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Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by earthnail on Monday May 08, 2023 @06:38AM (#35860076)
Because digital art is trained on the end result. The equivalent would be learning to write software by looking at compiled binaries.

Learning from source code is like learning from Photoshop files or Logic projects. Artists usually do not share them. In music, not even the labels get anything than the final mixdown (the music equivalent of the binary); the stems or projects remain with the studio - just like the source code in software projects tends to remain with the studios.

In software, we started showing and sharing source code under the assumption that it makes other humans making software better. People still rarely do this in music, as holding up industry secrets is deemed more important than fostering a community of personal growth.

We don't open source our code so an AI can grow. We do it so that humans can grow. There's no need to publish our code to distribute our final binary. This breaks the common understanding of why it's a good idea to share your source code, and as a result, people might become more protective of their code again.

In many ways, your comment is similar to all the comments saying "but you open-sourced it, surely you must know that people will then put it in their commercial code?"

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by kajaktum on Monday May 08, 2023 @06:46AM (#35860136)
People share arts because they want to help other humans grow too, not the AI.

Also the code is the end product. Similarly, artists don't share their project file because it’s not the point. This is like saying programmers not sharing their vim macros.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by earthnail on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:07AM (#35860264)
When you want to help other humans grow in music production in an open-source way, you have to share your studio project file. Try finding some of these... you'll find YouTube videos where people walk through aspects of their projects, but you won't find the actual studio project file.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by jasonjmcghee on Monday May 08, 2023 @11:50AM (#35862968)
Billie Eilish famously released her files for her first hit song and it includes a bunch of takes etc that they didn't use.

Apparently it's directly available in Logic (or was)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Logic_Studio/comments/gic2r2/logic_...

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by Turing_Machine on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:10AM (#35860688)
> People share arts because they want to help other humans grow too, not the AI.

Hold on just a second here. How do you know what "people" "want"? Who put you in charge of speaking for them?

Yes, there have been some loud complaints, but given that millions of people are involved, the overwhelming majority of whom haven't expressed an opinion one way or the other, I think it's a bit premature for this kind of blanket statement.

Secondly, there's a difference between what people want and what people are legally entitled to. If you ask people if they want a million dollars, most of them will say "Sure!". That doesn't mean they're going to get it.

Existing copyright controls the making of copies. That's it. There's a fudge factor in there called "fair use" that controls whether or not something constitutes an infringing copy.

Whether AI training data falls within that or not is going to have to be decided in the courts or by some type of government action. It's clearly not an exact copy...the actual pixels in the original work aren't anywhere in the database. But is what is in there close enough to be considered a "derivative work"? I don't know, and neither do you.

Again, it's way too soon to be making blanket statements on the issue.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by quonn on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:10AM (#35861172)
More important than an opinion of a court is the opinion of lawmakers. After all, copyright laws have a purpose and AI subverts that purpose. Lawmakers will have to decide whether the benefit of AI to society is greater than the benefit of having works published. We will see laws adapted accordingly.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by Turing_Machine on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:57AM (#35861556)
> After all, copyright laws have a purpose and AI subverts that purpose.

While it may differ in other countries, in the United States the purpose of intellectual property laws, as expressed in the Constitution, is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".

Enriching the copyright holders (on the rare occasions that actually occurs) is a secondary consequence, not the prime purpose.

Does AI "subvert" "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? I don't think so. Quite the contrary... I think it advances the progress of science and the useful arts, if anything.

It's pretty well established that a description of a copyrighted work is not protected, even an extremely-detailed description (see, for example, the way that Phoenix assigned one team to write an extremely-detailed description of the IBM PC BIOS, then gave that description to a second clean-room team that hadn't seen any of the actual source code. The second team then produced a clone of the BIOS that could be sold without paying IBM anything).

The data stored in these models seems more like a "description" rather than a "copy" to me -- though, of course, there's no guessing what a court or legislature will decide.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by ChatGTP on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:09AM (#35861661)
Do you get access to the raw model to advance the science with ? Or the watered down version ?
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by JohnFen on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:33PM (#35865325)
> Does AI "subvert" "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"? I don't think so. Quite the contrary... I think it advances the progress of science and the useful arts, if anything

It does subvert that purpose to the extent that it makes some people no longer willing to share their works. The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage the sharing of works.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by quonn on Tuesday May 09, 2023 @08:24AM (#35873290)
> Does AI "subvert" "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts"?

Absolutely, it may. That was my point that this is exactly to be observed and decided.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by kajaktum on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:11PM (#35868132)
Okay, I shouldn’t have used “want”. But helping others and collaboration is not something alien in the art world. Artist publish their work almost for the same reason programmers do:’

1. To showcase their work

2. To get feedback

Also, I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait for the majority response before we can form an opinion of whether or not something is good for them. Do we have to ask millions of people if they like it if their health benefits, social security or left thumb gets removed before we can say that they definitely won’t like it?

