Code Laundering As a Service (CLAS)

If you copy&paste, or even accidental reuse a copyrighted code or other materials in your personal project, and a Big Co. finds out they're going to sue you and/or take down your project.

If Github/Microsoft scraps all of GPLed code they can find and feeds it into a database and obfuscates it calling it “an AI”, then start selling it for money, apparently it's supposed to be a “fair use”.

Personally I believe that the concept of “intellectual property” (copyrights, patents, software licenses and everything like that) is deeply harmful to our civilization, unfair and stupid, and the only rationale supporting it are built around protecting economic interests of people benefiting from artificial, unnecessary scarcity it creates. (And yes, intellectual endeavors would still happen – flourish even more – just the model of financing it would change completely).

So I think what Copilot is doing is moral and good, and I don't mind them making money on it. But since big companies (including Microsoft) are the ones that guard their IP like hawks, I think they need to be called for what they are doing here – breaking stupid rules they have been always promoting and building their empire on.

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