DMCA Notices Remove 8,268 Projects On Github In 2015 (torrentfreak.com) 116
An anonymous reader writes: Github's transparency report for 2015 shows that the site received many DMCA notices that removed more than 8,200 projects. "In 2015, we received significantly more takedown notices, and took down significantly more content, than we did in 2014," Github reports. For comparison, the company received only 258 DMCA notices in 2014, 17 of which responded with a counter-notice or retraction. In 2015, they received 505 takedown notices, 62 of which were the subject of counters or withdrawals. TorrentFreak reports: "Copyright holders are not limited to reporting one URL or location per DMCA notice. In fact, each notice filed can target tens, hundreds, or even thousands of allegedly infringing locations." September was a particularly active month as it took down nearly 5,834 projects. "Usually, the DMCA reports we receive are from people or organizations reporting a single potentially infringing repository. However, every now and then we receive a single notice asking us to take down many repositories," Github explains. They are called 'Mass Removals' when more than 100 repositories are asked to be removed. "In all, fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content GitHub took down in 2015."
Yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA is like the TSA:
In the words of the head of El Al, "The TSA isn't security. It's an annoyance."
The DMCA doesn't stop pirates, it just interferes with legit and acceptable things.
Re:Yeah.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I sand round corners onto a block of wood, do I owe apple money?
Yes. In fact, you even owe them if you don't do anything with blocks of wood.
Written by the Reptilians (Score:3, Funny)
I have a theory that the DMCA and other similar legislation were written by Reptilians decades in advance, placed in a drawer, and pulled out years later. They planned many (but not all) of the paths taken and knew what was to come.
That is the US. Overseas, they are hard at work on other matters. Take, for instance, that shockwaves are reverberating around the Kremlin today as word spreads regarding an extraordinary meeting called by Vladimir Putin yesterday where, according to sources, the Russian presiden
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Cool story, bro. Your talents are being wasted here.
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Wow, this guy's talking to himself!
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"Transparency" Report Features a Few Blindspots (Score:5, Interesting)
The 2014 report failed to list [reddit.com] the takedown of the Gamergate hub, and this 2015 report doesn't mention how Github took down WebMConverter [reddit.com] to strongarm the developer [reddit.com] into changing its content [imgur.com].
Instead of using a broad, feel-good word like "transparency," they should just call it the DMCA report since that's the one specific kind of censorship it discloses.
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GitHub has gone full retard.
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My favorite: /* EHCI_HRTIMER_POLL_ASS */
What about "fuck me gently with a chainsaw"?
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So you agree that a program shouldn't have the word "retard" in its name? SJW much?
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SJW
It's too early to start drinking.
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I believe the developer can name his program whatever he wants.
I believe Github can decide whether they will host a program with "retard" in its name.
I believe anyone can use a program with "retard" in its name if they want---although I would never do so in a professional setting.
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I am threatened by people diluting the word "censorship" by using it in contexts which aren't censorship, thus making it harder for me to defend myself should I, or someone who's message matters to the society I live in, ever be targeted for actual censorship.
And GitHub has every right to d
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And GitHub has every right to do so. Or do you disagree?
Do people and organizations not have the right to control their own property, and what causes they're associated with? Do you think you should be able to dictate what content someone else's website must host?
I think this is a very dangerous mindset and it's mentioned when people argue about content on private websites. You remember when Facebook was found out to be tampering with conservative news articles and effectively preventing them from appearing on the trending news list? Based on your premise this is acceptable behavior.
Things like this may be legal, but it doesn't mean they are acceptable.
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You remember when Facebook was found out to be tampering with conservative news articles and effectively preventing them from appearing on the trending news list?
I don't know that it was ever proven to be deliberate behavior, but they are allowed to do it regardless.
Based on your premise this is acceptable behavior.
Acceptability is a personal decision. With most unacceptable things, you can either opt out, ignore it, or setup an alternative.
Things like this may be legal, but it doesn't mean they are acceptable.
If it is legal and you are free to opt out, then there isn't really a problem. Opt out.
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I don't know that it was ever proven to be deliberate behavior, but they are allowed to do it regardless.
If it is legal and you are free to opt out, then there isn't really a problem. Opt out.
So you see no moral issues with the largest social media site with 1.60+ billion users manipulating the news its users see? [gizmodo.com]
Acceptability is a personal decision. With most unacceptable things, you can either opt out, ignore it, or setup an alternative.
Yes, that has worked well in the operating system arena with Microsoft throwing their whole weight against competitors.
