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Comment on Ask HN: Can I charge GitHub for using my code in Copilot?parent

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You can restrict some activities, but not all. In particular you can't restrict using code as an AI training set. To be fair the law isn't totally clear here though.

For example see https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2020/02/27/copyrights-in-t...

Several cases – most notably the litigation surrounding Google Books – suggest that using copyrighted works for the non-expressive purpose of training AI models amounts to fair use.

So Copilot itself is not infringing when it trains these models. Individual people using Copilot are probably safe as well since small accidental copyright infringements are usually okay, but perhaps some cases it would run into trouble.

You can tell Copilot is using code under fair use, not according to a license, because almost all licenses require you to maintain the license and attribution and Copilot doesn't do that.

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