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lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

I didn’t mean you specifically. I think the ethical conversation is more interesting but I also think that people will feel different if, say, the Linux Foundation releases its own version of copilot and it’s not just one company reaping the rewards of all that code. And I’d like to make it easy for other competitors to do exactly that. It will be harder for them to do that if we think that the models themselves are copyrightable. I don’t think something like copilot is going to make anyone think twice 5 yrs from now any more than we think twice about something like google autocomplete or google search thumbnail images. I think stuff like copilot if properly tuned won’t be providing a substitute for whole GPL projects. I don’t think OSS communities will be damaged by this in any way. In fact those same oss communities are going to be some of the biggest users of these sorts of tools just like they use stackoverflow today.

lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

All of these terms of service have an assignment provision that allows the provider to assign the agreement to an acquirer. So the license you gave to GitHub moves to Microsoft (though here the license likely remains with GitHub because they are an independent subsidiary). All of these agreements also say they can unilaterally change terms whenever. The terms are generally always broad enough to cover these circumstances.

lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

Sort of. DMCA protects service providers against copyright infringement claims related to stuff uploaded to their services by third parties. So long as they adhere to DMCA requests, they’re not violating copyright law themselves.

lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

OSS license obligations mostly kick in upon distribution, hence this is a pivotal concept in this context. It’s also important because of the language in the TOS that says the code won’t be used outside the service. The stuff related to streaming is kind of unrelated here because movies aren’t under copyleft licenses and so the question of whether or not there was distribution there is not relevant- the question is whether or not the copyright holder’s monopoly right were violated and those include the right of public performance, public display, as well as distribution. They would have violated other copyright rights even without a finding of distribution.

lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

I think it’s important to recognize that most ML models will not be built in top of copyleft material. It will mostly use data that we as users have voluntarily provided to someone at some point and to which that platform now claims ownership. So we need to think long and hard about whether or not we believe any of these models should receive any copyright protection at all and in a much broader context. I think if we insist on claiming that copilot is copyrightable itself and should be under GPL then we have totally capitulated with respect to all other use cases in a way that actually further protects incumbent advantage for large companies and which deprived everyone else of any benefit or remuneration for their own data. You’re basically saying it’s ok for companies to privatize the collective knowledge of all of humanity. I’m not on board with that.

lindenksv85 | 4 years ago | on: Analyzing the legal implications of GitHub Copilot

If you are putting up code on GitHub to which you don’t have all the rights you’re actually in violation of their TOS and you are violating the rights of other copyright holders. I understand this is common and may not violate community norms or expectations but it is technically a license violation on multiple fronts. Contributors who add to existing GitHub projects are providing the same license to GitHub as the project maintainer though per the TOS.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

I find it highly unlikely that they didn’t have conversations beforehand. It’s also really black and white - they were proud of their lack of moderation and said it publicly. It’s not like there was a misunderstanding. Plus an org like Parler has its own lawyers. There is no way they weren’t warned of their contractual obligations by their own counsel. They just chose to take that risk.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

It’s not coordination if multiple companies actually agree on reality. I would think it would be worse if some companies said this were fine and other didn’t - THAT would imply that someone was being treated unfairly maybe. This is just a unanimous jury, that’s all. I think it’s rather silly to say that if, for example, someone goes on tv and says they’re planning on building nuclear bombs in their closet, you believe Apple can’t suspend them until they say that exact same thing on their platform. If you are a violent threat in the real world, then you also are on all the platforms whether you reveal that there or not.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

To be fair they wanted to do that because they saw Trump as a would-be dictator unwilling to leave power peacefully and deadest on using the government to punish his enemies and line his own pockets. They did THAT to avoid THIS. Being right about the reasons why you are doing things is actually important.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

There is a big difference between “controversial” and a place where people are actively planning criminal activity. It’s not close. No bank, for example, could continue serving a known crime org. They themselves would be charged if they did that.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

If so, that would be a crime and those people should have been arrested. So what? I love the conservative view that if any liberal anywhere did anything bad, then it’s a get out of jail card for them to also do that bad thing. No dude. A crime is a crime.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

Sure but AWS isn’t run by robots (yet!). It’s run by people who understand context and intent. I also very seriously doubt that Parler was turned off without any notice. If a company was getting abused like that, I think AWS would try to help them.

lindenksv85 | 5 years ago | on: At JPMorgan, productivity falls for younger employees at home

I think it’s unfortunate that people are taking statistics (or anecdotes) from this period to support or not support WFH. At this point in time, it would be rather audacious for anyone to claim that productivity is more tied to the location of your desk than to the fact that people are working through the apocalypse, and some people are working through more than one “once in a lifetime” disaster. If productivity is down, maybe it’s because we expect people to keep adding to billionaire bottom lines when their entire lives are falling apart, in many cases irreparably??

lindenksv85 | 6 years ago | on: Covid-19 twice as contagious as previously thought – CDC study

Being highly infectious is one thing but a virus’s deadliness is another. Something can have a really high infectiousness rate but not be very deadly, like common cold. The infectiousness they are citing her is the infectiousness that exists under normal conditions. So if you social distance, you can lower the infectiousness. Projected death rates are going down because distancing is working and we are lowering the virus’s infectiousness.
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