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> The judge disagreed, however, on the grounds that the code suggested by Copilot was not identical enough to the developers' own copyright-protected work, and
by yazzku 2y ago
> The judge disagreed, however, on the grounds that the code suggested by Copilot was not identical enough to the developers' own copyright-protected work, and thus section 1202(b) did not apply.
How did they reach this conclusion? How can you prove that it never copies a code snippet verbatim, versus just showing that it does for one specific code snippet? The latter is a lot easier to show, but I don't know what is it exactly that the prosecution claimed. I guess the size of the copy also matters in copyright violations?
- cdrini 2y agoI think there's a difference between a mathematical proof and legal proof. The mathematical proof would be "show that it never copies a code snippet verbatim", and you of course cannot prove that by example. Legal proof is I think different (not a lawyer). They're more pragmatic. If, observing a lot of cases where it does not verbatim copy, and, if an expert provides a reasonable argument as to why it is unlikely to verbatim copy, that is enough legal proof for a judge to conclude that the output is not identical enough to the developers copyrighted code.