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I don’t think copilot is intrinsically a copyright violation, as you seem to be alluding to. Examples like this seem to be more controversial, but I’m not sure

I don’t think copilot is intrinsically a copyright violation, as you seem to be alluding to. Examples like this seem to be more controversial, but I’m not sure there’s a clear copyright violation there either. If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Probably not very many. Who should own the copyright for each of them? Would the outcome be different for any other product feature? If you asked every dev on earth to write a function that checked a JWT claim, how many of them would be more or less exactly the same? Would that be a copyright violation? I hope the courts answer some of these questions one day.

stuartd 4y ago
> If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Thousands at least. Some of which would actually work.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  There’s a finite number of ways to implement a working FizzBuzz (or anything else) in any given language, that aren’t substantially similar, is my point. At least without introducing pointless code for the explicit purpose of making it look different.
dataflow 4y ago
> If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Does it matter? If you examined every copyright lawsuit on earth over code, how many of them would actually be over FizzBuzz?
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  The same rationale applies to any other simple code block, as I elaborated on.
  - dataflow 4y ago
    And my point is you don't have lawsuits over one simple code block.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      This entire thread is about how copilot committed a copyright violation on a simple code block.
      - dataflow 4y ago
        That code block is neither "simple like FizzBuzz" nor is it in a lawsuit. I feel like we're speaking past each other at this point.
        AmericanChopper 4y ago
        What makes it not simple like FizzBuzz? You will not be able to come up with a reason why this one single function is copyrightable, but a FizzBuzz function isn’t. It’s one function in 15 lines of code. Get 1,000,000 developers to implement that function and you’re not going to have anywhere near 1,000,000 substantially different implementations.
        monocasa 4y ago
        Google v. Oracle ended with a six line function not being granted de minimus protection. What you're talking about is arguably common sense, but not based on current case law in the US.
        dataflow 4y ago
        For one thing FizzBuzz is like... 5-6 statements? This function has 13. FizzBuzz has a whopping 1 variable to keep track of. This function has so many I'm not even going to try to count. I'm not going to keep arguing about this, but if you want to believe they're equally simple then you'll just have a hard time convincing other people. That's all I have left to say on this.
reachableceo 4y ago
Copyright is for original whole works. Utility functions don’t fall under that I don’t think. I suppose whoever wants to pay the fees would “own” these things ? https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf
didibus 4y ago
I think the issue people have is that every developer trying to implement FizzBuzz will not have studied all the existing public copyrighted implementations. They will likely be reinventing the solution with maybe never having seen an existing FizzBuzz implementation or having only seen one or two at most, and probably won't be re-implementing it verbatim. But the machine learning model has studied every single one of them. And maybe more preposterous, if its dataset had no FizzBuzz implementation would it even be able to re-invent it? I feel this is the big distinction that probably annoys people. That and the general fact that everyone is worried it'll devalue the worth of an experienced developer as AI will make hard thing easier, require less effort and talent to learn and thus making developers less high demand and probably lower paid.

stuartd 4y ago

> If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Thousands at least. Some of which would actually work.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
There’s a finite number of ways to implement a working FizzBuzz (or anything else) in any given language, that aren’t substantially similar, is my point. At least without introducing pointless code for the explicit purpose of making it look different.

dataflow 4y ago

> If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Does it matter? If you examined every copyright lawsuit on earth over code, how many of them would actually be over FizzBuzz?

AmericanChopper 4y ago
The same rationale applies to any other simple code block, as I elaborated on.
- dataflow 4y ago
  And my point is you don't have lawsuits over one simple code block.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    This entire thread is about how copilot committed a copyright violation on a simple code block.
    - dataflow 4y ago
      That code block is neither "simple like FizzBuzz" nor is it in a lawsuit. I feel like we're speaking past each other at this point.
      - AmericanChopper 4y ago
        What makes it not simple like FizzBuzz? You will not be able to come up with a reason why this one single function is copyrightable, but a FizzBuzz function isn’t. It’s one function in 15 lines of code. Get 1,000,000 developers to implement that function and you’re not going to have anywhere near 1,000,000 substantially different implementations.
        monocasa 4y ago
        Google v. Oracle ended with a six line function not being granted de minimus protection. What you're talking about is arguably common sense, but not based on current case law in the US.
        dataflow 4y ago
        For one thing FizzBuzz is like... 5-6 statements? This function has 13. FizzBuzz has a whopping 1 variable to keep track of. This function has so many I'm not even going to try to count. I'm not going to keep arguing about this, but if you want to believe they're equally simple then you'll just have a hard time convincing other people. That's all I have left to say on this.

reachableceo 4y ago

Copyright is for original whole works. Utility functions don’t fall under that I don’t think. I suppose whoever wants to pay the fees would “own” these things ? https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf

didibus 4y ago

I think the issue people have is that every developer trying to implement FizzBuzz will not have studied all the existing public copyrighted implementations. They will likely be reinventing the solution with maybe never having seen an existing FizzBuzz implementation or having only seen one or two at most, and probably won't be re-implementing it verbatim. But the machine learning model has studied every single one of them. And maybe more preposterous, if its dataset had no FizzBuzz implementation would it even be able to re-invent it? I feel this is the big distinction that probably annoys people. That and the general fact that everyone is worried it'll devalue the worth of an experienced developer as AI will make hard thing easier, require less effort and talent to learn and thus making developers less high demand and probably lower paid.