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Judge dismisses majority of GitHub Copilot copyright claims (www.developer-tech.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A judge has dismissed the majority of claims in a copyright lawsuit filed by developers against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

The lawsuit was initiated by a group of developers in 2022 and originally made 22 claims against the companies, alleging copyright violations related to the AI-powered GitHub Copilot coding assistant.

Judge Jon Tigar’s ruling, unsealed last week, leaves only two claims standing: one accusing the companies of an open-source license violation and another alleging breach of contract. This decision marks a substantial setback for the developers who argued that GitHub Copilot, which uses OpenAI’s technology and is owned by Microsoft, unlawfully trained on their work.

...

Despite this significant ruling, the legal battle is not over. The remaining claims regarding breach of contract and open-source license violations are likely to continue through litigation.

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[–] General_Effort 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I know what you mean. But looking at the comments here, Fair Use is not a popular concept. I remember that Alsup specifically quoted the copyright clause in his ruling. I can't imagine any argument that would make him rule, on the whole, for the plaintiffs in a case such as this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Huh. Thanks for explaining. I certainly find that surprising, but I definitely don't have enough experience with this community to know the shape of its members' feelings on copyright or fair use.

Thanks.

[–] General_Effort 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't listen to me on that. I have no idea how the community feels on copyright or fair use. Whenever AI comes up, the most dogmatic copyright maximalism dominates. On other subjects, the debate is more nuanced. I don't know how that fits together at all. But I guarantee you, if Alsup ruled on a case like this/OP, they would... Well, most comments would not like the ruling or him.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Really good point about the AI context. I really hadn't considered how it would leak over into potentially corroding support for fair use.

[–] General_Effort 1 points 2 months ago

Come to think of it. That DMCA argument would really wreck fair use.

It's illegal to remove "copyright management information" (CMI). In this case meaning the FOSS license. The argument was, that when copilot spits out verbatim snippets of source code without the license, this constitutes removal of the CMI. The point of the argument was that fair use is not a defense under the DMCA. These verbatim snippets are pretty obvious fair use to me, so countering that defense is important if they hope to get anywhere with their suit.

By the same argument, any meme image is illegal. They are taken from somewhere without the original license or attribution. Yikes.