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Comment by xfer | Hacker News Reader

> An editor extension allowing search of github would be at least as easy to use to violate licenses

Well, try doing that for music or movies or proprietary leaked codebase.

If you think copilot is uniquely producing things that are not that different from humans then surely no one would have any problem with feeding it massive amounts of corporate programs?

I am not aware what writers are doing but there have been plenty of uproar regarding stable diffusion. I have a feeling that if any tools like this get built for musicians/film-makers, it will look vastly different from the current situation.

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First, the music and to an extent movie industry enforcement of IP are uniquely pathological. But I am not talking about music or movies. I am contending that a simple search extension being much less capable than Copilot and so even more scopeable as aiding copyright violation would not be taken down.

> surely no one would have any problem with feeding it massive amounts of corporate programs?

There is a similar gymnastics done by human engineers today due to the issue of patents. I don't think this is a good trend to uphold.

> I am not aware what writers are doing but there have been plenty of uproar regarding stable diffusion

Yes but mostly in the art community. On HN there were plenty of arguments just the other day how it is not the same for art and programmers have a stronger case. I disagree but regardless, the case is exactly equivalent for GPT-3 and writers but it wasn't an issue generating about a thousand comments on respecting IP and ceasing deployment of LLMs until copilot.

> There is a similar gymnastics done by human engineers today due to the issue of patents. I don't think this is a good trend to uphold.

Are you arguing that copyright laws should be abolished? I have no problem with that as long as it's clearly defined, you can't not respect copyright of open source code but enforce it for proprietary code, just because the value is arguably non-monetary.

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