Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Shamelessly Attacks Both Git and Projects in GitHub, Using Plagiarism in "AI" Clothing (Exit GitHub Now!)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 26, 2023

A mountain of plagiarism

Silhouette of hiker in the Canadain Rockies

TWO readers contacted us regarding GitHub. They contacted us yesterday because of legitimate concerns, not all this "doomsday" stuff (sensationalism which distracts from $9 billion lawsuits for plagiarism, to name just one lawsuit out of several). Ignore the propaganda mill known as OSI; Microsoft pays the OSI to lie and to support plagiarism; today's OSI is effectively contracted by Microsoft to attack the GPL (copyleft) and constantly promote GitHub, which isn't just proprietary but also a war against Free software licensing (striking at the very heart, rendering licence enforcement difficult).

Regarding the readers, they presented different angles. One of them sought to point out that the chatbots and various other plagiarism engines of Microsoft are really not as exciting as Microsoft-sponsored publishers want us to believe, quoting this recent Nitter thread:

Recent papers support that current artificial intelligence paradigm - deep learning - is based on compression. Transformers & diffusion models encode compressed versions of the original data. AI is currently just glorified compression.

Another reader said that Microsoft "continues to illegally harvest and regurgitate copyrighted material in its LLM and is trying to shift the focus away from that activity by blaming the chumps that interact with the results." See what we posted under "Copyright" yesterday evening, notably a post from chatbots booster Matt Rickard [1], worryingly noting that "GitHub recently said it was “re-founding” itself on Copilot instead of git" (the "Git" in "GitHub").

GitHub still lacks a business model. GitHub had several rounds of layoffs this year and even an office shutdown.

Imagine what they will try next...

Microsoft is attacking Git, as it always did, and Linus Torvalds is too scared at the wheel, seeing that some of his bosses at the Linux Foundation are active Microsoft employees, staging a coup against the target of attacks. They can have him fired at any time (see the Sam Altman saga), sans the potential outcry it may (or would) cause. The second link, from International Business Times [2], says that "Microsoft believes it should not be held responsible if people use an artificial intelligence (AI) tool like Copilot to infringe on copyrighted material."

This is the typical "the computer did it" defense, which has long made itself alluring to sociopathic executives, whether they referred to computers and programs as "AI" or something less abstract. I pointed out nearly a decade ago that companies were outsourcing "moderation" (censorship) to algorithms so as to dodge accountability, including lawsuits.

Finally, Walled Culture (Dr. Glyn Moody) [3] speaks of "the fraudulent scheme [which] netted more than $23.4 million" after it "cheated artists".

This is pretty much what all that LLM (not "AI") noise is about. With help from corrupted (bribed) media, they seek to legitimise the hoarding and privatisation (attributions and licences removed) of artists' original works, whether those works are books or paintings or whatever else exists out there, not even in the Public Domain.

Related/contextual items from the news:

  1. How AI Changes Workflows

    GitHub recently said it was “re-founding” itself on Copilot instead of git. GitHub has always been about the workflow — there are plenty of other hosted git providers, but GitHub was the first to put together pull requests, issues, and collaboration into a single workflow. Re-founding on Copilot is a way to acknowledge that AI will drastically change the developer workflow.

  2. Microsoft Says It Is Not Responsible If An AI Like Copilot Is Used To Infringe On Copyrighted Material

    Microsoft believes it should not be held responsible if people use an artificial intelligence (AI) tool like Copilot to infringe on copyrighted material.

  3. Scammers who made $23.4 million from Content ID must pay back only $3.4 million to cheated artists

    According to another TorrentFreak post, the fraudulent scheme netted more than $23.4 million. Aside from the astonishing success of such a simple scam, what is also noteworthy is that people were complaining to YouTube about it as far back in 2017, but nothing seems to have been done then.

    It is only now that a court has finally ordered the scammers to pay back the money they received to the artists who have been losing out for years. Some 800 people came forward to claim restitution, and they will now be paid the princely sum of $3,365,352.85. As you may have noticed, this seems to leave the odd $20 million in the hands of the scammers. Maybe crime does pay when it’s carried out using today’s dysfunctional copyright system.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Before the OSI Was Bribed and Hijacked by Microsoft via GitHub and Compromised Management...
The OSI isn't even remotely "woke"
The OSI Has Been Silent for Over 3 Weeks, It Has a Severe Trust Issue After Promoting Microsoft and Proprietary GitHub
OSI took a lot of money from Microsoft to become a Microsoft lobbyist
Bribery is OK If You Work for Microsoft (No Punishment Expected)
It's very troubling and a symptom of a broken society/system when particular laws or rules are applied and enforced against some people but not against others
Someone Should Remind Microsoft Lunduke That Microsoft Hires Many Sexual Criminals and Pedophiles as Well
Microsoft Lunduke on an "expedition" to find one or more perverts, then generalise to everyone in the "community"
Cash Machines (ATMs) Make Mistakes and They're Proprietary Software
Correcting mistakes is a colossal challenge
Yes, Microsoft is the Problem
"I am no MS shill."
Another Failed Use Case for Chatbots (LLM): Legal Advice and Analysis
They're just some self-discrediting toy that costs way too much to operate
 
