If GitHub Copilot Is a Copyright Problem, Perhaps the Problem Is Copyright

“Am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.”

Well. Stealing removes the original from the owner, so it's a distinctively different act to copying.

You're kind of making the "you wouldn't download a car" argument which personally I always found a bit ridiculous, if I could download a car of course I would. What reasoning is there to pay for something that can be obtained for free and the consequences of you obtaining it for free are the same consequences of you never having it in the first place.

The difference between illegal copying and stealing is that in the first one the original author has no way of knowing they have been affected by it while in the second one the original owner always knows they've been affected.

Of course, the "stealing" only works if you think about the "potential loss". That a pirated copy in the now means a loss of profit in the future (I won't buy the item if I've already enjoyed it). But in realistic terms, this isn't necessarily true. I think it is the case for a lot of people that when they were children they incurred in illegal copying of media but what was the alternative? To ask your parents to buy you everything? Think of, for example, the anime industry in the west; if you think anime became popular in the west because they had some anime shows in cartoon network you couldn't be more wrong. How many of these illegal copying children have become paying adults?

Not only that, but can we really say in all honesty that the world is a better place when people in poor countries that manage to obtain a piece of hardware are incapable of accessing software because they can't pay for it? Now, this might seem like a problem of pricing but any price will always be a barrier for someone that's struggling. And who are the people that benefit the most from illegal copying? Is it rich people in developed countries, or poor people in developing countries?

Knowledge and information has the particularity that it can be copied at an almost negligible cost. We don't charge for air because we need it to breathe and because it is so accessible. We tend to charge "the right price" for water because we need it to live and it's not as accessible as we'd like. So what about information? Knowledge? Information-based entertainment? Are these required for living a fulfilling life? I think yes, are these accessible? As long as you have the hardware, yes.

So what kind of world is the one where things we can obtain for free are restricted through artificial monopolies? Is this not actually a problem? Maybe you'll think that if people can obtain stuff for free then no one will want to make stuff anymore; but I think this is an assertion that actually needs proving, and if it were the case. Wouldn't that be pointing out at an even bigger systemic problem?

I'm not sure why you find it funny that the complaints come from copyleft advocates? The entire point of copyleft is that code is shared only the condition that later modifications are also shared back. Copilot strips the license from the code it generates, so this condition isn't imposed on derivative code, which defeats the entire point of copyleft.

If someone was okay with the shared code being used in a different context and changes not being shared back, they'd have used a permissive license. But they did not.

The reason copyleft people are up in arms about this is because it entirely undoes the social and legal contract of copyleft licenses.