Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:04 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Class action against GitHub Copilot by gspr
Parent article: Class action against GitHub Copilot

> I'm not sure it matters what it's used for by you and your peers, if it comes with an out-of-the-box ability to also do the other things.

So you think that the sale of knives, hammers, screwdrivers etc should be banned? Because they come with an out-of-the-box ability to be used for murder. Come to that, maybe banning cars would be a very good idea, along with electricity, because they're big killers.

It's not the USE that matters. All tools have the *ability* to be mis-used, sometimes seriously. Ban cameras - they take porn pictures. But if the PRIMARY use is ABuse, that's when the law should step in. Everything else has to rely on the courts and common sense.

In the UK, carrying offensive weapons in public is illegal. Yet many of my friends - quite legally - carry very sharp knives. Because they're "tools of the trade" for chef'ing.

Cheers,
Wol

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:19 UTC (Fri) by gspr (guest, #91542) [Link] (3 responses)

Sorry, my phrasing was bad. I did not mean to refer to what actions can be taken with the thing. What I'm trying to convey is that Copilot (perhaps!) contains (some representation of) the copyrighted material, and can *therefore* be used to reproduce the material.

A pen won't reproduce a copyrighted text without a human inputting missing data, even though it of course can he used to reproduce such a text with human assistance. Copilot, on the other hand, can (maybe!)

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:33 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (2 responses)

It is *allowed* to ingest copyrighted materials for the models, by law. Hence it is not subject to the original license, among other things.

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:38 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Your "hence" does not follow from your first statement.

The law says that the act of ingestion does not itself infringe copyright, nor does the fact of ingestion make the model infringe copyright automatically. It does not, however, says that the model is not subject to the original licence if it is found to be infringing copyright, nor does it say that the output of the model is not contributory infringement.

Class action against GitHub Copilot

Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:42 UTC (Fri) by gspr (guest, #91542) [Link]

> It is *allowed* to ingest copyrighted materials for the models, by law. Hence it is not subject to the original license, among other things.

Yeah. But it's not allowed to *reproduce* that copyrighted material in a way incompatible with the original license. On one extreme, ingesting the material to produce, say, the parity of all the bits involved, is clearly not "reproduction" - and so is OK. On the other extreme, ingesting it and storing it perfectly in internal storage and spitting it back out on demand, clearly is "reproduction" - and surely not OK.

As I see it, the whole debate is about where between those extremes Copilot falls.

I'm not claiming to have the right answer. In fact, I don't even think I have _a_ answer. But I object to your sweeping statements about this seemingly being an easy and clear case.