4 ms·

The Twitter thread’s title seems unnecessarily incendiary and clickbaity. I don’t buy that producing/synthesizing code snippets based off public repos is a pro

The Twitter thread’s title seems unnecessarily incendiary and clickbaity. I don’t buy that producing/synthesizing code snippets based off public repos is a problem. There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC. Besides, it’s basically just a (semantic and contextual) search engine inlined within the IDE. Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code.

DJHenk 4y ago
> There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC. Of course there is something proprietary or original about that. Why else would they need such an enormous AI to suggest it. Auto completing simple boilerplate was already solved in a much simpler way. > Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code. Copyright infringement takes place as soon as some company publishes/sells material without explicit license or permission. So not the moment the users hits accept, but the moment just before that: when the tool shows it to the user.
- throwaheyy 4y ago
  Applying your logic, is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page? After all, if showing a search result in the IDE is “publishing” (let alone “selling” (?)) why hasn’t Google been sued out of existence for showing search results (oops, “publishing” copies of original work, billions of times over), as well as selling related advertising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use > Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship.
  - tremon 4y ago
    is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page? In some jurisdictions, it is. And in other jurisdictions, it is only allowed as long as it shows a link to the source page, which Copilot also doesn't do.

DJHenk 4y ago

> There’s nothing proprietary or original about eg. the syntax of a for-loop, or the boilerplate of setting up some JS framework MVC. Of course there is something proprietary or original about that. Why else would they need such an enormous AI to suggest it. Auto completing simple boilerplate was already solved in a much simpler way. > Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code. Copyright infringement takes place as soon as some company publishes/sells material without explicit license or permission. So not the moment the users hits accept, but the moment just before that: when the tool shows it to the user.

throwaheyy 4y ago
Applying your logic, is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page? After all, if showing a search result in the IDE is “publishing” (let alone “selling” (?)) why hasn’t Google been sued out of existence for showing search results (oops, “publishing” copies of original work, billions of times over), as well as selling related advertising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use > Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship.
- tremon 4y ago
  is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page? In some jurisdictions, it is. And in other jurisdictions, it is only allowed as long as it shows a link to the source page, which Copilot also doesn't do.