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First, I did not come up with the term "code laundering." I cannot claim credit for that; I saw it first on HN on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27729209

First, I did not come up with the term "code laundering." I cannot claim credit for that; I saw it first on HN on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27729209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27729209 somewhere. Second, you are correct that Copilot's maintainers claim that it bypasses copyright, but if it does while producing exact copies of code, then copyright is dead, and there are a lot of big companies out there with deep pockets that will ensure that doesn't happen. They may claim that because their algorithm is a black box, that whatever it produces has no copyright, but my licenses will push back directly on that claim by saying that if source code under the license is used as all or part of the inputs to an algorithm, whether all of the source code or partially, then the license terms must be attached to the output. After all, that's what we do with GPL and binary code. The binary code is the output of an algorithm (the compiler) whose input was the source code. I hope by tying it together like that, the terms can close the loophole they are claiming. But of course, I am going to get a lawyer to help me with those licenses.

ipaddr 5y ago
Can you add fines?
- ghoward 5y ago
  I wish. I just want users to know what rights they have. Ultimately, I want my software to serve end users, not companies. If companies add value for users with my software, that's exactly what I want. But stripping licenses away so that users can't know what rights they have with my code is not that.
d110af5ccf 5y ago
> ... if source code under the license is used as all or part of the inputs to an algorithm, whether all of the source code or partially, then the license terms must be attached to the output. You're not getting it. If Copilot isn't currently infringing copyright then adding such a clause won't matter. Such a clause would only hold weight when copyright applies. On the other hand, if copyright does apply, then you don't need such a clause because the activity is already a violation of the vast majority of licenses. (It even violates extremely permissive ones because it effectively strips out the license notice.) The GPL works specifically because copyright applies to the usecase in question. It simply specifies various requirements that you must meet in order to license the code given that copyright applies. In short, you can't just put a clause into a license saying, effectively, "and also, this license confers superpowers which make it so that my copyright applies in additional situations where it otherwise wouldn't!".
- ghoward 5y ago
  Ah, I see. I argue that, even if training a dataset is fair use, distributing the result is copyright infringement. I would want my license to make that part clearer.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    > even if training a dataset is fair use, distributing the result is copyright infringement I would be inclined to agree that the current situation (ie reproducing training examples verbatim) violates copyright. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that a trained model does (or even should) be subject to the copyright of the inputs. Of course I acknowledge that the latter view is controversial and also that such issues are so new that they haven't had a chance to be meaningfully addressed by either the courts or the legislature yet. As an example of a similar situation, see (https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/ https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/) which was trained entirely on copyrighted artwork. Note that there are at least three distinct issues here - training the model, distributing the model itself, and distributing the output of the model. > I would want my license to make that part clearer. But again, GitHub's argument here is that the license is completely irrelevant because it doesn't apply in the first place. Thus they won't care one bit about any clarifications you make one way or the other.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      You said that you're "not so sure that a trained model does (or even should) be subject to the copyright of the inputs." You missed my point. I'm not saying that the model is subject to the copyright of the inputs; I'm saying that the model's outputs are, which is entirely different. We say that the output of a compiler is still subject to the copyright of the inputs, so why not this?
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
        I misspoke. (Err mistyped?) I suspect there will often be a stronger case to be made for the model itself falling under copyright than what it outputs. It's up to the courts and the legislature in the end though, so who knows. Anyway, by providing public access to this thing I infer GitHub to be taking the position that copyright doesn't apply to the output. (And I suspect they are wrong, in particular because of the verbatim code samples people have managed to coax out of it.)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ipaddr 5y ago

Can you add fines?

ghoward 5y ago
I wish. I just want users to know what rights they have. Ultimately, I want my software to serve end users, not companies. If companies add value for users with my software, that's exactly what I want. But stripping licenses away so that users can't know what rights they have with my code is not that.

d110af5ccf 5y ago

> ... if source code under the license is used as all or part of the inputs to an algorithm, whether all of the source code or partially, then the license terms must be attached to the output. You're not getting it. If Copilot isn't currently infringing copyright then adding such a clause won't matter. Such a clause would only hold weight when copyright applies. On the other hand, if copyright does apply, then you don't need such a clause because the activity is already a violation of the vast majority of licenses. (It even violates extremely permissive ones because it effectively strips out the license notice.) The GPL works specifically because copyright applies to the usecase in question. It simply specifies various requirements that you must meet in order to license the code given that copyright applies. In short, you can't just put a clause into a license saying, effectively, "and also, this license confers superpowers which make it so that my copyright applies in additional situations where it otherwise wouldn't!".

ghoward 5y ago
Ah, I see. I argue that, even if training a dataset is fair use, distributing the result is copyright infringement. I would want my license to make that part clearer.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  > even if training a dataset is fair use, distributing the result is copyright infringement I would be inclined to agree that the current situation (ie reproducing training examples verbatim) violates copyright. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that a trained model does (or even should) be subject to the copyright of the inputs. Of course I acknowledge that the latter view is controversial and also that such issues are so new that they haven't had a chance to be meaningfully addressed by either the courts or the legislature yet. As an example of a similar situation, see (https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/ https://www.thiswaifudoesnotexist.net/) which was trained entirely on copyrighted artwork. Note that there are at least three distinct issues here - training the model, distributing the model itself, and distributing the output of the model. > I would want my license to make that part clearer. But again, GitHub's argument here is that the license is completely irrelevant because it doesn't apply in the first place. Thus they won't care one bit about any clarifications you make one way or the other.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    You said that you're "not so sure that a trained model does (or even should) be subject to the copyright of the inputs." You missed my point. I'm not saying that the model is subject to the copyright of the inputs; I'm saying that the model's outputs are, which is entirely different. We say that the output of a compiler is still subject to the copyright of the inputs, so why not this?
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      I misspoke. (Err mistyped?) I suspect there will often be a stronger case to be made for the model itself falling under copyright than what it outputs. It's up to the courts and the legislature in the end though, so who knows. Anyway, by providing public access to this thing I infer GitHub to be taking the position that copyright doesn't apply to the output. (And I suspect they are wrong, in particular because of the verbatim code samples people have managed to coax out of it.)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]