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A comment on GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright. Parent comment

Re:GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright by rlpb on Monday July 05, 2021 @04:18PM (#27741473)
> Github (and by extension Microsoft) is gambling on the fact that their license agreement granting them a license to the code in exchange for access to the platform supersedes the individual copyright notices attached to each repo.

The person who has the account on Github and uploads code to them rarely owns the copyright on all of the code, and therefore doesn't have the right to delegate to Github any further licensing permission.

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Re:GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright by 542458 on Monday July 05, 2021 @08:04PM (#27742998)
Legally I believe that’s the person who uploaded the code’s infringement rather than GitHub’s, so long as GitHub deals with takedown requests in a timely manner as per the DMCA.

Furthermore, as described in the article, the legal precedent has been that you don’t actually need copyright to something to train a model on it. You may think that’s silly or inconsistent, but that’s how the legal precedent is.

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Re:GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright by rlpb on Monday July 05, 2021 @08:15PM (#27743068)
> that’s the person who uploaded the code’s infringement rather than GitHub’s

That's not how it works. Anyone and everyone who distributes it is infringing and carries risk of enforcement action. That could also be someone further downstream.

> Furthermore, as described in the article, the legal precedent has been that you don’t actually need copyright to something to train a model on it.

I'm not commenting on this aspect.

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Re:GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright by 542458 on Monday July 05, 2021 @08:26PM (#27743124)
That is absolutely how it works.

https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca

“The DMCA “safe harbors” protect service providers from monetary liability based on the allegedly infringing activities of third parties.”

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Re:GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright by rlpb on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @05:36AM (#27746020)
That does nothing to derisk those further downstream of infringing content.
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