For one, just because your code is covered by the GPL, it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable. It has to demonstrate creativity. That's why you don't have to worry about writing for (int i = 0; i < idx; i++) {.
This means that the output of any algorithm on copyrighted code is still under the original copyright. I mean, we still apply the copyright of the original to the output of compilers, even though compilers can be transformative with inlining and link-time optimization, to the point that it mixes disparate code in the same way Copilot does.
In fact, I wrote some software licenses [1] that codify the fact that algorithms cannot change copyright.
What makes you so confident that this would not be ruled fair use?
(And for people not familiar - if ruled fair use, it doesn't matter what the license is because fair use is an exception to copyright itself.)
Here's the relevant quote:
> GitHub is arguing that using FOSS code in Copilot is fair use because using data for training a machine learning algorithm has been labelled as fair use. [1]
> However, even though the training is supposedly fair use, that doesn’t mean that the distribution of the output of such algorithms is fair use.
My licenses say, basically, "Sure, training is fair use, but distributing the output is not."
The licenses specifically say that the copyright applies to any output of any algorithm that uses the source code code as all or part of its input.
Now, I have not gotten a lawyer to look at my licenses yet (it's in the works), so don't use them yourself. But because everyone keeps saying that training is fair use, I'm fairly confident that only training is fair use.
Of course, it might not be, but that would take more court cases and more precedent. I wanted to poison the well now [2] to make companies nervous about using a model that was partially trained with code licensed under my licenses.
[1]: https://valohai.com/blog/copyright-laws-and-machine-learning...
[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and...
Licenses basically by definition cannot say what is and isn't fair use...
Yes. However, my licenses only say what people already say. Then the licenses go further and say, "But anything else is not allowed."
Everyone else says training is fair use. My licenses agree. But they make it clear that I don't believe that anything else is fair use.
Yes, these licenses must be tested in court. Except that they poison the well now.
You do not seem to get it. Yes, I understand that if fair use applies, my licenses don't matter. I get that. I promise I do get that.
The purpose of these licenses is to sow doubt that fair use applies to distributing the output of ML models.
Lawyers are usually a cautious lot. If a legal question has not been answered, they usually want to stay away from any possibility of legal risk regarding that question.
The licenses create a question: does fair use apply to the output of ML algorithms? With that question not answered, lawyers and their companies might elect to stay away from ML models trained with my code, and ML companies might stay away from training ML models on my code in the first place.
That is what I mean by "poisoning the well." The poison is doubt about the legality of distributing the output of ML models, and it is meant to put a damper on enthusiasm for code being used to train ML models, especially for my code.
That doesn't usually mean you can use code though, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27726343
Microsoft did not just copy individual lines. They fed whole repositories into their model, ignoring the license (if it exists) even though they knew from the start that information generated by the model will be publicly available. Available usually out of context, but nonetheless - the scope of the input and intent are very clearly "everything" and "redistribution".
Just adding a filter/ML model to the output shouldn't matter. I dare you to build a Copilot clone trained from leaked internal Microsoft code and then trying to argue the output is a bit mixed up.
That is a clear violation imho.
[1] https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
This goes beyond fair use or satirical/comedic effect. They are training their models to output text in the style of the authors being absorbed. The style of is exactly the artistic effect that is being copyrighted.
Buying a book, buying an audio CD, or buying a DVD/Blu-ray is granting the holder permission to read,listen,view that product as a single instance. You can lend them out, but that's all you're really allowed to do with them. The text,audio/video is not owned by you to do with as you please. People obviously do not like that, and argue making copies/backups is their right. Maybe that's acceptable, but we can agree posting them on torrents and sharing in any other manner from a copy made from the thing you have is not.
Saying that, training a model on someone's copyrighted text is not part of the agreement of the usage of said text whether it's a copyrighted magazine, newspaper, or book. If the people doing the training reach out to the copyright holders and get specific permission to use their copyrighted material in such a manner, then go ahead. The fact that people feel like they can do anything without the common courtesy of asking for permission is troubling to me that we've lost something as a society. There's no acknowledgment that someone has created something by their own work so that the creator can do with it as they please. A large portion of people believe that because it was created they deserve/should be able to/etc do what ever they want with someone else's creation. Including getting paid for derivitave works from the original creation.
