5 ms·

I think another important analogy is that you couldn't do this same operation with a human. In my eyes a human and an ML algorithm are both "agents". An ML algo

I think another important analogy is that you couldn't do this same operation with a human. In my eyes a human and an ML algorithm are both "agents". An ML algorithm is a computerized actor on a system but they are still able to do something novel based on previous inputs. If we take these two scenarios: 1. A hypothetical employer asks an employee to find a really fast algorithm to find an inverse square root. The employee has a perfect memory and can regurgitate fast inverse square root from Quake 2. 2. A hypothetical employer asks an employee to find a really fast algorithm to find an inverse square root. The employee uses this ML algorithm to generate the code which essentially regurgitates the only previously seen inverse square root function it was trained on. At some point in time in the future id Software sees this is happening at our hypothetical company and sues. In neither situation is the "actor" held accountable since the "actor" was employed by the company which allowed for practices that enabled this infringement to take place. I think an important legal question is: Do we consider a ML algorithm being trained on data the same as a human reading prior art for an innovation?

jeremyjh 5y ago
> I think an important legal question is: Do we consider a ML algorithm being trained on data the same as a human reading prior art for an innovation? It seems pretty obvious that it is the same thing to me. Instead of the human reviewing the prior art themselves the human has written a program to do so, but this can't change the acceptable outputs produced by the human's creative process (that includes the ML in this case).
- gravypod 5y ago
  I agree with this sentiment but I don't know if the courts do. There is so much cruft in the legal system from problems entirely removed from today's moral and ethical standards for disagreements from bygone eras that will be used as case law here.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    If people can write programs that launder IP then IP is over. That is never going to fly in any court.
    - murgindrag 5y ago
      It's more complex. Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. Are you laundering Windows? Clearly not okay. Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? Etc. There's a line somewhere, but it's somewhere, not at either edge, and it's a complex, odd-shaped line we haven't yet defined. I don't know where it is. However, it's not where you're putting it, and there isn't a slippery slope to "IP is over." If you use five lines of my code in a different system, IP hasn't ended.
      - gravypod 5y ago
        > Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. If you copy a single character from a codebase that could could get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it, that could go to court. This is a hypothetical but this is entirely possible. There have been copyright cases fought over single sentences especially in the music industry. > Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter.
        noxer 5y ago
        The whole reply I post here is made from letters that I copied out of a Harry Potter PDF. Clearly that's not how copyright works.
        Sebb767 5y ago
        I think you missed the part where he states: > that could could[sic] get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it Also, the letters in this case are not representative of the creative work itself. If you used the title font to write your post (hypothetically, I know HN does not allow this), you'd be in bad water already.
- dllthomas 5y ago
  One big difference is that the human will (... hopefully) never be considered themselves a derivative work, whereas there seems to be a case to be made that the model is.
user5994461 5y ago
Algorithms are not subject to copyright. Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. The trouble is verbatim copy of original copyrightable code, with an attached license that doesn't allow it. Github is most likely in violation because it's doing just that. However that specific square root square example may or may not be a violation. There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't, a larger code with comments could be.
- gravypod 5y ago
  > Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". > There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't I don't think copyright law agrees with this sentiment in the US. Even the spacing, variable names, and comments are non-functional attributes of this code. And, this also goes further, because the machine code it produces is also data that has copy rights. There's layers and layers of complexity here that is difficult to enumerate with forum posts.
  - user5994461 5y ago
    >>> This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". No there's isn't. An implementation of an algorithm is not copyrightable. It's specifically cited as an exception in European directives. I should say I speak more from a EU perspective. US may vary slightly. Both vary by country/state as well. There is a challenge with determining the threshold for copyrightable original work and it's not the same in every jurisdiction. That we can agree on. (I personally think comments are a big problem because they're always freeform text). In my opinion the tool should consider doing an autoformatting and removing comments, to avoid these issues.
mkr-hn 5y ago
Here's a thread of insights on this from an actual lawyer: https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585 https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585 The gist: >> "There is an observable trend in US law, based on fair use and older notions in US copyright law of the need for creativity, that judges give a looooot of leeway to “machines that read”. Copilot fits pretty squarely in that tradition."
mrh0057 5y ago
It’s more of I created a search engine that is context aware. Then claiming that it generates novel code because it can take snippets from multiple sources. Then have a bunch of people not understand what it is then are trying to claim it does x which would make this a general ai.

