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Comment by Shared404 | Hacker News Reader

Sourcehut may be a good option as well.

Drew seems like the type to fight illegitimate DMCA's.

Edit: I'm curious, why the downvotes? I am legitimately trying to be helpful. I recognize if you have personal differences with ddevault, but he puts his code where his mouth is.

If I'm misunderstanding said downvotes, please enlighten me.

Edit 2: Many thanks to those who have responded. It appears I misunderstood about this specific instance, where the DMCA does have some legitimacy.

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Didn't downvote, but I think you overestimate anyone if you think they'll go to court for you against an org as big as the RIAA or Google (unless perhaps if it's the EFF).

My (flawed?) understanding of DMCA is that the project whom a DMCA is filed against can counter-file if they believe the DMCA is illegitimate, after which the burden of going to court is between the group that filed the DMCA and the group they targeted.

Someone else in this thread linked this, which seems like a useful resource as well: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-10-29-how-mailing-lists-prev...

Edit: It was biryani_chicken who linked the resource above.

Also, I misunderstood about the legitimacy of this specific claim, my brain had yet to shift gear from the youtube-dl shenanigans.

Thanks for the response!

The problem with both RIAA and Google takedown demands is never about the DMCA takedown in relation to copyright infringement, its the circumvention (it seems that EFF understand this very well, but most online commentors didn't get this, which was exarcabated by GitHub using the DMCA takedown repo). Now, no one knows if GitHub were also directly targeted by legal threats as an acessory to "enable" the distribution of circumvention tools, which RIAA and Google is arguing.

Also, what RIAA is trying to remove is the code that allows to get the music video files from YouTube, which is served differently to normal videos (not just the test units in question). This was conspicuously absent from all discussions I've read.

He might not be able to fight the DMCA takedown, but makes it easier for contributors to not get too disrupted by it: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-10-29-how-mailing-lists-prev...

This is absolutely a legitimate DMCA notice. The repos in question are created with the sole intention of bypassing a DRM scheme, which allows for takedown under DMCA 1201.

It is a valid DMCA notice, but not for that reason. The repo contained Google copyrighted code.

It’s both:

> It is our belief that the repo as a whole represents a circumvention tool in violation of 1201 and therefore needs to be removed.

> Additionally, the Git repo contains several files that violate Google’s copyrights:

> <a bunch of files>

> In addition to this request, we have filed a separate Sensitive Data takedown request of this file: /widevine-l3-decryptor as it contains the secret Widevine RSA private key, which was extracted from the Widevine CDM and can be used in other circumvention technologies.

> > It is our belief that the repo as a whole represents a circumvention tool in violation of 1201 and therefore needs to be removed.

That bit is probably irrelevant to the DMCA takedown procedure, which only applies to "material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity". I don't think there's much clear precedent to what "be the subject of infringing activity" means, but decryption tools that don't use stolen code definitely don't qualify as "material that is claimed to be infringing".

And if Google does want to claim that the circumvention tool is infringing a Google copyright rather than merely running afoul of an unrelated provision of the DMCA, then Google has to specifically identify their own work of decryption code that the circumvention tool is ripping off. All this notice specifically identifies in the way of actual infringement are two documentation PDFs and an API header file (and we all know where Google stands on API copyright).

> It is our belief that the repo as a whole represents a circumvention tool in violation of 1201 and therefore needs to be removed.

"Their belief" is meaningless, to get a circumvention tool removed they need a court order.

Or a polite request to github, apparently, which seems to work too.

I don't feel as bad about it here as about youtube-dl. I disagree, mind you -- I'd like github to act as a neutral service provider -- but this one is a place where I can see why githu might hold a different opinion. It's an ideological split like abortion, gun control, or similar, where reasonable people can violently disagree.

The whole "Sensitive Data takedown request" is also a github thing, but this one is a written policy:

https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...

It has nothing to do with the DMCA.

It contained a private key!

It might be a legitimate DMCA notice, but the DMCA does not apply globally.

But it does apply to GitHub, an American company.

Almost every western country has ratified the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, which requires laws broadly similar to the DMCA. The DMCA is just the US's implementation of the WIPO treaty.

IANAL but i don't see 1201 mentioned in https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

Drew does not fight DMCAs, he's said so himself. Why would he? His company must follow the law.

> His company must follow the law.

Of course. That being said, wasn't there a big discussion when this happened to youtube-dl about how that was almost certainly not a legitimate DMCA? That being the case, disregarding it would not be illegal, at least to my (quite limited) understanding.

It appears I misunderstood in this specific case as there is a much stronger case for this DMCA to be considered legitimate.

Its not against the law to fight dmca notices that aren't legit. Its an unnessary risk that does not benefit him, but its definitely not illegal.

That said at least part of this notice seems legit.

dude, just donate to the eff. you don't need to volunteer someone else to take on a legal battle for you

I'm not volunteering someone else to fight, I'm mentioning their payed service, which seems like it could be useful for this use case.

I'm sorry if that's offensive.

(Also, I donate to the EFF)

What successes has EFF had?

https://www.eff.org/cases/2018-dmca-rulemaking

Something they've participated in every 2 years since 2000, as documented here: https://www.eff.org/cases?group=0-9

The EFF has been supported heavily by Google in the past. Some of the lawyers at Google worked at the EFF and vice versa. Moreover, they often have private fundraising parties for Google staffers. I doubt they're going to bite the hand that feeds them.

Possibly because if anything is, this is a legitimate claim. Ignoring the "it's a tool to circumvent DRM" nonsense (which is a "legitimate" claim under the DMCA).

The repository itself is pirated code - it is code held under copyright by google, and google doesn't want it to be public, therefore anyone distributing it is violating copyright. The DMCA claim is substantially less than what they could do. Actual copyright violations have very large fines.

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