DMCA takedowns GitHub has received | Hacker News Reader

DMCA takedowns GitHub has received

github.com

67 pointsfranze28 comments

Just browsing a few of the Sony DMCA notices, I can't help but notice something strange:

   [5] Please act expeditiously to remove the file-downloads found at the following URLs:
   http://www.fileserve.com/file/cWAKEDR
   https://github.com/kakaroto/ps3keys
   https://github.com/kakaroto/ps3tools
   ...

Fair enough for the ps3keys and tools, but there's a URL for fileserve there. That's not github, wonder why they think they should send that URL to github.

You wouldn't believe the amount of crappy DMCA notices that get sent out by various bots. So far we've received ones for:

1) Our copy of jQuery (FOX claimed they owned it)

2) Our contact page

3) Our custom written javascript includes

4) Our CSS

5) A daily notice for two weeks, even though the infringing file was removed within minutes of the first request

It's utterly abusrd. There's really no way to make the crappy notices stop (you can't contact the company that sends them, they ignore email/phone calls).

But sending out fake DMCA notices is perjury! And here companies are creating bots to do this? This is absotulely ridiculous.

The only part of a DMCA takedown notice that is under penalty of perjury is: "A statement [...] under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." If a takedown notice doesn't have meet all the requirements, it can be safely ignored (ie. you the ISP or host will still get sued, but might get it dismissed).

Note that for a counter-notice, the penalty for perjury is somewhat broader, in that it includes your statement that you have a good-faith belief that the material was removed by mistake or due to mis-identification. This means that you technically cannot make a valid counter-notice for what you have reason to believe is a bad-faith takedown notice, even if that bad-faith notice does not carry the penalty of perjury for the sender. (The sender may still be liable for your legal fees.)

This imbalance where the first to send notice in a copyright dispute has such a strong advantage and presumption of being right may even be a violation of the equal protection clause.

I'd say there's more bots sending out DMCA notices then actual people.

There's essentially no penalty for sending out incorrect ones. We'd end up having to take the senders to court, which would end up being very costly.

Every program has bugs.

Sony shouldn't be handing power of attorney to robots just yet.

When the program makes legal statements under penalty of perjury on behalf of its operator, the program should not be permitted to have bugs.

IANAL, but isn't it perjury, or at least something subject to civil sanctions, to attest to facts in this manner without personally performing enough due diligence to ascertain the facts are at least probably correct? The Bar Association should be interested in its members signing-off on legal documents they have not properly vetted. Perhaps the best course of action is an education campaign directed at the States' Bar Associations.

Likewise, when an automated stock trading program makes unfavorable trades, the company running the program is responsible for those trades.

To the extent machines are allowed to proxy for humans, the humans are fully responsible for the actions, automated or not.

Interesting that Sony was pretty takedown-happy a year ago and then seemingly went silent. Did something change? I can't imagine people stopped creating "infringing" content.

Also of note is the decompiled code with license info still intact, like 2012-07-16-microsoft.markdown. Seems like a dick move to put something like that on github, especially without even bothering to clean up the code or do something interesting with it.

Yeah, Sony's requests were regarding the tools that, at the time, could make any PS3 crackable from official firmware.

A year later they have all those old PS3's off the shelves and none have firmware 3.55 or lower, so they appear to not care as much.

AirBnb is issuing DMCA requests for their interview questions??

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/05885612f96982a7e4062a13...

Can you really issue a take down for an interview question? The text of one, ok, but the essence of the question itself?

Surely not?

I wonder if you have to sign an NDA to be asked the questions? IMO these cutesy interview questions have gone over the top and I think I'm going to use this as my proof.

But NDAs are for trade secrets and DMCA is only for copyright.

Not to mention that a NDA only provides a way to attack the person who signed it, and has no effect on anybody else even if they further spread the information.

If the interview question consists of some copyrightable source code with questions about it, why not?

It seems highly unlikely that even if there was source code, the candidate would be able to remember it with a high enough level of detail to warrant this.

maybe it was an online pre-interview question that you get to solve at home within a given timeframe?

This reminds me of all the major flaws in the DMCA, like not being allowed to "circumvent any measure that effectively controls access". The question that's unanswered: if a few lines of code can circumvent a measure, does that measure effectively control access? Either way: didn't stop Cisco from sending Github a takedown for a keygen. (Despite provisions in the DMCA that make distributing the circumvention device legal, like "a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs".

Corollary: is it legal to open a closed door if you have to twist the handle first? What if the spring is tighter than on a normal door?

My favorite was the bitcoin one. The complaintant (?) used DMCA to protect the MIT license on some code he wrote. Nice!

Link: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2012-01-09-bitcoi...

Not sure if any of those are included here but I have definitely seen links to 'warez' hosted as gists recently.

I think it would be interesting to see the responses too

There are some posted. Here are a couple: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2011-02-03-sony-c... https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2012-03-26-deathw...

Click the notice and click the link. Many 404 or have been "disabled", but a few have counter-notices filed after them in the DMCA repo.

Should not github take care of the commit messages?

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