Wait, I'm not sure what you are trying to say? Can you clarify?

That many people who are criticizing Microsoft for using open source code and claiming “fair use” and saying it’s not fair to creators are the same ones that say pirating digital content is harmless.

Because issues aren't automatically symmetrical, and impact of actions isn't equal in both ways, especially when there's power difference between the sides of the conflict, e.g. it's not hypocritical to punish a bully punching their victim, but not the victim for punching the bully back.

Disney used its power to distort copyright laws in a self-serving manner. As an individual you don't have equal power to oppose them (you were supposed to have in a democracy, but lobbying is legal and corporations are people).

Disney is a huge corporation that won't even notice if you pirate a movie, which you may not even have been able to pay for anyway, because of their region-locked twisted maze of distribution and DRM.

OTOH you may be screwed if you're a creator making a living from your work, and a big corp can just take it without paying, launder it through "… in the style of $YOURNAME" query, and say they own it now, because unlike your copyright, their Terms Of Service apply.

Even people who think copyright shouldn't exist may rely on using copyright — against itself. You can't unilaterally say "I don't believe in copyright", because the law doesn't care, but if you license something as copyleft, then the law does care about your anti-copyright license.

There’s an assumption that hackers are automatically anarcho-communist, and unconditionally, wholeheartedly, vocally supportive of content piracy, which is not correct.

Hackers mostly are, but Hacker news is mostly frequented by bog standard developers, who mostly aren't.

I don’t think anyone at all is here arguing that an AI trained on a massive corpus of movies that outputs snippets of film based on a prompt would be illegal. Such a thing would literally be the same as Midjourney with images. The fact that you can likely coax any AI to output snippets close to some of the source material is not likely to really matter and would be as if you recreated a copyrighted work using any other tools.

What’s the difference here then?

It'd probably turn towards Disney's history of bribing congress for copyright extensions whenever the mouse is about to enter the public domain.

The same copyright laws that the open source proponents are complaining about MS breaking?

There is a certain amount of irony that a likely possible outcome will be the strengthening of copyright laws and enforcement, at which point people will realize they won the battle but lost the war

The problem with copyright isn't that it exists and provides protections - this incentivises creators.

But life of the creator + 70 years?

Reminds me of this:

https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/07/research-optim...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1436186

But isn't it copyright upon which open source is founded? The license is based on the right of the owner of the copyright to authorize someone else to create a derivative work?

Without copyright, it would be perfectly legitimate and legal for someone to not follow a license (because it would bear no legal weight because of the lack of copyright).

I would argue that open source is best served by strong copyright protections that allow the people created the software to make sure that further changes to it are released back to the community. Weakening copyright law means that it is that much easier for big companies to co-opt some software and not need to release the changes back.

Steamboat Willie was released in 1928.

People probably would have less of a problem if microsoft breached the license on 100 year old code.

> The same copyright laws that the open source proponents are complaining about MS breaking?

As long as Microsoft can and will wield those laws against me? Darn tootin'

That's a bit of an exaggeration. There have only been two copyright term extensions since Mickey Mouse was created, and only one of those can even remotely be attributed to Disney lobbying.

Even for the term extension that is attributable to Disney, you can also attribute it to Germany and the formation of the EU. "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" is funny, yes, but also an oversimplification.

This is also why I fully expect Steamboat Willie to fall out of copyright protection in January 2024 - right on schedule. There's a few countries that have supra-EU copyright terms, but none of them are dealmakers. Nobody is demanding we match Mexico's life+100 terms, for example.

Equal protection under the law.

I am 100% on the side of content creators. Regardless of who they are .

The courts tend to take a dim view of theft. Which is what this is.

The article clearly lays out that multiple requests for sound legal basis have gone unanswered . It simply doesn’t exist and Microsoft is operating on a forgiveness vs permission model.

Licensing is 100% about permissions. Clear and explicit enumeration of the permissions (or lack thereof ) for a work.

