody is talking about doing so--not for code with Copilot, not for fiction prose with the new GPT-3 tools that are popping up, and not for any other medium I'm aware of. These applications are covered under existing fair use law, and their existence does not depend on weakening the exclusivity of creators' rights to their work. If you were to tell me that such rights should be curtailed to enable tools like Copilot to exist, I would strongly disagree with you. But--again--such curtailment is not necessary. The only reason I'm talking about it here is that there are people who think copyright should be abolished or strongly weakened. Almost universally, I've found, they're people who don't make money off distributing authorized copies of their work. So, if you ask me, they really have no clue what they're talking about, and shouldn't be running their mouths before seriously listening to (at least) the independent creators who would be impacted by such a change.

caconym_ 5y ago

> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right , to their respective Writings and Discoveries. What better way to promote said Progress than by making sure said Authors and Inventors can make enough money off their work to keep doing it? As written, it's a roundabout way to get at the instrumentality of capital, but if that's not what they had in mind then I'm not sure what they were getting at. Without copyright, a creator's rights to their own work aren't diminished; it's just that everyone else's are expanded to the same level. (I'd love to know if I'm way off base about this. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm sure it's been discussed to death.) > Honestly, I rather like this whole question of copilot. I solidly appreciate the brilliance of github as a honeypot. I think it's really cool, and I'd probably use it myself. As much as my favorite kinds of programming (e.g. writing experimental text editors) might not benefit from it, in my day job I sure would love to spend less time filling in boilerplate and looking up mundane API details. I don't mean to single Github out in my mention of big corporations benefiting from copyright law. Scraping vast quantities of copyrighted data to build new products is a common business model at this point, and--like other new IP-related paradigms enabled by modern information technology--I think it deserves a fresh look, being mindful of just what it is we're trying to accomplish with copyright law. As you say, it's not always obvious, even in written law.

stale2002 5y ago
> What better way to promote said Progress There are a lot of better ways. Having more information being public and free, and usable by tools like this sounds like an excellent way of promoting progress.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  Well, this is the current status quo. Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, while non-transformative copying is considered infringement. If you want to strip creators of (default) exclusive rights to their work, that's a different conversation than the one around whether Copilot and similar applications fall under fair use. Both have been touched on in this subthread, but your comment seems to be conflating them in a way that doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, and the concerns that people have about it (that it allows easier copying of code), are actually a benefit. And the fact that it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code, is overruled by the benefit that this stuff provides. > doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it. You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress. When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      > Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, Does it weaken copyright? Like I mentioned, it seems like it's probably allowed under existing law. > it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code I don't really buy this. The outputs of Copilot seem transformative enough that they won't by themselves meaningfully compete with the applications built from the sources in the training set. It seems to me that people are objecting to it more as "theft" on ethical grounds alone. I don't really have a strong opinion either way on that front, but if I did it would be based on principle and not some theoretical material harm, because I think the latter is marginal at best. > You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress. In fields where creators make money by selling access to copies of their work, what is a better way of promoting progress? People need places to live, and things to eat, and other things, and all of that costs money. If working in these creative fields becomes even less lucrative than it already is, fewer people will be able to do it, and for less time, because they will have to spend more of their time making money in other ways. In tech, many of us are privileged to have a fair amount of spare money and time. Don't forget that not everybody enjoys that privilege, and please try not to attach a negative-valued concept of "profit" to the necessities of survival. > When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way. Again, this is a very tech-centric view. I can't imagine (for instance) the average novelist being particularly happy to have the exclusivity of their rights to their own work curtailed to enable the creation of some tool, using their work as an input, for generating prose. And such objections would be absolutely correct, if anybody was actually talking about doing that. Fortunately, nobody is talking about doing so--not for code with Copilot, not for fiction prose with the new GPT-3 tools that are popping up, and not for any other medium I'm aware of. These applications are covered under existing fair use law, and their existence does not depend on weakening the exclusivity of creators' rights to their work. If you were to tell me that such rights should be curtailed to enable tools like Copilot to exist, I would strongly disagree with you. But--again--such curtailment is not necessary. The only reason I'm talking about it here is that there are people who think copyright should be abolished or strongly weakened. Almost universally, I've found, they're people who don't make money off distributing authorized copies of their work. So, if you ask me, they really have no clue what they're talking about, and shouldn't be running their mouths before seriously listening to (at least) the independent creators who would be impacted by such a change.