[blip54321]

Damages. This question will come back to damages.

If you steal 10 lines of code from me, the damages will be the greater of:

- The benefit to you (10 minutes programmer time)

- The cost to me ($0)

- Statutory damages (probably $200)

In other words, it's very unlikely to be worth a lawsuit. The most likely outcome is:

- A legal letter is sent

- Infringing code is removed

- As good bedside manner, some nominal amount of money is transferred, mostly in some gesture designed to make the violated party feel good about themselves (e.g. a nice gift).

[omoikane]

An example of how much copied code is worth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_...

For this content:

   a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organization (SSO) of the Java (API), and the API documentation.

The cost was: "statutory damages up to a maximum of US$150,000".

[varenc]

I don’t believe the nine lines of code was the relevant part leading to damages. It was the fact that Google copied this entire API design (SSO) for Java. I don’t think GPT-3 is in danger of doing that.

[rmbyrro]

> - The benefit to you (10 minutes programmer time)

That's an incomplete view. You're judging the value by the time it'd take to rewrite it.

The real value is in knowing what to type and why.

When Co-pilot suggests you a GPL code, it's main value is the knowledge, not the typing.

That piece of knowledge may have taken a LOT of effort from an OSS team to acquire.

Depending on the context, this knowledge would be worth millions.

Worth a lawsuit.

[stale2002]

> Depending on the context, this knowledge would be worth millions. Worth a lawsuit.

But it probably won't be worth millions of dollars. And that is why the lawsuit wont be worth it.

> That piece of knowledge may have taken a LOT of effort from an OSS team to acquire.

Anything "may" be possible. But it probably won't be worth that much.

[IncRnd]

Since people and github are contemplating repeatedly infringing, is there an avenue to increase these damages? This seems like repeated and willful infringement.

[blip54321]

It's not willful by the users of copilot. Damages would be low since it's easy to show that users have no intention of infringing, and in most cases, aren't aware they're infringing.

If liability sits somewhere, it's with copilot, github, and Microsoft.

A lot of that might come down to bedside manner. Right now, github isn't super-polite to people whose code it used. That's probably a mistake. They'd be a unsympathetic evil megacorp in a jury trial.

[croes]

With Copilot it's 10 lines of code by thousands of users.

It adds up.

[jlpqu]

Let's upload a lot of Oracle GPL code and find out. Oracle has certainly sued over 10 lines of code and for much higher damages.

But you know what? I think we'll find that CoPilot will have magically skipped those Oracle repositories and only used code from lowly open source slaves.

[Longlius]

Willful copyright infringement for monetary gain can be prosecuted as a criminal act in the United States (and many other countries including Japan) and it's highly possible Github themselves can end up in hot water for facilitating this.

[dahart]

> it’s highly possible Github themselves can end up in how water for facilitating this.

It might be possible, I don’t know about “highly”. Have you checked the license exclusions required to use Github? Their terms already carve out a Copyright exception for Github, because they need it on order to host your code. There’s also no reason Github can’t filter certain licenses, or make it impossible to complete entire functions, or build an option for everyone to opt-in to being autocomplete source material regardless of license, right? Any legal challenges are likely to result in changes to the feature before there are ever any serious repercussions.

I think it’s at least as likely, if not more so, that Copyright Law could evolve in response to the growing number of AI auto completers, and we (society) try to allow it within reason by being more specific about what constitutes automated infringement and who’s responsible for it. Fair Use currently exists but is vague and left up to courts to decide. In the meantime, Copyright is primarily intended to foster a balance between business and freedom of expression, and there’s a lot of open source software on Github that cares about freedom of expression and not about business. In any case, we don’t really want Copyright to represent some kind of absolute ownership land-lock over every string of 100 characters, that is a bit antithetical to both Copyright and the FOSS community.

[naikrovek]

wow the number of legal experts that appear and debate hypotheticals when everything is spelled out quite clearly in the license agreements is very high on this site.

Triply so when Microsoft is involved.

[zarzavat]

You and I have a different understanding of “willful”. If you’ve used copilot you’ll know that the vast majority of the time it’s not infringing anybody’s copyright, it’s creating code that is highly unique to the problem you are trying to solve.

[codegladiator]

Do you see a scope for troll code GPLers, something along the lines of troll patents ?

[blagie]

No. There's nothing magical about GPL code. Sticking a license on code doesn't suddenly lead to astronomical damages.

No one has won billions of dollars on GPL enforcement. It's not how courts work. Contrary to popular belief, courts also won't compel compliance (e.g. releasing my code); if I break your license, the standard recourse is damages, whether that's GPL or All Rights Reserved.

Otherwise, I'd make the First Born Child license, whereby by using my code, you give me full ownership of your first born child, your home, your car, and your bank account. I could write a license like that right now, but I couldn't force you to give me your child, car, bank account, and home. If you used my code, you'd have the option to accept the license and give me those things. Or you could reject it, in which case, it's a normal copyright violation; in that case, whatever I wrote in the license is moot, and you pay damages (and stop using my code).