> 1.
Isn't that akin to destruction of evidence?
Isn't that akin to destruction of evidence?
In spirit? ... Probably?
Unlike most LLMs, Github copilot can trivially solve their copyright problem by just using only code they have the right to reproduce.
They have a giant corpus of code tagged with license, SELECT BY license MIT/Equivalent and you're done, problem solved because those licenses explicitly grant permission for this kind of reuse.
(It's still not very cash money to take open source work for commercial gain without paying the original authors, and there's a humorous question if MIT-copilot would need to come with a multi-gigabyte attribution file, but everyone widely agrees it's legal and permitted.)
The only reason you'd hack a filter on top rather than doing the above is if you'd want to hide the copyright problem. It's an objectively worse solution.
Absolutely not trivial, in fact completely impossible by computer alone. You can't determine if you have the right to reproduce a piece of code just by looking at the code and tags themselves. *Taps the color-of-your-bits sign.*
* I can fork a GPL project on Github and replace the license file with MIT. Okay to reproduce?
* If I license my project as MIT but it includes code I copied inappropriately and don't have the right to reproduce myself, can Github? (No) This one is why indemnity clauses exist on contracted works.
* I create a git repo for work and select the MIT license but I don't actually own the copyright on that code and so that license is worthless.
Is taking away a drunk driver's keys (before they get in the car) destruction of the evidence of their drunk driving?
In the current case - its unclear if any crime took place at all, it seems clear that the primary intent was to prevent future crime not hide evidence of past ones. Most importantly the past version of the app is not destroyed (presumably). Github still has the version of the software without the copyright filter. If relavent and appropriate, the court could order them to produce the original version. It can't be destroying evidence if the evidence was not destroyed.
The people that think Copilot is infringng their copyright would be happy with that I would think? Unless they take a much stricter definition of fair use than current courts do.