Re:Copilot sells code other people wrote
by throwaheyy on Friday June 24, 2022 @05:09AM
(#31859355)
Applying your logic, is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page?
After all, if showing a search result in the IDE is “publishing” (let alone “selling” (?)) why hasn’t Google been sued out of existence for showing search results (oops, “publishing” copies of original work, billions of times over), as well as selling related advertising?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
> Examples of fair use in United States copyright law include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, and scholarship.
is any search engine infringing on copyright because it contains a snippet of the source page?
In some jurisdictions, it is. And in other jurisdictions, it is only allowed as long as it shows a link to the source page, which Copilot also doesn't do.
Of course there is something proprietary or original about that. Why else would they need such an enormous AI to suggest it. Auto completing simple boilerplate was already solved in a much simpler way.
> Copyright infringement hasn’t taken place until the user activated the autocompletion and actually placed the code within their own and released their code containing the infringing code.
Copyright infringement takes place as soon as some company publishes/sells material without explicit license or permission. So not the moment the users hits accept, but the moment just before that: when the tool shows it to the user.