[thesiniot]

Absolutely! But this article may focus too much on ethics.

In practice, you usually need to demonstrate that you were harmed by an action to bring it to court.

So we would need the author of a GPL'd repository to sue, with proof that copilot copied and pasted their code.

The moment that happens, MS would simply omit that single repository from the copilot dataset, tell the judge that they fixed a bug in their "content filtering algorithm", and have the case dismissed. They might also ban the developer's account for good measure.

[guitarbill]

> In practice, you usually need to demonstrate that you were harmed by an action to bring it to court.

I think this is true for copyright infringement damages. But is a GPL violation a copyright or a contract issue? And unlike copyright, the fix isn't damages to compensate the rightsholder, but to uphold the license.

> So we would need the author of a GPL'd repository to sue, with proof that copilot copied and pasted their code.

What happens if multiple authors wait and see, and then jointly sue? At that point, removing a single repo isn't enough.

[UncleMeat]

> And unlike copyright, the fix isn't damages to compensate the rightsholder, but to uphold the license.

That's not true. Courts won't consistently mandate that people relicense their code that includes GPLed stuff. They'll make you pay a fine and remove the code.