You could also legally call someone names on the street, but it doesn't mean it's acceptable nor that the community should tolerate it.
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So you see no moral issues with the largest social media site with 1.60+ billion users
Nope. I opted out of Facebook a long time ago. Because I can do that, there is no moral issue.
When it comes to bias, Fox News is worse, and I do nothing aside from changing the channel.
Yes, that has worked well in the operating system arena with Microsoft throwing their whole weight against competitors.
There are alternatives. Good ones, too.
If enterprise organizations choose not to use these alternatives, then Microsoft will exist for a very long time regardless of what happens in the home and SOHO markets.
You could also legally call someone names on the street
To a point.
If the recipient opts out by attempting to end the interaction, the aggressor can usually be cited for disor
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Facebook dominates its market. If I'm to keep in contact with some of my friends electronically, I need to be on Facebook. (Some of them no longer use email.) If Facebook does something offensive, I can't get the benefits of a social network anywhere else.
Github is a hosting site. Anyone halfway competent could put up another pretty much trivially, maybe on Amazon Web Services, and it would host perfectly well. When Sourceforge got less attractive, people simply went over to Github and whatever that
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Would you feel the same way if it was a bakery that refused to put two husbands and write two male names on a cake because they found it offensive?
If you are for GitHub censoring other peoples speech, you should be for a bakery doing the same thing. We don't want your kind around here ;)
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But they allow https://github.com/GNOME/gimp [github.com] so what's the problem?
Re:"Transparency" Report Features a Few Blindspots (Score:5, Informative)
The GamerGate repository was removed for TOS violations, specifically that it was being used to collect information used to harass and dox people. Interestingly it also rather gave the game away for GamerGate; the readme.md file didn't mention ethics in journalism until several paragraphs down. Instead it started with a rant about feminism.
As for WebM, they were asked to remove the word "retards", and did so. It really helps if you explain these things so that people can make up their own minds as to if it was justified. It's almost as if you were hoping they wouldn't bother to check.
In any case, those things were not included in the transparency report because they were widely reported (i.e. already transparent). The transparency report is a list of otherwise non-public requests from outside parties.
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Perhaps trying to organize a movement promoting ethics around a hashtag isn't just a great idea. I mean, if you are calling for journalists to police themselves, but set your own organization up so that it can't be policed because anyone can "join" by typing a few characters, well maybe you should reconsider your plan.
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Wrap it up, some people did X therefore everyone did. It's not like you can prevent anyone from being a part of a self defined group.
If harassment and doxing were present in the files on the Gamergate repository, then Github's objective analysis of their repo was correct. It violated the TOS, and therefore it was removed. Github is a code repository, so it wasn't even an appropriate platform for organizing social action to begin with.
It doesn't matter what the Gamergate "movement" claims to be about; it matters that the Gamergate supporters on Github engaged in inappropriate conduct.
I do believe that 99% of Gamergate supporters are asscl
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So, I assume you are ok with a bakery censoring what they write on cakes then? You should be perfectly fine with a baker saying they refuse to write two male (or female) names on a cake and putting two husbands (of wives) on a cake. This is the same thing after all, and a private company should be allowed to self sensor what people can do on their premises.
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That's not censorship, that's discrimination which is illegal. Gender and sexual orientation are protected from discrimination when providing a commercial service. Posting racism on a forum that has stated it wishes to to maintain certain standards of decency and non-discriminatory language is not legally protected.
Your understanding of this issue is simplistic and childish.
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https://www.eeoc.gov/facts/qan... [eeoc.gov]
Not exactly. The bakeries are not discriminating for a job, so the Office of Personnel management interpretation of the discrimination laws does not apply.
Your understanding of this issue is entirely based upon your feelings about the specific incident, and not by equality under the law. You are the one who seems to be being simplistic and childish as you have this whole opinion that laws should have favorites. Either we are all protected equally, or the law provides no p
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My understanding of the details primarily comes from the Finding of Facts in the court ruling, personally. The ruling said that the bakery had practiced illegal discrimination to start with, and had gone on to encourage online harassment.
Laws are normally passed either to solve an existing problem or to grandstand. The LGBQ community was having discrimination problems, and many states altered their anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation. This does in fact protect anybody, as no busines
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You sir are a special snowflake...Supporting ethics in game journalism is now considered hate speech, I have seen it all.
Also, since you support Github being able to not be a platform to spread things they find offensive, I am sure you support bakers refusing to sell cakes to homosexuals, after all, a private entity shouldn't be forced to write things they find offensive.
