[xtracto]

Say you publish a song and copyright it. Then I record it and save it in a .xz format. It's not an MP3, it is not an audio file. Say I split it into N several chunks and I share it with N different people. Or with the same people, but I share it at N different dates. Say I charge them $10 a month for doing that, and I don't pay you anything.

Am I violating your copyright? Are you entitled to do that?

To make it funnier: Say instead of the .xz, I "compress" it via π compression [1]. So what I share with you is a pair of π indices and data lengths for each of them, from which you can "reconstruct" the audio. Am I illegally violating your copyrights by sharing that?

[1] https://github.com/philipl/pifs

[Aeolun]

What you are actually giving people is a set of chords that happen to show up in your song, the machine can suggest an appropriate next chord.

It’s also smart enough to rebuild your song from the chords _if you ask it to_.

[varajelle]

I take your code and I compress it in a tar.gz file. Il call that file "the model". Then I ask an algorithm (Gzip) to infer some code using "the model". The algorithm (gzip) just learned how to code by reading your code. It just happened to have it memorized in its model.

[Aeolun]

Yeah, and that’s completely fine.

I’ve seen this point made before, but it assumes you use the entire input as output, which is silly.

[varajelle]

Oh no, I'm not using the entire input, just a few functions of interest. And not the copyright headers of course.

[BizarroLand]

With the exception that there are infinite types of chords in this case, and even though many musicians follow familiar chord structures the underlying melodies and rhythms are unique enough for any familiar person to be able to differentiate "Red Hot Chill Peppers" from "All-American Rejects", and now there is a system where All-American Rejects hit a few buttons and a song is generated (using audio samples of "Under the Bridge") that sounds like "Under the Bridge pt 2, All-American Rejects Boogaloo".

That's why it's actionable and why there is meat on the bone for this case. The real issue is going to be if they can convince a jury that this software is just stealing code and whether its wrong if a robot does it.

[williamcotton]

Actually the real issue is if Copilot can stand up to these legal doctrines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea–expression_distinction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction-Filtration-Compari...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure,_sequence_and_organi...

[2muchcoffeeman]

I was thinking of something similar as a counter argument and lo and behold, it’s a real thing maths has solved with a real implementation.

[obiefernandez]

This analogy is flawed