Julia Reda – GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright

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2021-07-05 11:30:07

This is a slightly modified version of my original German-language article first published on heise.de under a CC-by 4.0 license.

GitHub is currently causing a lot of commotion in the Free Software scene with its release of Copilot. Copilot is an artificial intelligence trained on publicly available source code and texts. It produces code suggestions to programmers in real time. Since Copilot also uses the numerous GitHub repositories under copyleft licences such as the GPL as training material, some commentators accuse GitHub of copyright infringement, because Copilot itself is not released under a copyleft licence, but is to be offered as a paid service after a test phase. The controversy touches on several thorny copyright issues at once. What is astonishing about the current debate is that the calls for the broadest possible interpretation of copyright are now coming from within the Free Software community.

Copyleft licences are an ingenious invention with which the Free Software scene has used copyright, the sharp sword for the content industry, to promote the free exchange of culture and innovation. Works licensed under copyleft may be copied, modified and distributed by all, as long as any copies or derivative works may in turn be re-used under the same license conditions. This creates a virtuous circle, thanks to which more and more innovations are open to the general public. Copyright, which was designed to guarantee exclusivity over creations, is used here to prevent access to derivative works from being restricted.

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