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Unless things have changed since I paid any attention to game journalism, finding ethics was pretty much impossible, and supporting ethics was something like voting for the Unicorn Fairy party.
Github does not exist to spread things at all, and the only thing I'm likely to find offensive is COBOL projects. Github exists to host projects, and excludes what they consider illegitimate projects on a case-by-case basis. A bakery exists to make and sell baked goods, and in that state it was illegal to discrim
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Yeah, because you are the one who chooses who is mad and who needs to be contained. Keep it up AC, I'm sure they are coming for you next.
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Aww, poor APK isn't getting enough attention and needs to bring up old arguments he lost in some kind of attempt to be vindicated. Keep up the good "security" work, you make all the rest of us look like geniuses.
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Takedowns due to philosophical disagreement or policy/disciplinary reasons should remain private unless the targeted party agrees to publicize the issue. It's like disciplinary action being handled privately at work---it's best done quietly so the matter can remain confidential if desired. If someone believes the philosophy is wrong, they can always go public on their own anyway.
Gamergate was a trash "movement" and doesn't deserve free hosting anywhere. Oh, the media covering video games isn't catering to m
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That would be because the two lists are fundamentally different things. The first is things they are required to do by law. The second is something they do, on their property, based on their own policies.
The former is an unnacceptable intrusion on liberty. The latter IS liberty at work.
You may not like their policies, that's your right - and there are many other code hosts with different policies, but they have every right to have those policies. And not wanting to host content for mysoginistic dickbags on
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Definition? (Score:1)
On github, what constitutes being a valid target for a DMCA takedown?
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I don't know. If you "break" into a walled garden, as in try to create compatible software?
http://boingboing.net/2014/02/... [boingboing.net]
Re:Definition? (Score:5, Interesting)
The obvious case would be people using it like any other file(-sharing) host.
I don't think there's much if anything stopping you from adding e.g. an archive containing a movie or a bunch of ebooks into a throw-away repository and linking it from somewhere else.
Using Git might even make it easier to reupload stuff after one repo gets taken down - just add another remote to your source repo and push it.
Commercial source code, copyrighted graphcs, etc. (Score:5, Informative)
GitHub actually them available online: https://github.com/github/dmca
Some of them are like someone using one of Adobe's .svg graphics or a commercial script file or source code file being distributed.
And some of them are abuse. Like this: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2016-01-15-AlgoTrader.md and they did license their source code under the GPL as shown here at the bottom https://web.archive.org/web/20140208002555/http://code.google.com/p/algo-trader/
So it looks like most DMCA takedown requests are legitimate, but presumably a small percent are abuse.
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What's up with the AlgoTrader ass-hat? He created an open source project (he admits it was an open source project), discontinued it, and now is filing DMCA claims against people who kept a copy and forked it? Does this moron not understand what "open source" means? He should be countersued into the ground.
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Seems you are correct. https://github.com/curtiszimmerman/AlgoTrader
Sorry, we had to truncate this directory to 1,000 (Score:2)
GitHub has stopped listing new ones:
Re:Definition? (Score:5, Informative)
On github, what constitutes being a valid target for a DMCA takedown?
Well, you can look at the full list of DMCA complaints [github.com] they have received and see for yourself.
I randomly looked through them and many appear to be pretty reasonable. Many are related to simple copyright infringement, such as storing textbooks or published homework and test questions and answers. This isn't surprising, as GitHub is basically just a place you can store files.
Some say the code or data is internal or non-public and was uploaded without permission. There are also a bunch from Qualcomm complaining about firmware images and driver code. VMWare complained about internal roadmap documentation.
Some are just files with links to other materials, such as TV shows and movies. Sony and Marvel make appearances.
The line blurs some for others. There are HTML5 versions of classic games, such as ones from Nintendo and Blizzard, that got pulled down. A few companies appear to have searched GitHub for serial numbers and license keys of their products, and requested the entire repo be pulled if it contains a single file with a serial number in it. Many of these appear to be honest mistakes and have counter-notices.
In any case, it's nice to see GitHub being transparent. The DMCA requests themselves are pretty interesting, but since the vast majority of the targeted repos are no longer accessible, it's hard to gauge how justifiable most of the complains really were.
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...In any case, it's nice to see GitHub being transparent. The DMCA requests themselves are pretty interesting, but since the vast majority of the targeted repos are no longer accessible, it's hard to gauge how justifiable most of the complains really were.
My thoughts exactly... when looking though that list, almost all of them can be normalised to be meaningless:
The only ones that you can glean any information from are where the file URLs have been given instead of entire repo URLs.