jeremyjh 5y ago

> I think an important legal question is: Do we consider a ML algorithm being trained on data the same as a human reading prior art for an innovation? It seems pretty obvious that it is the same thing to me. Instead of the human reviewing the prior art themselves the human has written a program to do so, but this can't change the acceptable outputs produced by the human's creative process (that includes the ML in this case).

gravypod 5y ago
I agree with this sentiment but I don't know if the courts do. There is so much cruft in the legal system from problems entirely removed from today's moral and ethical standards for disagreements from bygone eras that will be used as case law here.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  If people can write programs that launder IP then IP is over. That is never going to fly in any court.
  - murgindrag 5y ago
    It's more complex. Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. Are you laundering Windows? Clearly not okay. Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? Etc. There's a line somewhere, but it's somewhere, not at either edge, and it's a complex, odd-shaped line we haven't yet defined. I don't know where it is. However, it's not where you're putting it, and there isn't a slippery slope to "IP is over." If you use five lines of my code in a different system, IP hasn't ended.
    - gravypod 5y ago
      > Are you laundering 5 lines of code? Probably fair use. The amount of copying does not matter for a copyright claim. If you copy a single character from a codebase that could could get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it, that could go to court. This is a hypothetical but this is entirely possible. There have been copyright cases fought over single sentences especially in the music industry. > Are you trying to launder, or is it unintentional? I'm not a lawyer but in the US, Copyright is a strict liability statute which means intent does not matter.
      - noxer 5y ago
        The whole reply I post here is made from letters that I copied out of a Harry Potter PDF. Clearly that's not how copyright works.
        Sebb767 5y ago
        I think you missed the part where he states: > that could could[sic] get nowhere but there, and lawyers could prove it Also, the letters in this case are not representative of the creative work itself. If you used the title font to write your post (hypothetically, I know HN does not allow this), you'd be in bad water already.
dllthomas 5y ago
One big difference is that the human will (... hopefully) never be considered themselves a derivative work, whereas there seems to be a case to be made that the model is.

user5994461 5y ago

Algorithms are not subject to copyright. Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. The trouble is verbatim copy of original copyrightable code, with an attached license that doesn't allow it. Github is most likely in violation because it's doing just that. However that specific square root square example may or may not be a violation. There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't, a larger code with comments could be.

gravypod 5y ago
> Writing and copying an inverse square root is fine, doesn't matter if it's human, computer or alien. This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". > There's a difficult question of what constitutes original copyrightable work, a trivial well defined algorithm isn't I don't think copyright law agrees with this sentiment in the US. Even the spacing, variable names, and comments are non-functional attributes of this code. And, this also goes further, because the machine code it produces is also data that has copy rights. There's layers and layers of complexity here that is difficult to enumerate with forum posts.
- user5994461 5y ago
  >>> This is very myopic because there's a big difference between "memorizing an algorithm" and "memorizing an implementation of an algorithm". No there's isn't. An implementation of an algorithm is not copyrightable. It's specifically cited as an exception in European directives. I should say I speak more from a EU perspective. US may vary slightly. Both vary by country/state as well. There is a challenge with determining the threshold for copyrightable original work and it's not the same in every jurisdiction. That we can agree on. (I personally think comments are a big problem because they're always freeform text). In my opinion the tool should consider doing an autoformatting and removing comments, to avoid these issues.

mkr-hn 5y ago

Here's a thread of insights on this from an actual lawyer: https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585 https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585 The gist: >> "There is an observable trend in US law, based on fair use and older notions in US copyright law of the need for creativity, that judges give a looooot of leeway to “machines that read”. Copilot fits pretty squarely in that tradition."

mrh0057 5y ago

It’s more of I created a search engine that is context aware. Then claiming that it generates novel code because it can take snippets from multiple sources. Then have a bunch of people not understand what it is then are trying to claim it does x which would make this a general ai.