undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointsCort3z3y ago0 comments

Just to be clear; I cannot prove that they have used my code, but for the sake of argument, lets assume so.

They would have directly used my code when they trained the thing. I see it as an equivalent of creating a zip-file. My code is not directly in the zip file either. Only by the act of un-zipping does it come back, which requires a sequence of math-steps.

0 comments

Filligree3y ago

But there is no equivalent of "unzipping" for Copilot.

This is a generative neural network. It doesn't contain a copy of your code; it contains weightings that were slightly adjusted by your code. Getting it to output a literal copy is only possible in two cases:

- If your code solves a problem that can only be solved in a single way, for a given coding style / quality level. The AI will usually produce the same result, given the same input, and it's going to be an attempt at a solution. This isn't copyright violation.

- If 'your' code has actually already been replicated hundreds of times over, such that the AI was over-trained on it. In that case it's a copyright violation... but how come you never went after the hundreds of other violations?

account423y ago

There is no guarantee that a ML network only produces the input data under those two conditions. But even for

> If 'your' code has actually already been replicated hundreds of times over, such that the AI was over-trained on it. In that case it's a copyright violation... but how come you never went after the hundreds of other violations?

Replication is not a violation if the terms of the license are followed. Many open source projects are replicated hundreds of times with no license violation - that doesn't mean that you can now ignore the license.

But even if they did violate the license, that doesn't give you the right to do it too. There is no requirement to enforce copyright consistently - see e.g. mods for games which are more often than not redistributing copyrighted content and derivatives of it but usually don't run into trouble because they benefit the copyright owner. But try to make your own game based on that same content and the original publisher will not handle it in the same way as those mods. Same for OSS licenses: The original author does not lose any rights to sue you if they have ignored technical license violations by others when those uses are acceptable to the original author.