I think it is pretty safe to say that artists don’t like having their whole livelihood overnight. (Inb4 get better jerbs)

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by keldami on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:01AM (#35860231)
>> "but you open-sourced it, surely you must know that people will then put it in their commercial code?"

this is a general problem in open source. And with obfusication in an AI it is just unfair. If AI / codepilot would reference the source in a nice way, then I woundn't mind.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by bombcar on Monday May 08, 2023 @02:38PM (#35865380)
Especially given the history of the last 30 years where major open source licenses carefully fought over just how much "commercial code" could use the works involved.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by ZoomZoomZoom on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:30AM (#35860406)
> People still rarely do this in music, as holding up industry secrets is deemed more important than fostering a community of personal growth.

This is absolutely not the reason and it's surprising to read this opinion stated as a fact.

First of all, not revealing multi-tracks doesn't prevent personal growth. Human ear is pretty good at discerning individual elements of a mix. It's all in the final product. If you can't learn from it or can't hear something, either it's an unimportant part of the mix, your ear is not good enough yet to distill any meaningful information from the balances of the mix in question, or it's just not a good mix.

Secondly, multi-tracks are not the source code. Putting it in relevant terms, it's just the assets. What's important are processes and artistic decisions made while processing them and combining them in their final form.

Not revealing stems/multi-tracks is not a matter of gatekeeping, it's a safety measure to prevent unauthorized use of individual composition elements and creation of "alternative" mixes which break artistic integrity of the piece.

Music is art (at least a considerable portion of it), and and artist needs as much control over the final product as possible. Mixing is a part of it.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by rschneid on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:49AM (#35860532)
Gatekeeping isn't boolean, it falls on a spectrum. If your rationale about preventing un 'authorized' use is in fact true, the process must be effectively keeping some notional gate some kind of closed even if it's only from people you (or maybe even the original artist) consider to be acting 'unscrupulously.'

If musicians' priorities were for the world to share in their musical indulgence not just in listening but also in like-minded creation, they would release as much of their mixing tools/backgrounds/stems/etc as possible. Since the capitalist framework is a foregone conclusion, they need to keep some secrets in their sauce to produce scarcity to justify a price for their labor so they can eat... Because the farmers and butchers all keep gates of their own kind, too :)

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by ZoomZoomZoom on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:24AM (#35860781)
I don't really get the point you're arguing for.

I disputed a specific mistaken proposition, that "holding up industry secrets is deemed more important than fostering a community of personal growth". It's a mistake on several levels: there's no dichotomy as it's presented in this sentence, and the reasons for not providing multi-tracks and project files are different.

> If musicians' priorities were for the world to share in their musical indulgence not just in listening but also in like-minded creation

So? They have other priorities so this is not what they do. Teaching is an industry that's only an adjacent and derivative activity to the cultural sphere of arts. It's of no concern for the artist, unless they choose to capitalize on their skills/knowledge/experience.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by rschneid on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:45AM (#35860958)
I'm agreeing with you that there are many reasons why the music Industry doesn't share stems but also concluding that many among those could be rationally considered gatekeeping by various groups. I'm not disparaging the industry as a whole or the individuals who comprise it, but the reality is simply messy. Many signed artists I'm sure wish they could distribute their stems or more of their process, but are hindered/prevented from doing so by labels. Seems close to what gatekeeping means to me, but that's just like my opinion, man...
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by Juliate on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:05AM (#35860646)
> If musicians' priorities were for the world to share in their musical indulgence not just in listening but also in like-minded creation, they would release as much of their mixing tools/backgrounds/stems/etc as possible.

They do. For a price. When you know how to ask.

The thing is, if you really want to « like-minded create », you do not need, not even want their stems (you can find most of them anyway online, if only for learning).

If your thing is not « consumption » but creation, your own voice/process/way matters more (and is more fun) than starting from the studio separate tracks.

As for the music _business_ side of things, attention (hence scarcity management) on and availability/capacity to provide are the two main levers you have if you want to live from it. As with any other business actually.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by mbreese on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:55AM (#35860580)
> We do it so that humans can grow.

I think you’re being a little too altruistic. When I publish code, it’s not about helping people grow. It’s so that others can see the code they are using and that if there is a bug or mistake, they can correct it. Hopefully they share that fix back, but it’s not required.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by JohnFen on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:13AM (#35861194)
I think that people do it for a whole bunch of different reasons. Helping others is one of them, yours is another. But I remember that back at the start of code-sharing, the usual reason people gave for doing it was to help advance overall knowledge.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by Waterluvian on Monday May 08, 2023 @07:59AM (#35860606)
> The equivalent would be learning to write software by looking at compiled binaries.

