Class-action lawsuit filed against Microsoft's GitHub Copilot for software piracy

guest · Nov 7, 2022

By Usama Jawad @UsamaJawad96 - November 4, 2022

GitHub Copilot sounds like a fascinating tool on paper. Launched in preview by Microsoft over a year ago, it's basically an AI-powered extension that uses the code present in all public repositories on GitHub and then write code on your behalf based on simple prompts. For example, you could just write "Take an average of the numbers in this list" and GitHub Copilot will autonomously write the code to do this based on its training on GitHub codebases.
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Microsoft announced GitHub Copilot's general availability a few months ago at $10/month, but pretty much since its inception, the product has been criticized for its legal status in the sense that it uses the code written by other people without their permission and that Microsoft profits off of these practices. Today, a class-action lawsuit has been filed against the AI-powered pair programming tool.

The lawsuit has been initiated by Matthew Butterick, who is a programmer, author, and lawyer. He is being represented by the Joseph Saveri Law Firm from California. Together, they are claiming that Microsoft is engaging in open-source software piracy by using billions of lines of code written by millions of programmers under various licenses including MIT, GPL, and Apache. The defendants named in the lawsuit are GitHub, Microsoft, and its technology partner OpenAI.
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Butterick goes on to say that: [...]
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Joseph Saveri Law Firm and Matthew Butterick File Class-Action Lawsuit Against GitHub, Microsoft, and OpenAI Over Violations of Open-Source Licenses Arising From GitHub Copilot, an AI-based product

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Class-action lawsuit filed against Microsoft's GitHub Copilot for software piracy

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Class-action lawsuit filed against Microsoft's GitHub Copilot for software piracy

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