5 ms·

Why should Copilot engineers, and the company that invests in it, not be rewarded for their incredible product and SaaS offering they spend resources on providi

Why should Copilot engineers, and the company that invests in it, not be rewarded for their incredible product and SaaS offering they spend resources on providing?

lucasyvas 4y ago
- visarga 4y ago
  That's not theft. Was the original code deleted? No. Then it's copying. And not even that, is the model replicating the training set like Google search? No. Then it's some kind of derivative work. And especially for Github it's OK because user agreements allow MS to do it. Is "imagining" the same with "copying"? Does copy-right cover learning-right? Can learning and practicing be restricted by the authors? Can visual styles, algorithms and facts be copyrighted? I say no to all of them.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    I think he is using theft because currently piracy(which is basically copying files) is legally considered theft.
    - larsiusprime 4y ago
      Larceny and copyright infringement are two distinct legal categories for two distinct kinds of crimes. One involves a taking of property and the other involves the violation of a government granted monopoly
  - lucasyvas 4y ago
    Human's aren't even allowed to do this. It has to be done clean room - this is not learning, it's copying and has been proven so. The only implementation that would be allowed is if they had to describe the code via a specification and Codepilot was able to generate it from scratch. It does not do that - it just reorganizes stuff it's already seen, which is a copyleft violation in humans, therefore it should be for a machine created by humans. The code has had its license violated.
    - visarga 4y ago
      > It has to be done clean room That's for patents not for copyrights. All you need to do is make it a little different, generate until satisfied for patent safe code. Another model can also do the patent checking.
      - lucasyvas 4y ago
        I've heard multiple stories from people who can't even look at the Linux source before they do something in their company's kernel because the act of just looking at it compromises them legally. So which is it?
        visarga 4y ago
        Clean room implementation only happens for very special codes, like codecs or efficient matrix multmul that took billions of trials to develop with AI. Not for 2-3 lines of code snippets that do one simple thing and are already covered online in hundreds of places.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        One of the canonical examples of software reverse engineering is Phoenix Technologies producing a compatible BIOS for IBM PC. They did exactly what OP described - had one person look at (public but copyrighted) IBM source and produce an extremely detailed design document, then another team went and wrote a new BIOS from scratch following that document. The issue at hand was copyright, not patents.
  - batmanturkey 4y ago
    It’s not about “learning” at all, copilot spits out copyrighted licensed code verbatim directly copied from the source to your project in violation of specific and multitudinous repositories. They are making rips of other peoples stuff, selling the contents of peoples “books/movies/songs” sans author attribution or album credits etc… to put it in terms you may be familiar with Vinegar and salt on open wounds. Bad
    - abigail95 4y ago
      Whether verbatim copying infringes copyright can only be determined by a court, and only on a case by case basis. Anyone saying "in violation" without doing a fair use test doesn't know how copyright works.
    - seadan83 4y ago
      Is there any nuance for scope? Software I've licensed as GPL, I'm concerned about the working software being re-used and re-licensed for something commercial. For a given method out of tens-of-thousands, it's very not-germaine to the overall software to the point that I don't see it is a really relevant (but that is my opinion). Though, if someone likes the opening sentence of the encylopedia (or some other giant work), and an AI says, "this is a good opening sentence - does that really make for "ripping" off? Isn't the covered work the larger contents of the encylopedia, rather than an arbitrarily well written opening sentence? Isn't the big part of the work the ensemble? I'm starting to wonder about these arguments, and whether we've gone into bad faith and hyperbole territory here. Are algorithms subject to copyright? Is it the case that if a GPL work uses a well known algorithm, that GPL work cannot be used as a reference? (Given that algorithms have very limited forms they can take, using an algorithm as a reference is really just copying it. Even translating pseudo-code to code, it's still the same thing). Can you explain to me how something like using Eulers formula to solve a math problem would not be copyright infringement? A GPL project might use that formula somewhere, but then using that would be a copyright violation? How about HTML source code, does putting a 'copyright' notice on the webpage make it invalid to then use any of the javascript, even if it has nothing special to do with the domain of the website? "selling the contents of peoples “books/movies/songs” Going to this analogy, I don't know if it is really the contents, but more like the first sentence, or even the first few words of that sentence rather than any recognizable subset of that work. Like, if I have an app that does a spreadsheet, I don't care if you take an implementation of quick sort from my code as reference, but I do care if you use the same and main features of the spreadsheet app that I made.
noasaservice 4y ago
Are they following All the licenses they are consuming? Why haven't they uploaded Windows source to Copilot? Just how much code reproduced violates copyright? If, instead of Copilot, Bob was giving me code to copy, and it was a AGPL codebase, am I still subject to the AGPL?
nine_k 4y ago
They built it using some publicly available resources. These resources are available conditionally, subject to licenses (such ad GPL). Which is fine. The problem is that their product sometimes produces verbatim copies of licensed works, without attaching licensing information. This not only goes against the licenses under which the original authors made these works available. It can also put the product's users in danger of anything from bad publicity to a copyright lawsuit. CoPilot is a very interesting research project. It's not yet an acceptably mature product though.

