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by _Understated_ 1807 days ago
I understand the concept of fair use (I think) but I can't see how it applies to Copilot.

Google didn't create new books from the contents of existing ones (whether you agree that they should have been allowed to store the books or not) but Copilot is creating new code/apps from existing ones.

Edit: I guess my understanding of fair use was wrong. I stand corrected.

1 comments

If Google Books were creating new books, that would only help their argument. Transformativeness is one of the four parts of the fair use test.

Copilot producing new, novel works (which may contain short verbatim snippets of GPL works) is a strong argument for transformativeness.

It would help the transformativeness, but it would substantially change the effect upon the market. By creating competing products with the copyrighted material, there is a higher degree of transformative, but you also end up disrupting the marketplace.

I don't know how a court would decide this, but I do think the facts in future GPT-3 cases are sufficiently different from Author's Guild that I could see it going any way. Plus, I think the prevalence of GPT-3 and the ramifications of the ruling one way or another could lead some future case to be heard by the Supreme Court. A similar case could come up in California, or another state where the 2nd Circuit Artist Guild case isn't precedent.

> short verbatim snippets of GPL works

Define short