The post summarizes what others have said. It does not independently assess or define fair use or the github terms of service. As for "actual lawyer": The lin

The post summarizes what others have said. It does not independently assess or define fair use or the github terms of service. As for "actual lawyer": The linked-in profile of the author includes no work for any law firm or on relevant case law; it has some public-interest and open-source advocacy and his own "firm" consulting with startups, and some legal work for a startup as GC. It's good that he's been interested in this domain, but his work is not obviously validated. It may be wise for him not to attempt a legal assessment, or for readers not to grant him too much deference. With no disrepect intended to the author, I would encourage readers to make their own assessments before accepting Copilot as benign. I appreciate satvikpendem's caution about non-lawyers, but both discussion and the law are probably best served not by deferring entirely to lawyers. The law should make sense, and non-lawyers should be able to use it to reason about the legality of practices, at least to validate legal opinions. Much of what matters in law is the process and posture, especially establishing who has the burden of action and proof. With Github copilot, Microsoft is daring (forcing?) people to invest a lot of money adjudicating novel issues for uncertain damages to recover on intangible benefits like community. If Microsoft/Github want to establish favorable case law, it's best to find weak opponents with few incentives. Even if there were a large company with code copied from Github, they'd have to be willing to anger Microsoft (who could likely fork their business on a whim). The article setting the expectation that there's no problem or harm only helps Microsoft. In most cases, the executive director of any nonprofit, even when tied to the university, is largely responsible for fund-raising, and generally pursues the goals of the funders, or telegraphs opinions likely to raise funds. Better sources would be tenured professors with publication histories on point, or practitioners who have adjudicated some of the case law. Corporate lawyers working in the domain have the expertise, but likely not the incentives. Fair use, per <https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-...>: "limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. [...] Most fair use analysis falls into two categories: (1) commentary and criticism, or (2) parody" Copilot is decidedly not commentary, criticism, or parody. It's extracting code in whole and remixing, just as Google does in extracting text to its search listings. The difference is that there's a benefit to the listed site leading it to permit this use. Copilot offers zero benefit, and may indeed reduce interest in the source code. Also remember fair use is an exception to copyright, a defense. The burden is on the infringer to establish the exception in case law. To date, no one has.