Why should Copilot engineers, and the company that invests in it, not be rewarded for their incredible product and SaaS offering they spend resources on providing?

lucasyvas 4y ago

visarga 4y ago
That's not theft. Was the original code deleted? No. Then it's copying. And not even that, is the model replicating the training set like Google search? No. Then it's some kind of derivative work. And especially for Github it's OK because user agreements allow MS to do it. Is "imagining" the same with "copying"? Does copy-right cover learning-right? Can learning and practicing be restricted by the authors? Can visual styles, algorithms and facts be copyrighted? I say no to all of them.
- jacooper 4y ago
  I think he is using theft because currently piracy(which is basically copying files) is legally considered theft.
  - larsiusprime 4y ago
    Larceny and copyright infringement are two distinct legal categories for two distinct kinds of crimes. One involves a taking of property and the other involves the violation of a government granted monopoly
- lucasyvas 4y ago
  Human's aren't even allowed to do this. It has to be done clean room - this is not learning, it's copying and has been proven so. The only implementation that would be allowed is if they had to describe the code via a specification and Codepilot was able to generate it from scratch. It does not do that - it just reorganizes stuff it's already seen, which is a copyleft violation in humans, therefore it should be for a machine created by humans. The code has had its license violated.
  - visarga 4y ago
    > It has to be done clean room That's for patents not for copyrights. All you need to do is make it a little different, generate until satisfied for patent safe code. Another model can also do the patent checking.
    - lucasyvas 4y ago
      I've heard multiple stories from people who can't even look at the Linux source before they do something in their company's kernel because the act of just looking at it compromises them legally. So which is it?
      - visarga 4y ago
        Clean room implementation only happens for very special codes, like codecs or efficient matrix multmul that took billions of trials to develop with AI. Not for 2-3 lines of code snippets that do one simple thing and are already covered online in hundreds of places.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      One of the canonical examples of software reverse engineering is Phoenix Technologies producing a compatible BIOS for IBM PC. They did exactly what OP described - had one person look at (public but copyrighted) IBM source and produce an extremely detailed design document, then another team went and wrote a new BIOS from scratch following that document. The issue at hand was copyright, not patents.
- batmanturkey 4y ago
  It’s not about “learning” at all, copilot spits out copyrighted licensed code verbatim directly copied from the source to your project in violation of specific and multitudinous repositories. They are making rips of other peoples stuff, selling the contents of peoples “books/movies/songs” sans author attribution or album credits etc… to put it in terms you may be familiar with Vinegar and salt on open wounds. Bad
  - abigail95 4y ago
    Whether verbatim copying infringes copyright can only be determined by a court, and only on a case by case basis. Anyone saying "in violation" without doing a fair use test doesn't know how copyright works.
  - seadan83 4y ago
    Is there any nuance for scope? Software I've licensed as GPL, I'm concerned about the working software being re-used and re-licensed for something commercial. For a given method out of tens-of-thousands, it's very not-germaine to the overall software to the point that I don't see it is a really relevant (but that is my opinion). Though, if someone likes the opening sentence of the encylopedia (or some other giant work), and an AI says, "this is a good opening sentence - does that really make for "ripping" off? Isn't the covered work the larger contents of the encylopedia, rather than an arbitrarily well written opening sentence? Isn't the big part of the work the ensemble? I'm starting to wonder about these arguments, and whether we've gone into bad faith and hyperbole territory here. Are algorithms subject to copyright? Is it the case that if a GPL work uses a well known algorithm, that GPL work cannot be used as a reference? (Given that algorithms have very limited forms they can take, using an algorithm as a reference is really just copying it. Even translating pseudo-code to code, it's still the same thing). Can you explain to me how something like using Eulers formula to solve a math problem would not be copyright infringement? A GPL project might use that formula somewhere, but then using that would be a copyright violation? How about HTML source code, does putting a 'copyright' notice on the webpage make it invalid to then use any of the javascript, even if it has nothing special to do with the domain of the website? "selling the contents of peoples “books/movies/songs” Going to this analogy, I don't know if it is really the contents, but more like the first sentence, or even the first few words of that sentence rather than any recognizable subset of that work. Like, if I have an app that does a spreadsheet, I don't care if you take an implementation of quick sort from my code as reference, but I do care if you use the same and main features of the spreadsheet app that I made.

noasaservice 4y ago

Are they following All the licenses they are consuming? Why haven't they uploaded Windows source to Copilot? Just how much code reproduced violates copyright? If, instead of Copilot, Bob was giving me code to copy, and it was a AGPL codebase, am I still subject to the AGPL?

nine_k 4y ago

They built it using some publicly available resources. These resources are available conditionally, subject to licenses (such ad GPL). Which is fine. The problem is that their product sometimes produces verbatim copies of licensed works, without attaching licensing information. This not only goes against the licenses under which the original authors made these works available. It can also put the product's users in danger of anything from bad publicity to a copyright lawsuit. CoPilot is a very interesting research project. It's not yet an acceptably mature product though.