DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

Posted Jun 24, 2022 18:23 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering by Wol
Parent article: DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

> then if the licensor made it clear that he considered it DID make a derivative work, the Judge will be inclined to side with the licensor.

Nope, that's not how the law works. Stating it over and over again does not make it true.

For the purposes of determining whether X is a derivative work of Y, the judge looks at X, Y (its contents, not its license), and the copyright statute. Nothing else.

DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

Posted Jun 24, 2022 18:28 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

(Self-nitpick: I probably should have written "the prevailing copyright law" rather than "the copyright statute" because, in common law countries, the former also includes prior legal precedents.)

DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

Posted Jun 24, 2022 20:50 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

> For the purposes of determining whether X is a derivative work of Y, the judge looks at X, Y (its contents, not its license), and the copyright statute. Nothing else.

And if that's not enough for him to make up his mind?

That *SHOULD* be all that's needed. But if that IS all that's needed, why can't we all make our own minds up? Surely it's obvious? Why do we need Judges? It can't be THAT hard ... ?

Cheers,
Wol

DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

Posted Jun 24, 2022 21:59 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

Sure, you can write the government a letter saying that you're seceding from your country and making up your own laws. It's not going to accomplish anything, but you can do it anyway.

DeVault: GitHub Copilot and open source laundering

Posted Jun 27, 2022 14:18 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

For the purposes of determining whether X is a derivative work of Y, the judge looks at X, Y (its contents, not its license), and the copyright statute. Nothing else.

I think it would still be of some interest whether X resulted from Y through “cp Y X” or through a query to Copilot whose model was trained on Y. In the first case, X is pretty clearly a derived work of Y. In the second case, Microsoft, at least, would probably like to claim it isn't.