This class action lawsuit should surprise nobody. It’s a class that is sick and tired of being exploited.

Do not take my work that I contributed with explicit permissions and use it in a way I didn’t grant permission for. Full stop. It isn’t complicated.

You wouldn’t download a car and all that jazz….

> The courts tend to take a dim view of theft. Which is what this is.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...

so much animosity over rights you gave GitHub when you put your code there. "Theft" gimme a break. you license your code to GitHub so they can show it to others. This is separate to the stated license in your code. Nowhere in that terms of service document are the means that the code is shown to users specified.

Give me a break. Did you even read the license? You read that it is restricted to "the service". That service cannot be copilot, because it didn't even exist when most people agreed to the license. Moreover the license explicitly states they cannot use the code to distribute in any other way or sell it. So if anything they are violating their own agreement.

Also MS themselves don't even claim that training is covered by their terms of service, they claim it is fair use.

What do you think is more likely, that Microsoft stuffed their own terms and conditions?

Or you are mistaken and "the service" of github, includes all features available on the website including copilot.

Even if you're right and a court rules against them, what's to stop them changing the terms to become compliant?

? Did you read what I wrote, MS doesn't even claim copilot is covered by their terms. They claim it is covered by fair use (some people also claimed there is code not hosted by GitHub in copilot, which would further confirm that they believe they are covered by something else)

Moreover terms have been largely unchanged for years AFAIK. If someone agreed to the license years ago, they can't have agreed to copilot use. Also copilot is not a service on their website, it is a separate service and they charge for it, also contradicting the terms.

If you think I'm mistaken I will gladly reevaluate what I said if you could kindly restate your position, by answering a few questions

What does separate service mean? What would Copilot look like if it was not separate?

Elaborate on "not a service on their website", as it is available and listed as a feature "Github Copilot" on their website.

Is the contradiction related to payment for the service, or just because you think it is separate?

Since I thought you were arguing that Githubs own terms prevent them from using the public repositories in Copilot, this is what I argued against.

If you think fair use is involved, then that's the end of the line. If MS claims fair use, then until a court says otherwise, it is. Anyone who thinks their copyright is being violated can get an injunction tomorrow.

> What would Copilot look like if it was not separate?

Maybe some type of hint shown inside your code when it’s shown at github.com. There is already a text editor.

> They claim it is covered by fair use

they claim the training of their model is covered by fair use, but they did not say that was the justification they were using. They don't need to claim fair use.

It's pretty clear from the Terms of Use that they can use code hosted on github.com to provide any service they like, so long as it is a GitHub service. They don't need fair use, they already have the rights to do what they are doing.

It's not full stop didn't grant permission.

Fair use is a major part of copyright law. I do not have to ask permission to use your work.

For you to win in court you have to overcome fair use, you have to overcome innocent infringer, you have to overcome no damages.

Anyone leaving comments saying that there's an obvious way a court would rule on a copyright case involving those 3 things is wrong.

If my code is licensed under terms , that’s the permission .

If you use my licensed work then yes, you do need to follow the terms of the license .

The issue of license / contract / copyright is messy. It doesn’t ever seem (in the USA anyway ) to be definitively answered / “solved.”

I chose AGPL v3 only on purpose.

Co pilot and users thereof (so now two levels removed ) utilizing code in whatever work are stealing my work (unless it’s AGPL v3 licensed ). The adding of intermediaries (and the most likely unknown and with no way to know) infringing is going to be very difficult to mitigate. It’s like truly unknowingly buying stolen property,

No I don't have to follow your license.

If I use it under fair use, there is nothing you can do about it.

The fourth factor of fair use is the effect on the value of your work. If I'm not affecting the works value because there is no market for it, because it has no commercial value, you are going to have a very hard time defeating this argument in court.

I don't think many people here would object if Copilot was trained on all the publicly available source code from before 1930.