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It buys time for them. GitHub will have a lengthy internal discussion about DMCA takedown requests and the fact that the code isn't on their server. During this time it'll give the HN and reddit communities time to grab the link and redistribute.

Understood!

But zipped files are super fishy though. What if this repo is spreading malware?

Zip is just a tarball that Windows understands.

Potentially due to the threat of DMCAs. Pixeldrain and Mega are widely used in piracy and sometimes leaks like these, considering they are not known for complying with them most of the time, unlike GitHub.

Because it will be taken down from Github.

to reduce the chances of GitHub taking it down, perhaps? not sure it'll help though