5 ms·

I think the main point that the article makes is that for copyright to work you need some notion of a creative work, and so far it's generally accepted that sni

by remus 5y ago

I think the main point that the article makes is that for copyright to work you need some notion of a creative work, and so far it's generally accepted that snippets like i = i + 1 aren't creative enough to be covered by copyright. The interesting point is where you draw the line between what's boilerplate and what's creative, and legally it will presumably come down to showing that copilot crosses that line egregiously enough for someone to think they've got a successful chance at legal action.

j4yav 5y ago
Since that article was written people have shown it will generate quite long coherent sections. It will even generate someone’s private about me page: https://twitter.com/kylpeacock/status/1410749018183933952?s=21 https://twitter.com/kylpeacock/status/1410749018183933952?s=...
- nanna 5y ago
  But that about me page is the very definition of boilerplate text, so really it only gives weight to the argument that it's not producing original work.
  - dmurray 5y ago
    You got downvoted, but I kind of like this argument. There are a million "about me" pages, but Copilot did a good job of picking one for "generic software engineer". If it could just have changed a word or two to a synonym, it would be great.
    - stickfigure 5y ago
      That page was so generic that I could fully believe it was originally written by a GPT bot.
- phire 5y ago
  Bullshit. That not an existing aboutme page. You can go to davidcelis' website and verify that it's completely different. Copilot just picked a random person and linked to their social media accounts. You can search any large quote within that about me on Google and not find a match, it is unique. The only two examples of generating large sections of copyrighted work are the quake floating point hack and the zen of python. Both those examples are commonly known and copied and talked about, to the point that they have wikipedia pages.
b3morales 5y ago
Sure, but GitHub's own promotional pages (pretty much any of the gifs on https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/ as well as other articles, e.g. https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio...) show it producing much more elaborate segments than that. In fact, that's a crucial selling point for the product.
thayne 5y ago
But as I understand it, copilot can generate much longer snippets, even entire functions. I think the big question is, if copilot ends up copying significant portions a GPL work, not just tiny snippets, is the resulting work infringing, and if so, who is liable?
- bostonsre 5y ago
  If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? If it is infringing and someone is liable, what proportion of the infringing cases would be found and what proportion of those found instances be brought to the courts? I have almost no sense of how often code is infringed currently and how often anyone does anything about it. I have a feeling that we live in a world with constant infringement, basically no one cares, and no one does anything about it. And I would assume, the status quo will maintain its current course with this new tool. But again, I'm giving zero factual evidence, it's just a feeling from not seeing our hearing almost any news about open source code infringment.
  - thayne 5y ago
    If you use copilot and it generates a substantial amount of code, you don't know if that might be a replica of code from another project with an incompatible license. If you are law abiding and/or want to respect open aource licenses, then it is on you to figure out what if any license that code would fall under. Which means copilot would only be useful to developers who don't care about FOSS licenses or only use it for snippets that couldn't possibly be considered original enough to be covered by copyright.

by remus 5y ago

j4yav 5y ago

Since that article was written people have shown it will generate quite long coherent sections. It will even generate someone’s private about me page: https://twitter.com/kylpeacock/status/1410749018183933952?s=21 https://twitter.com/kylpeacock/status/1410749018183933952?s=...

nanna 5y ago
But that about me page is the very definition of boilerplate text, so really it only gives weight to the argument that it's not producing original work.
- dmurray 5y ago
  You got downvoted, but I kind of like this argument. There are a million "about me" pages, but Copilot did a good job of picking one for "generic software engineer". If it could just have changed a word or two to a synonym, it would be great.
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    That page was so generic that I could fully believe it was originally written by a GPT bot.
phire 5y ago
Bullshit. That not an existing aboutme page. You can go to davidcelis' website and verify that it's completely different. Copilot just picked a random person and linked to their social media accounts. You can search any large quote within that about me on Google and not find a match, it is unique. The only two examples of generating large sections of copyrighted work are the quake floating point hack and the zen of python. Both those examples are commonly known and copied and talked about, to the point that they have wikipedia pages.

b3morales 5y ago

Sure, but GitHub's own promotional pages (pretty much any of the gifs on https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/ as well as other articles, e.g. https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio...) show it producing much more elaborate segments than that. In fact, that's a crucial selling point for the product.

thayne 5y ago

But as I understand it, copilot can generate much longer snippets, even entire functions. I think the big question is, if copilot ends up copying significant portions a GPL work, not just tiny snippets, is the resulting work infringing, and if so, who is liable?

bostonsre 5y ago
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? If it is infringing and someone is liable, what proportion of the infringing cases would be found and what proportion of those found instances be brought to the courts? I have almost no sense of how often code is infringed currently and how often anyone does anything about it. I have a feeling that we live in a world with constant infringement, basically no one cares, and no one does anything about it. And I would assume, the status quo will maintain its current course with this new tool. But again, I'm giving zero factual evidence, it's just a feeling from not seeing our hearing almost any news about open source code infringment.
- thayne 5y ago
  If you use copilot and it generates a substantial amount of code, you don't know if that might be a replica of code from another project with an incompatible license. If you are law abiding and/or want to respect open aource licenses, then it is on you to figure out what if any license that code would fall under. Which means copilot would only be useful to developers who don't care about FOSS licenses or only use it for snippets that couldn't possibly be considered original enough to be covered by copyright.