3 ms·

Code which is publicly viewable but available under a license which doesn't meet the Open Source Definition[1] is commonly called "shared source" rather than "o

Code which is publicly viewable but available under a license which doesn't meet the Open Source Definition[1] is commonly called "shared source" rather than "open source". They aren't really confused about the licensing. Microsoft suggests that no matter what the license is for training code, generated code is not infringing — either because Copilot training is "fair use", because the similarity isn't strong enough, or because the amount copied is de minimis. However, the risk is primarily borne by the users, not by Microsoft. [1] https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd

simiones 4y ago
> Microsoft suggests that no matter what the license is for training code, generated code is not infringing They claim no such thing. They claim that Copilot itself is not infringing any license by being trained on code - that their own use of the code for AI training purposes is fair use and that the Copilot NN is not a derivative work of any code in the training set. But they explicitly warn you that code that Copilot generates may infringe others' copyright, and that you should use "standard IP scanning tools" to ensure you are not infringing copyright by using the code Copilot spit out.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  ...Which are clearly conflicting statements. How can it be fair use to train a dataset whose output is infringing copyright? It's obvious how: it can't be.
  - munchler 4y ago
    That's not clear at all. Training a model on a copyrighted dataset might not be infringing, even if the output of that model is potentially infringing. It's an important question that hasn't yet been resolved, AFAIK. If Copilot is infringing just by training on copyrighted data, then so is Stable Diffusion.
    - thomastjeffery 4y ago
      You - and many others, including Microsoft - are assuming some incredible inability to understand what ML is and does. Microsoft's position basically distills to laundering: At the entrance to the black box, there are assets being appropriated in a way that is difficult to criticize. At the exit, the same assets - trivially manipulated - are presented as if they were invented by the box itself. It doesn't matter what the box is or does. It's clearly deriving its output from its input. An appeal to the complexity of the box as its own moral ground leaves us with nowhere to stand.
      - munchler 4y ago
        You are missing my point. In your analogy, does copyright infringement occur when the box is created, or does it only occur when the box is used? This seems like a very important, but unresolved, legal distinction. If the former, then Microsoft is liable. If the latter, then only users of the box are liable.
        thomastjeffery 4y ago
        It's only being made important in order to obfuscate the process. Imagine I took a hose, and put a sprinkler on one end and left that in my yard; then attached the other end to the spigot of my neighbor's house. My neighbor comes to me to complain, "You're stealing my water!" "Oh, but I've tangled the hose so much that even I can't prove where the water is coming from! Furthermore, I've gotten permission from our other neighbor Dave, and you can plainly see that I'm using his water. Maybe some of yours has been mixed in, but the courts have deemed that 'fair use'. After all, I can be responsible for tracking down where every drop of water comes from!" "You attached the hose right here to my spigot! Water is flowing out of my house into your hose!" "As I stated before, no one - not even I - can prove whose water is flowing through my hose. You can't compel me to untangle my hoses!" --- This situation is obvious. I have left my hose tangled in order to dodge responsibility for taking your water. When someone does this with money, it's called "laundering". The only difference here is that it's an asset (copyrighted source code) and not a currency (dollars) being laundered. It's further complicated by the fact that you can't "take away" source code. But the entire premise of copyright is to pretend that you can: to violate copyright is to use the assets created by someone else, thereby ignoring their arbitrary monopoly. Fair use allows us to accidentally or incidentally use copyrighted works, but that clearly isn't what Microsoft has done. They are just using all the code they can get their hands on, and laundering it through ML.

simiones 4y ago

> Microsoft suggests that no matter what the license is for training code, generated code is not infringing They claim no such thing. They claim that Copilot itself is not infringing any license by being trained on code - that their own use of the code for AI training purposes is fair use and that the Copilot NN is not a derivative work of any code in the training set. But they explicitly warn you that code that Copilot generates may infringe others' copyright, and that you should use "standard IP scanning tools" to ensure you are not infringing copyright by using the code Copilot spit out.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
...Which are clearly conflicting statements. How can it be fair use to train a dataset whose output is infringing copyright? It's obvious how: it can't be.
- munchler 4y ago
  That's not clear at all. Training a model on a copyrighted dataset might not be infringing, even if the output of that model is potentially infringing. It's an important question that hasn't yet been resolved, AFAIK. If Copilot is infringing just by training on copyrighted data, then so is Stable Diffusion.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    You - and many others, including Microsoft - are assuming some incredible inability to understand what ML is and does. Microsoft's position basically distills to laundering: At the entrance to the black box, there are assets being appropriated in a way that is difficult to criticize. At the exit, the same assets - trivially manipulated - are presented as if they were invented by the box itself. It doesn't matter what the box is or does. It's clearly deriving its output from its input. An appeal to the complexity of the box as its own moral ground leaves us with nowhere to stand.
    - munchler 4y ago
      You are missing my point. In your analogy, does copyright infringement occur when the box is created, or does it only occur when the box is used? This seems like a very important, but unresolved, legal distinction. If the former, then Microsoft is liable. If the latter, then only users of the box are liable.
      - thomastjeffery 4y ago
        It's only being made important in order to obfuscate the process. Imagine I took a hose, and put a sprinkler on one end and left that in my yard; then attached the other end to the spigot of my neighbor's house. My neighbor comes to me to complain, "You're stealing my water!" "Oh, but I've tangled the hose so much that even I can't prove where the water is coming from! Furthermore, I've gotten permission from our other neighbor Dave, and you can plainly see that I'm using his water. Maybe some of yours has been mixed in, but the courts have deemed that 'fair use'. After all, I can be responsible for tracking down where every drop of water comes from!" "You attached the hose right here to my spigot! Water is flowing out of my house into your hose!" "As I stated before, no one - not even I - can prove whose water is flowing through my hose. You can't compel me to untangle my hoses!" --- This situation is obvious. I have left my hose tangled in order to dodge responsibility for taking your water. When someone does this with money, it's called "laundering". The only difference here is that it's an asset (copyrighted source code) and not a currency (dollars) being laundered. It's further complicated by the fact that you can't "take away" source code. But the entire premise of copyright is to pretend that you can: to violate copyright is to use the assets created by someone else, thereby ignoring their arbitrary monopoly. Fair use allows us to accidentally or incidentally use copyrighted works, but that clearly isn't what Microsoft has done. They are just using all the code they can get their hands on, and laundering it through ML.