A attack reflection of sort.
Edit: You're technically not attacking you're reflecting if the attack stops there's nothing to reflect.
Just like in martial arts you don't just take a beating you defend and return the opponents attack back at them. Seems fair to me.
You can always fight, even if you believe you will lose.
If that were the case, I don't think they would have backed down and allowed access to Github again.
I sincerely doubt github is at all important to China.
On the other hand, the capitalists running the communist party might scoff at the idea of software that everyone is allowed to copy, because that offers no advantage to the unscrupulous. At least I'd imagine they would scoff at copyleft, just like Github does.
An eye for an eye would leave two people blind: the person who blinded the other, and the one that was blinded.
Once people start seeing the severe consequence of blinding someone (getting blinded back), they and everyone else would most likely stop, not continue blinding more people.
Such errors result in people who shouldn't be blinded themselves being blinded, and are themselves the subject of retaliation by the same error-prone process.
Well under your reading wouldn't it just leave them each without one eye. They may be blind but in most cases they will still have one other functioning eye. /pedantry
"Who paid retribution for the second blinding? The second paid for the first, I demand a third eye" ... ergo the aphorism.
Why only one? :)