zlacker

Ok. So instead of whining about it on Twitter sue GitHub. No matter what you think of Copilot, establishing some case law on AI-generated code will be beneficial to everyone.

>>ralph8+(OP)
Whining about it on Twitter = free and easy

Suing Github = signing up for a ~decade long incredibly expensive and time-consuming legal battle against one of the richest companies in the world

There may be a slight difference in effort between these two options.

>>ralph8+(OP)
It goes beyond code. Also photos, art, text, etc. Be careful what you wish for. Whether you like it or not, with a stroke of a pen Congress or the Supreme Court in the US could probably wipe out the legal use of a huge amount of the training data used for ML.

>>ghaff+A
Good.

>>ghaff+A
Good! Large corporations shouldn’t be able to profit off of other people’s data without consent or compensation.

>>Jevon2+d2
Great! I assume you believe all search engines should be illegal then?

>>drstew+G3
Search engines don't sell the information of others; they sell certain metadata of that information, namely, the location of that information.

>>mjr00+n
Not to mention Microsoft could countersue using their enormous patent war chest, which they have a history of doing[0]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2012/03/22/microsoft-and-tivo-drop-th...

>>drstew+G3
Accessing a computer system without permission is illegal. Search engines operate under the assumption that they have permission to access any public available server unless explicitly forbidden.

If a company or person assume they got copyright permission to any work public accessible then they will quickly find out that such assumption is wrong, and that they require explicit permission.

>>ghowar+w4
And excerpts of that information in many cases.

>>belorn+q5
>Search engines operate under the assumption that they have permission to access any public available server unless explicitly forbidden.

And why should opt-out be a reasonable norm? To be clear, the internet (among many other things) breaks down if every exchange of information is opt-in. Sharing of photographs taken in public places is another example. But the internet basically functions because people share information on an opt-out basis (that may or may not even be respected).

>>ralph8+(OP)
You're going to chip in, right? And help fundraise? Because it would take millions of dollars to mount a successful legal attack over this.