I see this sentiment a lot in FOSS spaces but I don't really understand why. The role of judicial process _isn't_ to provide a guiding moral philosophy around social organization. Depending on the government in question that's either a role of government functions or isn't something that should be guided at all. The role of law often (and yes, not in all governments, but at least in the US) is to offer a contract between the state and the individual.
I understand the potential for abuse here in using Copilot to regurgitate licensed works without adhering to the terms of the work's license, but I'm not fluent enough in law to know if this is illegal or not. Calling out and specifically applying strict limits this practice is certainly something I'm sympathetic to, and I'm very curious to see what the courts come up with. But swayed by a moral argument I am not.
Moving on, I’ll put this to you: you claim training a ML model against copyrighted text is in violation of the ‘permission’ granted by the rights holder. However, flip this on its head for a moment – that’s basically all human brains do. Clearly, the greatest writers of our time haven’t written their works in a vacuum. Rather, that historical reading and inspiration becomes sufficiently obfuscated that we deem something adequately creative enough to be granted its own copyright.
Fundamentally, how does Copilot differ, other than perhaps being a poor implementation? Is it by not being ‘adequately creative’ enough? Is there some future version you could envision that would be, or is it the principle you’re arguing against?
I'm probably just a curmudgeon, but I don't understand the point of Copilot. So I'm probably not the best to opine about it. However, I am very opinionated about copyright in manner that typical flows against HN group think.
Also, you're taking the machine learning metaphor literally. AI models do not "learn", they're just statistical models, they don't understand anything. There is no comparison to human learning that isn't superficial or metaphorical.
The real question is how Copilot is any different than a compiler, or lossy encoding or compression.
I totally missed the non-wrapped question.
Because I don't give a crap about down-votes/up-votes. I just know from experience my views on copyright do not gel with the majority views on HN. I was just acknowledging that fact. Conversations can be had regardless of votes. My views on Napster/MP3 trading are in the same realm (and somewhat related with copyright issues). I was a co-owner of a small music site when Napster was in its heyday, and we saw direct repurcussions of people not buy music because they got it from mp3 trading. Group think here is all "things for free when I want it, how i want it", yet I still have conversations. I'm not afraid of a measly -4 points because my thoughts are contrary to group think.
At the same time, if something like this gets your goad, how is asking how something is better being better in and of itself?
In some jurisdictions this is in fact their right by law as long as they own the original (the music/film industry of course used this as an excuse to slap additional fees on every sale of any storage medium). Redistribution is different however.
OSS licenses have been litigated and upheld. Can't supply details of my own experience for confidentiality reasons but plenty of plaintiffs have prevailed in suits about violations of OSS license terms. My guess is the numbers are higher than you might think because a lot of the cases end in non-public settlements.
Then there's private repositories. If they included those in the training data set that's even more actionable.
Personally I think this is software piracy at an absolutely unprecedented scale. Machine learning is just information transfer from the training data into weights in a model, a close relative of lossy data compression. Microsoft is now reselling all its GitHub users' code for profit.
This really doesn't give me much comfort though. Making a repo public doesn't imply anything, it could be "All rights reserved".
I'd argue Microsoft too, was/is overconfident about how this would play out. I would have expected a little more caution on selecting the training data.
copilot is known to reproduce entire blocks of text including non functional parts like comments.
As we're seeing, there's VERY little software where the specific algorithms or ideas in the software are what's valuable. The value comes from the ability to sell a service based on the software and operate it at scale. Like you said, how much SaaS is mostly open source stuff packaged up? Android is (sort of) open source, companies pay lots of people a lot of money to contribute to the Linux kernel where they give away the code they developed with that money, etc etc.
> it doesn't mean every single line in isolation is copyrightable
It is if you can prove reproduction apart from your own original work (fair use). Unlike patents copyright doesn’t protect uniqueness. It is only a shield from reproduction, and if reproduction is demonstrable to a court you are likely at risk.