[caconym_]

> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right , to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

What better way to promote said Progress than by making sure said Authors and Inventors can make enough money off their work to keep doing it? As written, it's a roundabout way to get at the instrumentality of capital, but if that's not what they had in mind then I'm not sure what they were getting at. Without copyright, a creator's rights to their own work aren't diminished; it's just that everyone else's are expanded to the same level.

(I'd love to know if I'm way off base about this. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm sure it's been discussed to death.)

> Honestly, I rather like this whole question of copilot. I solidly appreciate the brilliance of github as a honeypot.

I think it's really cool, and I'd probably use it myself. As much as my favorite kinds of programming (e.g. writing experimental text editors) might not benefit from it, in my day job I sure would love to spend less time filling in boilerplate and looking up mundane API details.

I don't mean to single Github out in my mention of big corporations benefiting from copyright law. Scraping vast quantities of copyrighted data to build new products is a common business model at this point, and--like other new IP-related paradigms enabled by modern information technology--I think it deserves a fresh look, being mindful of just what it is we're trying to accomplish with copyright law. As you say, it's not always obvious, even in written law.

[stale2002]

> What better way to promote said Progress

There are a lot of better ways. Having more information being public and free, and usable by tools like this sounds like an excellent way of promoting progress.

[caconym_]

Well, this is the current status quo. Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use, while non-transformative copying is considered infringement.

If you want to strip creators of (default) exclusive rights to their work, that's a different conversation than the one around whether Copilot and similar applications fall under fair use. Both have been touched on in this subthread, but your comment seems to be conflating them in a way that doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it.

[stale2002]

> Automated scraping of copyrighted material for (arguably) transformative applications like Copilot is generally allowed under fair use,

Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright, and the concerns that people have about it (that it allows easier copying of code), are actually a benefit.

And the fact that it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code, is overruled by the benefit that this stuff provides.

> doesn't follow directly from the discussion above it.

You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress.

When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way.

[caconym_]

> Ok great. So then new tools like this are good, even though they weaken copyright,

Does it weaken copyright? Like I mentioned, it seems like it's probably allowed under existing law.

> it might hurt people's ability to profit from their code

I don't really buy this. The outputs of Copilot seem transformative enough that they won't by themselves meaningfully compete with the applications built from the sources in the training set.

It seems to me that people are objecting to it more as "theft" on ethical grounds alone. I don't really have a strong opinion either way on that front, but if I did it would be based on principle and not some theoretical material harm, because I think the latter is marginal at best.

> You suggested protecting profits as if it is the only or best way of promoting progress.

In fields where creators make money by selling access to copies of their work, what is a better way of promoting progress? People need places to live, and things to eat, and other things, and all of that costs money. If working in these creative fields becomes even less lucrative than it already is, fewer people will be able to do it, and for less time, because they will have to spend more of their time making money in other ways.

In tech, many of us are privileged to have a fair amount of spare money and time. Don't forget that not everybody enjoys that privilege, and please try not to attach a negative-valued concept of "profit" to the necessities of survival.

> When, in reality, stuff like these tools are actually a much better way of doing so. And it does so in a way that undermines copyright law, in a beneficial way.

Again, this is a very tech-centric view. I can't imagine (for instance) the average novelist being particularly happy to have the exclusivity of their rights to their own work curtailed to enable the creation of some tool, using their work as an input, for generating prose. And such objections would be absolutely correct, if anybody was actually talking about doing that.

Fortunately, nobody is talking about doing so--not for code with Copilot, not for fiction prose with the new GPT-3 tools that are popping up, and not for any other medium I'm aware of. These applications are covered under existing fair use law, and their existence does not depend on weakening the exclusivity of creators' rights to their work.

If you were to tell me that such rights should be curtailed to enable tools like Copilot to exist, I would strongly disagree with you. But--again--such curtailment is not necessary. The only reason I'm talking about it here is that there are people who think copyright should be abolished or strongly weakened. Almost universally, I've found, they're people who don't make money off distributing authorized copies of their work. So, if you ask me, they really have no clue what they're talking about, and shouldn't be running their mouths before seriously listening to (at least) the independent creators who would be impacted by such a change.

[stale2002]

> Does it weaken copyright? Like I mentioned, it seems like it's probably allowed under existing law.

Yes it does. It is legally allowed, but in the past it was much more difficult to code launder, or copy things, in the way that an AI would do it.

Something becoming easier to do, has an effect, even if it was legal in the past.

> what is a better way of promoting progress

More technologies like this, that allow better sharing of code and information. It reduces the barrier to entry to creating content, thus causing more of it to be made.

> If you were to tell me that such rights should be curtailed

You have it reversed. Rights do not need to be curtailed, to enable these tools. Instead I am advocated for the production of these tools to be done for the purpose of curtailing these rights. The causation is reversed.

The rights should be "curtailed" through the process of tools that allow people to easily get around the law, and to make the law unenforceable. Changing laws is much harder than making the law irrelevant.

We don't need to change any laws, if we just make it impossible for laws to be enforced.

It is kind of like how bittorrent undermined copyright laws. No laws needed to be changed, for piracy to become rampant and unpunishable. (And don't even try to challenge me on this point, that piracy is effectively unenforceable these days. If you do, I'll just go watch the lastest episode of some marvel show, for free, right now, lul)

[caconym_]

> More technologies like this, that allow better sharing of code and information. It reduces the barrier to entry to creating content, thus causing more of it to be made.

Like I said, this seems like a highly tech-centric viewpoint. Keep in mind that source code is far from the only thing covered under copyright law. Personally, if I was stranded on a desert island, I'd rather have a single original novel written by a human than a hundred novels' worth of GPT-3 output.

Beyond that, your perspective is pretty interesting--I guess you support the existence of tools like this because you see it as an opportunity to erode existing copyright law. Personally, I may not support the full extent and implementation of copyright law in America, but I do support the fundamental principle that a creator should have exclusive rights to their work. So we disagree pretty strongly on that, and I doubt we'll find common ground.

I guess I would just urge you, if you value art at all, to consider how independent artists like writers and musicians would be affected by the elimination of copyright. I don't really give a shit about the IP rights of programmers (even though I'm one myself, with public FOSS contributions), but you seem willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater.