Copilot under fire as dev claims it emits 'large chunks of my copyrighted code'
I&#x27;d like to stake out the position, which I hope remains within the overton window, as tenable, that &quot;information wants to be free&quot;. There was a pretty strong contingent of people in the tech world that believed that at one point, though tech has grown to the point that &quot;adults&quot; have stepped in, and lawyers, and big money, etc, etc.<p>I remember using Napster for the first time back in the day. Amazing! All this free music at my fingertips, sharing P2P, so cool. And I thought Aaron Swartz was a hero. More recently, SciHub is one of the greatest things to happen to knowledge sharing ever. Software patents are stupid and cause more harm than they&#x27;re worth, and everyone hates patent trolls, right? Copyright is just a tool to be abused by Disney&#x27;s lobbyists.<p>I think the latest tools like Copilot and the stuff Stability AI is releasing fits right in here as amazing tools heralding a new future of exploration and leveling up the power of creators to create. Remixing existing data, maybe copying it, whatever.<p>Obviously, I&#x27;m an adult now, and when working for my corporation I have to be diligent about respecting software licenses and getting lawyer clearance for using tools like Copilot and such, but at some level I&#x27;ve got the Mr Anderson vs Neo thing going on in my head and it feels a little bit like we&#x27;ve lost something from the freewheeling days of early tech.