GitHub Copilot is not infringing copyright
I disagree with this article. GitHub Copilot is indeed infringing copyright and not only in a grey zone, but in a very clear black and white fashion that our corporate taskmasters (Microsoft included) have defended as infringement.<p>The legal debate around copyright infringement has always centered around the rights granted by the owner vs the rights appropriated by the user, with the owner's wants superseding user needs/wants. Any open-source code available on Github is controlled by the copyright notice of the owner granting specific rights to users. Copilot is a commercial product, therefore, Github can only use code that the owners make available for commercial use. Every other instance of code used is a case of copyright infringement, a clear case by Microsoft's own definition of copyright infringement [1][2].<p>Github (and by extension Microsoft) is gambling on the fact that their license agreement granting them a license to the code in exchange for access to the platform supersedes the individual copyright notices attached to each repo. This is a fine line to walk and will likely not survive in a court of law. They are betting on deep lawyer pockets to see them through this, but are more likely than not to lose this battle. I suspect we will see how this plays out in the coming months.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/info/Cloud.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/info/Cloud.html</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/contact/dmca" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/contact/dmca</a>