ghoward

69 ms·

661.
by ghoward 5y ago
https://thetech.com/2011/11/18/swartz-v131-n53 And it was only not prosecuted because he committed suicide. If you're going to reject true facts, then this discussion isn't productive.
662.
by ghoward 5y ago
> No. A contract can involve me agreeing not to do something I would otherwise be permitted to do (eg, an NDA is a contract in which I agree that I won't engage in certain forms of constitutionally protected speech). If I agree to a
663.
by ghoward 5y ago
> Every time you access a file share, you request explicit authorisation to copy any of the files in that share? I think you'd have trouble finding any court who accepted that this was the intended outcome. If you don't own the
664.
by ghoward 5y ago
> Right. I have valid credentials for a system which grant me read access to a bunch of binaries. Are you saying that I need explicit authorisation to copy those? Yeah, you do. > Agreed! I'm not going to be able to cause you to i
665.
by ghoward 5y ago
> If I'm given permission to use a computer, and I then use that access to duplicate binaries that are not subject to copyright law and which the level of access I have been greanted gives me access to, which provision of the CFAA d
666.
by ghoward 5y ago
I would bet that the EULA covers that too by saying that if you copy it and give it to someone else, or allow someone else to copy it from you, that person is also under the EULA. Just checked: the Windows EULA [0] does not allow you to cop
667.
by ghoward 5y ago
I will be breaking contract law. EULA's still hold teeth without copyright because they fall under contract law, not copyright. Edit: I would like to add something about licenses and contract law. While FOSS licenses can also be contra
668.
by ghoward 5y ago
Do we have a choice with some of the software we have to use?
669.
by ghoward 5y ago
It does if you have "agreed" to a EULA that forbids reverse engineering. I don't know if you know this, but there are already EULA's that can reverse engineering.
670.
by ghoward 5y ago
> From too much freedom I presume? Or what did you mean exactly? From things like what Audacity did: adding spyware or other bloat that serves the company rather than the user. Also from being taken advantage of, as right to repair has
671.
by ghoward 5y ago
This. Very much this.
672.
by ghoward 5y ago
The problem with this article is that it assumes that Stallman's intent would lead to the end result that Stallman wants, and that what Stallman wants is good. I believe this is wrong, either in one way or the other. As far as I unders
673.
by ghoward 5y ago
I can't find the link. :( Edit: nevermind; I am stupid.
674.
by ghoward 5y ago
I think you have what I am saying backwards. I am saying that the licenses should apply to the output of Copilot, like they apply to the output of compilers.
675.
by ghoward 5y ago
Oh, I am not using Copilot. But other people not part of GitHub are. And those are still violations.
676.
by ghoward 5y ago
Maybe they mean code that is in public (versus private) repos? And then use the word to make it seem like it's stuff in the public domain?
677.
by ghoward 5y ago
Doesn't matter that it's a technical preview; people are using it now, GitHub has already used it internally. So if it infringes now, there is already code out there being used that does infringe.
678.
by ghoward 5y ago
* They both process source code as input. * They both produce software as output. * They both transform their input. * They both can combine different works to create a derivative work of each work. (Compilers do this with optimizations, es
679.
by ghoward 5y ago
The analogy goes even further if you consider compiler optimizations: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and... .
680.
by ghoward 5y ago
Totally relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#1._Purpose_and_charac... .
681.
by ghoward 5y ago
They only claimed that training the model was fair use. What about its output? I argue that its output is still affected by the copyright of its inputs, the same way the output of a compiler is affected by the copyright of its inputs.
682.
by ghoward 5y ago
This is why I have now moved my code off of GitHub.
683.
by ghoward 5y ago
Keeping it private is one option, but I really want my end users to have the freedom to modify the code for themselves.
684.
by ghoward 5y ago
This is a great argument.
685.
by ghoward 5y ago
I made new licenses [1] [2] that attempt this. The problem with adding a clause against ML training is that that is (supposedly) fair use. What my licenses do is concede that but claim that the output of those algorithms is still under th
686.
by ghoward 5y ago
I think there is an argument to be made that Copilot is producing derivative code, though. It may produce copies verbatim, and that's a violation, but far more often, it produces a mixture of things it was trained on, most of which pro
687.
by ghoward 5y ago
That is a funny idea. Personally, too much work for me, and Copilot probably generates subtly wrong code already.
688.
by ghoward 5y ago
I don't know. Because I don't know is why I pulled all of my code (except for a permissively-licensed project that people actually depend on the GitHub link for) off of GitHub.
689.
by ghoward 5y ago
I agree; my blog post says so. What my licenses are supposed to do is sow even more doubt in companies' minds about models trained on my code.
690.
by ghoward 5y ago
In my blog post, I talk about how training is fair use, but we don't know about distributing the output . These licenses, even if they don't work, are designed to poison the well by putting enough doubt into companies' minds

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