Only if Copilot was issuing compiled binaries. In this case the end result is the code.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by newswasboring on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:22AM (#35860764)
> We do it so that humans can grow.

When was this decided? I don't remember any licences or foundational essays saying this.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by SoftTalker on Monday May 08, 2023 @08:27AM (#35860796)
Since you mentioned music, can we draw any parallel with the recent Ed Sheeran case? You can't copyright a chord progression, or a rhythm. So can you claim license violation for code which is similar in how it arranges standard design patterns and well-known language idioms? Unless you can find a line-for-line match in a substantial portion of the code, I don't see how you can make a claim for license violation, whether a person or an AI wrote the code in question.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by bayindirh on Monday May 08, 2023 @09:02AM (#35861113)
The problem is not "training using GPL", it's stripping the license and providing the resulting code to anyone, for any purpose.

Copilot can provide very specific implementations of problems with "in the style of $NAME" prompts. Consider a case where you put your life's work as GPL licensed code, and someone can reproduce + adapt your highly optimized matrix multiplication code with a simple prompt, without license. Even if it's not a "textbook license violation", you're lifting one's GPL licensed function and landing it to your codebase without its license. If your code base is not licensed under the same GPL version (or later if the repo allows), it's both unethical and license breach at the same time. Adaptation of the code doesn't matter.

Same is true for more strict, source-available licenses. They are open source, but not open to be reused. What will happen if you put a function derived from a codebase with these strict licenses with or without knowledge? You're again in a dangerous grey area from both license and legal perspective.

The issue we discuss is neither straightforward nor simple to navigate. I left GitHub because of this, and may tag my repositories with this badge.

Open source means nothing if copyleft is taken out of the picture, and licenses are simply ignored.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by Brian_K_White on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:09AM (#35861664)
"The problem is not "training using GPL", it's stripping the license and providing the resulting code to anyone, for any purpose."

This.

Since Copilot arrived I thought that most open source developers would be fine with it if github simply even tried to acknowledge the original licences in any way.

I personally would be ok with even a very indirect aggregate group based thing that should be no burden at all for github. They make a big list with everyone's name in it and call it the copilot contributors, and provide some kind of page for it, then when copilot spits out code, it includes a link to that page, and/or a user includes that in the credits/authors for their project like any other credited source.

No excuses about how impractical it would be to cite 3 other authors for every line of output.

But they don't even do that tiny bit. They don't try and fall short, they don't even try. But they still take the goods. The goods are already free, and yet they still manage to steal them.

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by charlesrocket on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:38AM (#35861999)
To be fair, artists share lyrics, since everything else can be easily scanned by ear. Negatives are frequently the only source. You do not need any negatives to recreate a photograph. Just like you do not need masters or sketches to recreate a song or a popular paining. Most modern photographs are not even produced by photographers - the camera would do all the work, your job is to pick one frame from 9528 you took while your finger got stuck on a button. Moving code somewhere else or omitting the source would not bring back dead ethics of greed-driven modern society and definitely can not slow down reversing in any way.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by UncleMeat on Monday May 08, 2023 @10:57AM (#35862244)
Code is the end product. We store code in our repos, not binaries.
Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by benatkin on Monday May 08, 2023 @01:06PM (#35864120)
> The equivalent would be learning to write software by looking at compiled binaries.

Challenge accepted?

With the speed at which things are advancing....

Re:Please don’t upload my code on GitHub by yellowapple on Monday May 08, 2023 @01:42PM (#35864606)
> We don't open source our code so an AI can grow. We do it so that humans can grow.

I open source my code so that programmers and users can grow. I don't care if that programmer or user is a meatbag or a machine (or both! or neither!).

What I do care about is that the license terms of said code are respected. The vast majority of my code may be under something permissive like MIT or (lately) ISC, but I do make giving credit where credit's due a condition of using the code I've written, for good reason.

That's where tools like Copilot make a misstep: by ignoring the conditions I've placed on the use of my intellectual property. Plagiarism is plagiarism, regardless if it's a human or AI or dolphin or Martian or whatever doing it.

That's also where tools like Copilot differ from e.g. StableDiffusion. AI-generated art doesn't (usually) involve copying and pasting snippets of existing artwork into a new work the way Copilot has been demonstrated to do on multiple occasions.

(My other "problem" is that I can guarantee Microsoft will assert double-standards when it comes to Copilot infringing on e.g. the GPL v. Copilot infringing on Microsoft's own EULAs - and I really really really want to see that happen via someone tricking Copilot into ingesting the Windows source code and vomiting that into Copilot users' IDEs verbatim)