The only way you can stop them using your code so is to not share it with anyone. If they find your code (even via a leak!), they can legally use it, if their fair use claim is correct.
(Nitpick: Fair use isn't an exemption from copyright, it's a defense for violating copyright)
Nitpick: Fair use is both a Constitutional and statutory (the latter codifying the former) limitation on the exclusive rights granted as part of copyright, so it's definitely an exception.
Procedurally, it operates as a defense, but that's not inconsistent with it being an exception.
"Training of ML models with data not licensed to you and then selling the output of the model" isn't on those lists, and consequently is a flagrant copyright violation in - broadly - the entire EU.
If you are a developer in the EU using Copilot, it is really pretty obvious that using Copilot is a commercialized copyright violation, which is e.g. in Germany (but I'm guessing many other states) a criminal offense, not a civil offense. Now, people might say, they're paying Microsoft for this service, and that's not in the EU, so something something can't prosecute. Of course, that doesn't actually work in the real world, and this corner of prosecuting copyright violations has been extremely well explored during the many, many trials of people committing IP violations of music and films over the past few decades.
In addition to that, I'm pretty sure routine copyright violations by an employed developer would be one of the more clear-cut reasons for a termination without notice and compensation for having to replace the affected code.
How is that a contrast? The US has an actual, enumerated list of exceptions (the US term is “limitations on exclusive rights”, of which fair use is, in the US Code order, the first.)
See the section headings in Title 17, Chapter 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/chapter-1
My uneducated brain cannot tell the practical difference between them, can you or anyone knowledgeable please explain like I'm 5?
Take UK law, "fair dealing" (I believe it's written as) is specifically stated as "not infringing copyright". Which means it's an allowance or exception, depending on how you want to phrase it. It's not something that is technically in breach and then used as a defence in (for example) court. In fact I don't even know how that kind of law would work in practice.
However since fair use can be a little subjective at times that does mean people are often forced to defend their position that their usage of the source material fell under "fair dealing".
In the same way, Google is making use of fair use by providing website titles, summaries, book samples, etc. There has been some controversy with news about them taking that too far. But by and large, they are still legal. And people of course have tried to challenge that in courts. It's just small samples being distributed, not a complete work. There are lots of examples of companies depending on fair use for all sorts of things. E.g. quoting an author or paraphrasing their work is fine. You don't need their permission for that.
Also another point here is that it isn't necessarily just MS that would be violating copyright (if the above somehow wasn't the case) but the receiver of the auto-completed code that ends up distributing that code. Because it is that code that ends up being distributed. All MS does is show you some code sample, it's the programmer that decides what to do with it. Whether you receive your sample from Stackoverflow, co-pilot, or a book is not relevant: you are responsible for the code you distribute.
Finally, the Github terms of use give Github some rights to doing things to your code if you choose to put it on Github. That probably also covers what they are doing with Github Co-pilot. That's a valid reason for removing your code from Github if you don't agree with that but of course no guarantee that Github Co-pilot would not crawl external public git repositories or that whomever you pick as an alternative wouldn't have some similar legalese in their terms of use. If these things matter to you, review it. Just because Gitlab hasn't launched a co-pilot competitor doesn't mean they couldn't.
I didn't envision that my code would be split into tons of little code snippets and then sold around. Doing so, the spirit of the GPL-isation of my software has been betrayed.
There's also a free flow of information argument. Citing pieces of my code is good for that flow. But MSFT doesn't seek free flow here, it seeks a money-making flow. So I disagree.
I understand your explanation and somehow, it sounds right on the pragmatic level. But on the idealistic level, it sounds wrong :-/
Dunno...
On balance, you are distributing software that is copyrighted (nothing you can do about that). The GPL gives users some limited permissions that undo some of the restrictions that come with copyright. Fair use applies to copyrighted material regardless of the license and is not something you can actually restrict with a license. That kind of is the whole point of fair use. So, the GPL, it's (supposed) intentions, and idealism don't factor into the equation here. That's just not how it works.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
It certainly does. That's one big reason why judges often disagree and judges' rulings can often be predicted by which party appointed them.
But the copyleft ideology in particular rarely factors into court cases, because few judges care about it.
Or maybe I've misread the article?
I suppose this is how e.g. Red Hat operates.
I feel like this has not really been tested, especially in a court that resides outside the United States. Microsoft, as far as I know, probably has legal entities in other countries as well. A German developer residing in Germany could take Microsoft Deutschland GmbH to court in Germany.
That clause is doing a lot of work here. You seem to be starting with an assumption that their claim is correct, but it's kind of a ridiculous assumption. Here are the usual categories of fair use, according to the US copyright office.
"criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research"
Which of these do you think describes Copilot? I say none. I also suspect that most people and most courts would say none. I don't think "arbitrary incorporation into other works without attribution" fits even a generous definition of fair use. Some might even recognize it as a definition of plagiarism. Can you make your case instead of assuming it?
As far as practical consequences are concerned: if their fair use claim is struck down, Copilot is dead, unequivocally, because the only kind of license they can satisfy is a public-domain-equivalent one, and there’s not all that much such code. This is why I said “depends entirely on”.
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849107 where I said much the same thing, and pointed out that any mentions of the GPL specifically are a red herring.
I mean it does in the short term, because Microsoft trains it on public GitHub code.
Beyond that, as long as Microsoft is operating under their “fair use” theory, licensing is irrelevant: if they decide to expand their funnel to public code from outside of GitHub, yours will get sucked in if it is public, regardless of license, since their entire theory is they don't need a license.
They seem to say that's not the only source.
"What data has GitHub Copilot been trained on?
GitHub Copilot is powered by Codex, a generative pretrained AI model created by OpenAI. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub"
It reminds me of:
However, it does not prove that your version of the repository was the first and original one.
Generally i do recommend to avoid cryptocurrencies for anything serious. Its public image is beyond repair.
You need to use a license that restricts its use, and restricts the use of derivatives otherwise someone uploading a fork to Github will just put you back where you started. I think GPL3 would give you such protections, but you should check with a lawyer if this is particularly important to you.