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Wayland Unfit for Use and LLM Slop Faking One's Language Skills With Robot Communications
Links for the day
Nailing the "Hey Hi" (AI) Hype Bubble
So-called "hey hi" as they define it now is all about large companies or regimes remotely controlling the processes running on your machine and even your very own behaviour on your machine, which is in effect no longer your machine but some remotely controlled apparatus
"Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users" Now as a T-shirt
That's shown along the sidebar
Links 29/07/2025: Bad Climate and "Fair Software Licensing" Blasts Microsoft
Links for the day
Links 29/07/2025: Data Brokers Gone Wrong/Rogue and "Copyright Thicket"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Linuxconfig.org, Linuxsecurity.com, Fagioli, The Register
Today's "Slopwatch" isn't the first article about LLM slop
We Cover Topics Other Sites Are Too Afraid to Cover (Even When They Know the Facts)
It's not that they doubt the truth, they just realise there may be consequences for talking about it
They Try to Tell Us the Free Software Foundation Inc is Dying, But Its Revenue Doubled Since the Dot-Com Bubble Burst
Being in "Activism" is never easy; but it does positive things for society
It's About the Cost of Workers, Not the Fictional Skills Shortage (That Does Not Exist, the Media Spreads False and Sometimes Self-Fulfilling Narratives)
This issue isn't limited to computing, some dub it "globalism"
Links 29/07/2025: More Pushbacks Against Slop and More Praises of Tom Lehrer
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/07/2025: Purple Yarrow and Understanding Op Amps
Links for the day
This Monday WebProNews Absolutely Flooded the Web With Fake (LLM Slop) 'Articles' About "Linux", Google News Promoted Them as Legitimate
All of the following are fake articles attributed to pseudonyms or authors that don't exist; the images are also slop. Why does Google promote these?
Linuxiac is Not a Slopfarm, But at Least Some of Its Articles Are Machine-Generated Fakes
what we said about it was correct
Expect More Microsoft Layoffs
"Are more job cuts coming?"
Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries
Does that seem like the behaviour expected from a company which claims it is "worth" trillions?
LWN Downtime Due to Linode, Not LLM Bots
"I’ve received an email letting me know that there is a potential for data loss."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 28, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, July 28, 2025
Nonfree Software in My Bank, by Richard Stallman
Updated 8 hours ago
Links 28/07/2025: Science, Health, and Conflicts
Links for the day
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Healthy Self-Image With Autism and a "New Life"
Links for the day
Links 28/07/2025: COVID-19 Sped up Brain Aging, "Circumvention is More Popular Than Compliance"
Links for the day
Richard Stallman is Usually Right Because He Thinks "Outside the Box"
he is able to observe society (mores and norms) as somewhat of an outsider
LWN Has Been Down for a Long Time, Another Casualty of LLM Bots?
Time will tell. How much time though?
Slopfarms Versus 'Linux' (and Against People Who Write Real Articles About GNU/Linux)
LLM slop in slopfarms by Brian Fagioli and Redazione RHC
Gemini Links 28/07/2025: Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray and Running pkgsrc in a FreeBSD Jail
Links for the day
Microsoft Turns News Sites Into Spamfarms
Is the site The Register MS the next IDG?
The Register MS/The Register US
On Saturday I contacted them for a comment (before issuing criticism)
Hacking revelations at Vatican Jubilee of Digital Missionaries
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, July 27, 2025
The Week to Come
Planning ahead
LLM Slop Has Only Been a Boon for Misinformation Online
The very same companies that were supposed to maintain quality (again, not limited to Google with PageRank) are now actively participating in generating and spreading slop
When They Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
We're Going to Focus Less on the Molotov Cocktail-Throwing Microsofters and More on Patents
We can get back to focusing on what we wanted to focus on all along
Just Trying to Keep Web Sites Honest (Journalistic Integrity)
the latest articles in LinuxIac are real
Links 27/07/2025: Political Affairs, Data Breaches, Attacks on Freedom of the Press
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: Hot in Japan and Terminal Escape Codes
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs Coming, Science and Hardware News
Links for the day
Links 27/07/2025: FSF Hackathon and "Hulk Hogan Was a Very Bad Man"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles