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Comment by dark-star | Hacker News Reader

> Is it a valid defense against copyright infringement to say “we don’t know where we got it, maybe someone else copied it from you first?”

If you do something, it's ultimately you who has to make sure that it is not against the law. "I didn't know" is never a good defense. If you pay with counterfeit cash, it is you who will be arrested, even if you didn't know it was counterfeit. If you use code from somewhere else (no matter if it's by copy/pasting or by using Copilot), it is you who has to make certain that it doesn't infringe on any copyright.

Just because a tool can (accidentally) make you break the law, doesn't mean the tool is to blame (cf. BitTorrent, Tor, KaliLinux, ...)

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BitTorrent doesn't automatically download a pirated copy of Lion King when you ask it for something to watch...

BitTorrent (and, to a larger degree, EDonkey) did and still do that. Who tells you that what you're downloading is indeed what you think it is. You can click on a magnet link that claims to download a Debian ISO just to find out later that it's something else entirely. To make matters worse, BitTorrent even uploads to potentially hundreds of other clients while you're still downloading, so while downloading something might not be illegal in your jurisdiction, uploading/distributing most certainly is, and you can get into lots of trouble for uploading (parts of a) copyrighted wortk to hundreds or thousands of other users

> You can click on a magnet link that claims to download a Debian ISO just to find out later that it's something else entirely

This is just fear mongering, the same exact thing can happen with a web browser, I click a link to view an image of a cat but... oops, it was actually a Getty copyrighted picture of a dog! Oh nooooo.

On the web that sort of thing is actually common, but bit torrent? I have never downloaded a torrent to find it was something other than what I expected. Never have I seen a movie masquerading as a Debian ISO. That's nothing more than a joke people use to make light of their (deliberate) copyright infringement.

Furthermore, is there even any bit torrent client that will recommend copyrighted content to you, rather than merely download what you tell it to? I've not seen one. Search engines, in my browser, do that sort of recommendation but bit torrent clients do what I tell them to. Including seeding to others, which is optional but recommended for obvious reasons.

> I click a link to view an image of a cat but... oops, it was actually a Getty copyrighted picture of a dog! Oh nooooo

Sorry, what?

Downloading copyrighted content is very, very rarely the problem.

It's the uploading (the sharing!) of copyrighted content where you actually get into trouble.

If you actually care, then simply configure your client to leech. Every client I've ever used or heard of supports this.

But more to the point, getting tricked into seeding a copyrighted movie by a torrent masquerading as a Debian ISO isn't something that actually happens. That's absurd FUD.

Errm, you posted:

> "This is just fear mongering, the same exact thing can happen with a web browser, I click a link to view an image of a cat but... oops, it was actually a Getty copyrighted picture of a dog! Oh nooooo."

No-one cares whether you download an open-sourced photo of a cat or a copyrighted photo of a dog.

Why would anyone claim that?

It's a terrible comparison to torrents.

BitTorrent is certainly not a good example to follow, but I do think that copilot is more wrong.

They should definitely include disclaimers and make seeding opt-in (though I don't know how safe you are legally when you download a Lion King copy labeled Debian.iso). That said, they don't have the information necessary to tell whether what you're doing is legal or not.

Copilot _has_ that information. The model spits out code that it read. They could disallow publishing or commercially using code generated by it while they're sorting it out, but they made the decision not to.

AI is hard, but the model is clearly handing out literal copies of GPL code. Github knows this and they still don't tell you about it when you click install.

It doesn't matter if the information is there or not, since an algorithm cannot commit a copyright violation. There is at least one human involved, and the human is the one who is responsible.

A car has all the information that it's going faster than the speed limit, or that it just ran a red light. But in the end it's the driver who is responsible. It's not the tool (car, Copilot) that commits the illegal act, it's the user using that tool

In the case of Copilot, you don't even have a speedometer.

So your point is that removing the speedometer from your car and then claiming "I didn't know I was driving too fast!" will make it somehow not your responsibility?

It is still your responsibility to know and obey the traffic laws, the same as it is your responsibility to obey the copyright laws....

Yet, plenty of tools of this caliber have been made illegal (in some parts of the world).

Indeed, and people always (rightfully) complain loudly against the outlawing of these tools, and in many cases they have been successful. Yet here it's the opposite for some weird reason.

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