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> Copyright has concluded that reading by robots doesn’t count. Infringement is for humans only; when computers do it, it’s fair use. This is a ridiculous conc
by ablekh 5y ago
> Copyright has concluded that reading by robots doesn’t count. Infringement is for humans only; when computers do it, it’s fair use.
This is a ridiculous conclusion. The ultimate destination of the robot actions' product is its user, i.e. a human. It is a clear corollary of the transitive law. Therefore, all human-focused legal concepts, including infringement, are applicable in such cases.
The absurdness of the conclusion cited above can be easily illustrated, as follows. Suppose that a person owns or rents an advanced robot (say, like Boston Dynamics' Spot, but better). He/she then programs it to break into someone's house and steal something valuable. All goes by the plan, the robot delivers the stolen goods to the rendezvous point and, if rented, gets returned. Now, according to the conclusion's logic, since a robot has done the actual "work", "it's fair use". Nonsense, right?
Just to clarify: I like the concept of GitHub Copilot (even though I have not yet tried this particular product). It offers various benefits, from pedagogical to adopting software engineering best practices to improving engineering productivity. However, I think that IP and legal aspects of this approach and specific product should be carefully studied and resolved in a consistent manner (e.g., prevent the model or system to output exact source code snippets).