It doesn't make sense. If I make a piece of software that curls a random gist and then puts it into your editor am I infringing or are you infringing when you run it or are you infringing when you use that file and distribute it somewhere?

> If I make a piece of software that curls a random gist and then puts it into your editor am I infringing

Depends on the license. If it's MIT and you serve the license, no, you are not infringing at all. A trimmed version of MIT for the relevant bits:

Permission is hereby granted [...[ to any person obtaining a copy of this software [..] to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, [...] subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

> are you infringing when you run it

Depends on the license

> are you infringing when you use that file and distribute it somewhere

Depends on the license

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When copilot gives you code without the license, you can't even know!

Well, `curl` will download a gist without checking its license. So curl is infringing?

The law will consider "intent". By your logic, web browsers are infringing.

Can you use curl to infringe on copyright? Yes. Is every time you use curl copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with curl? Yes.

Can you use copilot to infringe? Yes. Is every time you use copilot copyright infringement? No. Can you in theory tell when you are infringing with copilot? *No*

my response above about intent is wrong, but the rest still holds imo.

So the difference is entirely in being able to find out whether you're infringing or not?

Surely that's solvable with a EULA that passes the responsibility onto the user to search?

I'm not a lawyer, but if you provide a platform that enables infringement that's different than if you provide a tool that could enable infringement.

Popcorn time vs. bittorrent.

And you are right the EULA could say "it's up to the end user to confirm you can use this code". But then how do you verify? That slows down "productivity" where copilot promises "speeding up" productivity.

Yep, makes sense! I guess we'll see what arguments the court finds convincing. I, for one, hope Copilot stays, but if we can delay its destruction long enough I think we'll get open-source models that will give us this for free. And then the cat will be out of the bag.