"jethrodaniel" does not appear to have the copyright to offer that license, but it's hard for Github to determine that in general, so I doubt they would be liable for the error.
> The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
Replicating it without complying with those terms is still infringement.
And from Microsoft no less, once outcast for mass poisoning.
Please insert that meme, "That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works!"
The legal system is permission based, not forgiveness or "I didn't know" based.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
A huge part of 17§512 is the DMCA takedown process mainly in 17§512(c)(3). Does Microsoft even have the ability to truly remove training data from the model? Or do they have to retrain on each DMCA takedown?
> THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
False.
If they committed copyright infringement, even if they genuinely believed they weren't, they are not in the clear. They still owe damages.
Since it’s a tort I don’t think you have to prove they should have know it would return copyrighted code, the fact that it does is enough to have liability.
On youtube, video uploads are a cost center, whereas on github, code is a profit center
But even ignoring that, everybody uploading code to GitHub has given GitHub the right to analyze that code as per the GitHub ToS. This is the same mechanism by which you can't upload code to GitHub with a license that says "nobody is allowed to display this code on the internet" and then sue GitHub.
> According to Downing, the answer depends to a certain extent on where that code is hosted. If it’s on GitHub, there very clearly would not be copyright infringement.
> “If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features,” Downing says. “So with respect to code that’s already on GitHub, I think the answer to the question of copyright infringement is fairly straightforward.”
Downing cautions that copilot output of large chunks of code complete with comments are more questionable to use, but that for the most part it looks above board.
https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-c...
Here's an English lawyer on the same topic...
> The licence is broadly worded, and I'm confident that there is scope for argument, but if it turns out that Github does not require a licence for its activities then, in respect of the code hosted on Github, I suspect it could make a reasonable case that the mandatory licence grant in its terms covers this as against the uploader.
https://decoded.legal/blog/2021/06/github-copilot-initial-th...
I am very surprised there hasn’t been a legal challenge to it.
“I’m sorry your honor I didn’t understand what I was signing” I don’t think has ever been a valid reason in a courtroom, similar to “I’m sorry I didn’t know I was committing a crime” is not a valid defense.
When the terms were written, it's exceedingly unlikely that they intended it or anyone understood it to be blanket permission to allow a trained AI to copy code for others and no user would have interpreted it that way. Microsoft/Github can't necessarily unilaterally increase the intended range without making it clear in the terms.
If it got to a court case, and both sides could afford it, it could be a lengthy one.
(This comment is not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.)
By uploading your code, you give Github an exclusive license to use it to improve their services. Copilot is such a service. Just because it's an AI and it provides others code does not somehow invalidate the license you gave.
Many online services have very wide terms around what they can do with your data, which most people who bother to read them interpret as being what is required for them to handle the service for you without breaking copyright law. In that context, being able to use and analyse your data to improve their services could be another catch-all that lets them do specific performance optimisation on their backend.
One party instead deciding they've got blanket permission to do whatever they like with your work, including selling it to others, may well not hold up in court.
Contracts aren't programs and one party tricking the other rarely works out in court - courts world-wide tend to rule against trickery and deception.
That's assuming that all code on GitHub is uploaded in good faith by the copyright owner, which is not always going to be the case.
Linux, for example, does not require copyright assignment. The original contributor of a change owns the copyright for that code and may have never used Github.
5. Even if it is illegal, is it actually bad? No one can possibly sell code snippets, the transaction costs are many orders of magnitude greater than any reasonable price. In my opinion, at least in this case the benefits massively outweigh the costs and the law should not apply here.
I've not installed or used it for the same reason (don't want to use AGPL or GPLd code by accident, and don't want my closed source code to be used accidentally as well), but the thought of Copilot being "killed" due to litigation/copyright/licensing issues is sad.
For me, It's kind of like when MP3 first appeared: Sharing music in Napster or downloading Mp3s from Geocities was just amazing. The idea of having such things at your fingertips. Even though I understood the issue the authors had with the unpaid distribution of their music... still, the idea of "what could be..." made it amazing.
I guess Microsoft could be a bit forward thinking, and implement the "Spotify" model in code: Pay OpenSource developers (whoever owns the repo, or whoever made a commit?) a small amount whenever their code gets used through Copilot.
I'm super excited by how "Copilot" related services will look like in 10 years. And I really really hope that the technology/idea doesn't get killed by litigation.
By all means allow repos to opt in, although if it’s licensed under something like GPL there’s no way to convert it to non gpl without permission from every contributor. I for one am not interested in Microsoft or anyone else paying me to close my code.
Allowing people to pay $xxx to copy my copyrighted work without my agreement is simple piracy.
Either they international agreement to drop copyright as a concept, or obey the law.
Is it really? From a consequentialist utilitarian perspective?
The alternative would be to completely remove copyright, which would be ok.
A world with copiloted snippets seems like a better one to live in than a world without.
There seems to be. Google 'windows nt source code leak github':
https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+nt+source+code+leak+...
First search results:
Windows NT 4.0:
> https://github.com/lianthony/NT4.0
> https://github.com/ZoloZiak/WinNT4
Windows XP:
My question is, if it isn't a copyright infringement issue to use copilot in its current form right now, why not just claim copilot was used whenever accused of copyright infringement hence forth?
Without speaking to the particulars of copilot, this situation where laws seem toothless because of the ease of plausible deniability is actually fairly common. And in many such cases, the law is not as toothless as it seems, because
1. Getting multiple people to stick to a script under oath is difficult and dangerous.
2. Criminals frequently send each other messages like
A: "lol I just crimed, hope nobody figures it out."
B: "lol just say you used copilot".
A: "lolol yeah fuck the law"
Obviously this only gets the worst criminals, but there seems to be lots and lots of them.
That same Quake example from last year is repeated every single time.
Aside from the fact that GitHub has since added a protection for this, that this example gets repeated time and time again instead of a *list of examples leads me to believe this is (and was not) a common occurrence.
2) TBD
3) Not likely. Worst case a judgement will go against them, they'll effectively pay a fine and then they'll retrain it on a more restricted set of source code.
4) OSS has a pretty tragic history re: enforcement. It wins nearly every skirmish but has no interest in the war so from a big picture standpoint, it loses due to apathy.
I trust MSFT to screw everyone over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
By the mid-1980s Microsoft had gotten out of the Unix business, except for its ownership stake in SCO.[20]
They later filed for bankruptcy in 2007.
SCO was founded in 1979 by Larry Michels and his son Doug Michels.
https://web.archive.org/web/20061105100939/http://www.inform...
They were a partner with Microsoft maintaining a version of Xenix
You can buy 100% of shares and take it private, but that's overkill for what Microsoft wanted.
I'm curious - what are the legal implications of this going forward? I've so many questions.
1. Will Microsoft ever face lawsuits for these license violations?
2. If so, who/how? Class-action?
3. Will copilot be forced to open-source in the future? Under which license? Some open source licenses are incompatible with others, but copilot uses code from probably every OSS license conceived.
4. If Microsoft faces no justice, will we start seeing more OSS license violations? Will Google start using AGPL-licensed code?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287 | Copilot regurgitating Quake code