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An interesting question would be over fair use. Generally, "transformative" works are covered under fair use. I can certainly see the argument that DL output is

An interesting question would be over fair use. Generally, "transformative" works are covered under fair use. I can certainly see the argument that DL output is transformative in nature. Not a lawyer take my comments with a grain of salt.

MartijnBraam 4y ago
Is plagiarism legal if I change the variable names?
- Engineering-MD 4y ago
  Just for clarity, note that plagiarism and copyright infringement are distinct. If you rewrite someone’s paragraph with synonyms it’s still plagiarism but not copyright infringement especially if you don’t cite the work in question. Conversely, you could quote several paragraphs of someone else’s work in quotations with citation and it may be copyright infringement but not plagiarism. Or at least that is how I understand it.
ddevault 4y ago
Copilot can certainly produce an output which appears "transformative". It can also produce verbatim copies of licensed works. The output exists along a spectrum from probably transformative to clearly non-transformative, and it offers no tools for the user to establish the provenance of its output. Fair use is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and this would require that each program produced by Copilot is examined to determine the depth of the transformation. It lives by this vagueness and is abused as a tool for laundering the source code, to wash off the license terms for free software under a suitably complex and inscrutable system that establishing this provenance is not realistic, even if the output would fall on the "non-transformative" end of the scale. I can kind of understand the argument that GitHub itself is, perhaps, not liable for this (setting aside the fact that they use Copilot in their own works, and GitHub's own software would have to be examined under this lens), but it is certainly irresponsible of them and disrespectful of the community that it owes its success to, and it seems to me that its users would definitely be at a higher legal risk.
nwellnhof 4y ago
Many jurisdictions don't have a doctrine like fair use.
omegalulw 4y ago
> I can certainly see the argument that DL output is transformative in nature. It's a thin line. Depending on how the model is trained and what size it is, it is not unreasonable to expect that it will have the ability to remember training data.
lithos 4y ago
The US supreme court already believes it's dubious that an AI can create an original work: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.natlawreview.com/article/paradise-lost-art-created-ai-ineligible-copyright-protection%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.natlawreview.com/article/pa... Though has ruled that training AI on copyright materials is fine, as long as the defendants can claim it's a card catalog: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co... So it's going to be interesting to see how this is viewed by the supreme court when it gets there.

MartijnBraam 4y ago

Is plagiarism legal if I change the variable names?

Engineering-MD 4y ago
Just for clarity, note that plagiarism and copyright infringement are distinct. If you rewrite someone’s paragraph with synonyms it’s still plagiarism but not copyright infringement especially if you don’t cite the work in question. Conversely, you could quote several paragraphs of someone else’s work in quotations with citation and it may be copyright infringement but not plagiarism. Or at least that is how I understand it.

ddevault 4y ago

Copilot can certainly produce an output which appears "transformative". It can also produce verbatim copies of licensed works. The output exists along a spectrum from probably transformative to clearly non-transformative, and it offers no tools for the user to establish the provenance of its output. Fair use is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and this would require that each program produced by Copilot is examined to determine the depth of the transformation. It lives by this vagueness and is abused as a tool for laundering the source code, to wash off the license terms for free software under a suitably complex and inscrutable system that establishing this provenance is not realistic, even if the output would fall on the "non-transformative" end of the scale. I can kind of understand the argument that GitHub itself is, perhaps, not liable for this (setting aside the fact that they use Copilot in their own works, and GitHub's own software would have to be examined under this lens), but it is certainly irresponsible of them and disrespectful of the community that it owes its success to, and it seems to me that its users would definitely be at a higher legal risk.

nwellnhof 4y ago

Many jurisdictions don't have a doctrine like fair use.

omegalulw 4y ago

> I can certainly see the argument that DL output is transformative in nature. It's a thin line. Depending on how the model is trained and what size it is, it is not unreasonable to expect that it will have the ability to remember training data.

lithos 4y ago

The US supreme court already believes it's dubious that an AI can create an original work: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.natlawreview.com/article/paradise-lost-art-created-ai-ineligible-copyright-protection%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.natlawreview.com/article/pa... Though has ruled that training AI on copyright materials is fine, as long as the defendants can claim it's a card catalog: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-court-decision-for-data-science-and-machine-learning-44cfc1c1bcaf https://towardsdatascience.com/the-most-important-supreme-co... So it's going to be interesting to see how this is viewed by the supreme court when it gets there.