| Thanks for this, but can you answer the question: Would it be 'fair use' for the devlopers to simply copy code from those repos - even just 10 lines, and claim 'fair use' - i.e. circumventing Copilot? Even if Copilot is 'fair use' ... does that mean the results are 'fair use' on the part of AutoPilot users? And a bigger question: is your interpretation of those statues and case law enough to make the answer unambiguous? I don't have legal background, but I do have an operating background with lawyers and tech ... and my 'gut' says that anyone using Copilot is opening themselves up to lawsuits. If the code you put in your software comes, via Copilot, but that code is verbatim from some kind of GPL's (or worse, proprietary) ... there's a good chance you could get sued if someone gets the inclination. Maybe it's because of my personal experience, but I can just see corporate lawyers banning Copilot straight up as the risks are simply now worth the upside. That's now what we like to hear in the classically liberal sense i.e. 'share and innovate' ... but gosh it doesn't feel like a happy legal situation to me. Looking forward to people with more insight sharing on this important topic. |
Only a lawyer (and truly, only a court) could answer that question.
If you copy 100 lines of code that amounts to no more than a trivial implementation in a popular language of how to invert a binary tree, it's likely fair use.
If you copy 10 lines of code that are highly novel, have never been written before, and solve a problem no one outside the authors have solved... It may not be fair use to copy that.
Other people who have replied have mentioned "the heart" of a work. The US Supreme Court has held that even de minimis - "minimal", to be brief - copying can sometimes be infringement if you copied the "heart" of a work.