Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this feels like it's more a law firm and individual looking to profit and make their mark in legal history rather than an aggrieved individual looking for justice.
Programmer/Lawyer Plaintiff + upstart SF Based Law Firm + novel technology = a good shot at a case that'll last a long time, and fertile ground to establish yourself as experts in what looks to be a heavily litigated area over the next decade+.
One of the core principles of the American system of government is that we outsource enforcement to private parties. Instead of the public needing to fund enforcement with tax dollars private parties undertake risky litigation in exchange for the chance of a big payoff.
There is a reasonable argument that's a horrible system. But it doesn't make sense to criticize the plaintiff looking for a profit - the entire system has been set up such that that's what they're supposed to do. If you're angry about it lobby for either no rules or properly funded government enforcement of rules.
> But it doesn't make sense to criticize the plaintiff looking for a profit…
I don’t know man, I can simultaneously see the systemic issue that needs to be solved and also critique someone for subcoming to base needs like greed when they don’t have the need.
But the need is obviously there. Everyone who produces the following code in a non-university environment - for a fee! - needs to be punished quickly and severely:
Based on the given prompt, [Codex] produced the following response:
What they're doing is a service, though. Say that $10 million worth of damage against others has been done. If the law firm does not act, the villainous curs who caused that damage get to keep their money and are incentivized to do it again. If the law firm does act and prevails, then the villains lose their ill-gotten gains (in favor of the law firm and, sometimes, to an extent, the injured parties). That's preferable. Not ideal, but certainly better than nothing.
That implies it’s a service I want, which I have not decided on in this situation. Either way I was more arguing with the other posters claim that it “didn’t make sense” to critique this move, which I think is factually incorrect since I can come up with a few plausible situations where it does make sense
I perhaps wasn’t clear, I meant that I am not sure I want copilot constrained in this way. If I solidify that belief into definitely not wanting copilot constrained, then this would be a negative suit for me
understood, and there are others who do want it constrained this way, and their right to not be a victim of copyright infringement outweighs a desire to reap the gains of such infringement
Sadly, you've got it backwards. Class actions are opt-out. You're part of it unless you know about the settlement and contact them to let them know you're opting out of it.
That's entirely fair - and I'm not angry, just not convinced in their arguments, especially when the motive is likely not genuine.
As an aside - I'm almost positive MSFT/Github expected this and their legal teams have been prepping for this moment. Copyright Law and Fair Use in the US is so nuanced and vague that anything created involving prior art by big-pocket individuals or corporations will be litigated swiftly.
I expected one of these lawsuits to come first from Getty or one of the big money artist estates against OpenAI or Stability.ai, but Getty and OpenAI seem to be partnering instead of litigating.
Are you against policing? Because that's government enforcement. Admittedly policing in the US is god awful, but I still think most people would rather have it than no police force at all.
Government enforcement of this kind of law is really no different. It wouldn't be the legislature doing it.
> If you're angry about it lobby for either no rules or properly funded government enforcement of rules.
No, there are plenty of other changes you might want to see.
For example, in the American system, judges are generally not allowed to be aware of anything not mentioned by a party to the case. There is no good reason for this.
This is a classic example of the ad hominem fallacy. Stating that "they are no angels" doesn't detract from whether they're right or capable of effecting positive legal change.
Frankly, I don't care if anyone makes a name for themselves for doing this. In fact, I applaud them and would happily give them recognition should they be successful.
Similarly, I'd hope that there are opportunties for profit in this space, given that I don't want cheap lawyers botching this case and setting terrible legal precedent for the rest of us. Microsoft has a billion dollar legal team and they will do everything they can to protect their bottom line.
Just like Google’s noble but misguided attempt to make all the world’s books searchable a few years back, what we have here is IP law getting in the way of a societal goodness.
Copyright and patent are not natural; they’re granted by law “to promote progress in the useful arts”. At first glance here it appears that GitHub is promoting progress and the plaintiffs are just rent-seeking.
It can be and is both what you describe and a necessary feature of our adversarial legal system.
Github can't really go to a court by themselves and ask "is this legal?". There is the concept declaratory relief but you need to be at least threatened with a lawsuit before that's on the table.
So Github kinda just has to try releasing CoPilot and get sued to find out. The legal system is setup to reward the lawyer who will go to bat against them to find out if it is legal. The plantiff (and maybe lawyer, depending on how the case is financed) take the risk they are wrong just as Github had to.
It is setup this way to incentivize lawyers to protect everyone's rights.
But who cares? Who else is willing to fund litigation on this important legal question? The real justice here is declarative and benefits everyone.
No matter who litigates and for what reasons it will be extremely valuable for good precedents to be set around the question of things like Copilot and DALL-E with respect to copyright and ownership. I'd rather have self interested lawyers dedicated to winning their case than self interested corporations fighting this out.
I brought a class action suit against Sharp and I was the class representative. They settled. The judge awarded me a whopping $1,000 from the settlement money. From the time I put into it, including 3 or 4 full days in NYC because my deposition coincided with a snowstorm, I didn’t exactly come out ahead financially.
Obviously this is different for the reasons you stated, but I didn’t want people to think bringing a class action lawsuit forward is a way to get rich. It’s a bit of a joke, really.
> rather than an aggrieved individual looking for justice.
How an aggravated individual can seek justice from a big multinational corporation? That's not possible unless that individual is a retired billionaire wanting to become a millionaire.
I have a friend from highschool who does class action lawsuits. He spends a very large amount of money funding his suits on things like expert witnesses among other things, only 1 in 5 pays off, so it has to pay off well. His model is similar to venture capitalism. Most of these cases take 5-7 years to execute. So he basically takes out loans from another laywer to fund them. His average pay for the last 10 years has been around $140k/year. Some years he makes nothing and pays out a lot, others he makes several million and pays back all the loans. Another way to think of it is like giving money to tax fraud wistleblowers.
Yes he does think of it somewhat like that, establishing himself in an area. However a lot of his work comes from finding people aggrieved by something not them finding him.
How come? When people contributed code publicly they attached a license how the code may be used. Is training an AI model on this allowed? I think there's a fair, important and novel legal question to be examined here.
Patent trolls usually file lawsuits that are just unmerited, but rely simply on the fact that mounting a defence is more expensive than settling.
It is a little different. The first patent troll that blazed the trail gets both more credit (for ingenuity) and blame (for the deleterious impact) in my opinion. I'll give the same internet points to these guys.
Programmer/Lawyer Plaintiff + upstart SF Based Law Firm + novel technology = a good shot at a case that'll last a long time, and fertile ground to establish yourself as experts in what looks to be a heavily litigated area over the next decade+.