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Re:GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion by Spivak on Monday October 17, 2022 @10:04PM (#33242123)
Yes but that’s your problem as a user of the tool. It doesn’t make Copilot itself illegal which is what the person I originally replied to was saying.

Yes if you use a tool to violate copyright it’s copyright infringement. If you prod Midjourney into outputting near exact Starry Night that’s on you too.

So far no one has made a compelling case that Copilot itself is violating copyright.

Re:GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion by eloisius on Monday October 17, 2022 @11:08PM (#33242517)
Code search may show snippets, but it's clearly not separated from the rest of its code base, including the license. It may be your problem as a user of that tool if you pirate snippets out of the search results without honoring its license, but GitHub at least didn't distribute it without its license. A human judge would surely determine that a search result page showing a snippet and linking back to the project wouldn't constitute distributing the code without attribution. Copilot is a different matter. There is no way to know where the code came from, whether it's novel or verbatim copy of someone's copyrighted work. Microsoft _is_ distributing code snippets here sans its license.