Solution -- (Score:5, Funny)
Don't host anything in the US. Ever.
Host your projects in more liberal countries like Russia or China.
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Given the results of our last elections, I'd say Canada is a pretty Liberal country.
Re: Solution -- (Score:1)
Clinton type liberal but more stupid.
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When we use "liberal" as an adjective we mean as in liberty. It's not our problem that the Americans don't know what liberty is and just define "liberal" to be "progressive".
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>When Americans think of "libertarian"
So what do you want them to think then ? Classic-libertarian ? That would be anti-government, anti-business socialist anarchism !
Re:Solution -- (Score:4, Insightful)
That isn't bad advice, actually. Most of the copyright trolls seem to be in the US, so if you host your stuff in another country it saves you a lot of bother with DMCA notices. I responded to the first few I got but then just started ignoring them.
And it'll only get worse (Score:2, Funny)
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The safe harbor protections were already in place before the DMCA. All the DMCA did was weaken them, actually.
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Believe it or not, this comment section here on Slashdot existed LONG before the DMCA, which helped it NOT ONCE.
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Everybody knows it was Al Gore who invented all that shit!
Not some fucking arcane, misbegotten piece of Big Media purchased and paid-for legislation.
And yeah, the web was really boring before it was wall to wall scams and advertising, thank the gods for the DMCA which changed all that.
My icon... (Score:4, Funny)
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+1 underrated, +1 funny
Thank you President Clinton (Score:1)
The DMCA has been such a blessing to our family (my wife is also a lawyer).
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Actually probably just a bunch of petty Adobe lawyers getting entire useful projects taken down because the noobs writing the software didn't realize all those nice pretty fancy fonts shipped with Photoshop and Illustrator are not free for re-use.
counter notice (Score:5, Interesting)
I was one of those counter notices. An ex business partner tried to claim ownership of my work, after I pulled my code from the project. Github disabled and then re-enabled my repository, within 1 week of sending in a counter notice. The person claiming infringement profited from my work without giving me a cent. He failed to file against me in court, as he was as broke as I am and had no merit to his claims.
Re: counter notice (Score:1)
Can we see the actual notices? (Score:2)
These transparency reports are quite informative. But I'd love to see the actual removals. At some pont, we need to see if the removals have any validity or not. We just can't tell from this data. Is there any legal reason they can't be publicly posted? Actually, I wonder if the DMCA should *require* that they be public, so that the public at-large knows who the bullies are, or maybe who the jerks who keep copying people's stuff are. If you don't want your notice public, don't file it.
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For the DMCA takedowns, yes we can - they are at https://github.com/github/dmca [github.com] (it's in the second-to-last paragraph). I don't think they're allowed to for the NSLs. I didn't spot any listings for other forms of takedowns.
It appears that the massive majority (>5000, according to https://github.com/github/dmca... [github.com] ) is one project; judging by Google results of the repo name, it's some Chinese e-commerce site's source code. Not sure why people would be so interested in forking it that there's that many
How many false claims? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: How many false claims? (Score:3)
Re:How many false claims? (Score:5, Insightful)
DMCA full text [aclu.org]
The DMCA contains the word perjury twice: once in relation to the person making the claim, and once in relation to the person making a counter-claim:
You'll note that the only statement subject to perjury is that the claimant is authorized to act on behalf of a rights owner. The first half, about accuracy, is not subject to the same penalty. The prior section (v) mentions that a statement must be made that there is a good faith belief that the subject of the claim is infringing, but it makes no mention of any penalties if this is untrue.
There is some token language later on about misrepresentation - that the claimant is liable for any damages incurred by the alleged infringer should the claimant knowingly misrepresent that the material is infringing. However, proving there was intentional misrepresentation is a pretty high bar, and in most cases, the damages are low enough as to be not worth the legal fight anyways.
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The part under pain of perjury is the part where the notice sender claims that there is a copyrighted work, and that the sender either holds the copyright or represents the copyright holder. The other part, the infringement claim, is not under pain of perjury. It really can't be, since the DMCA does have to have room for mistakes. If there is a mistaken claim, the poster is supposed to file a counter-claim.
This has gone wrong in two ways. First, many places that host user-provided content don't care
there should be an equivalent of github on darknet (Score:2)
When did they get time travel? (Score:2)
DMCA Notices Remove 8,268 Projects On Github In 2015
I think the real news is that they have a time machine.
10 complainants sent 90% of notices, like patents (Score:2)
That's a lot of DMCA notices, more than I would expect. But perhaps this explains why:
"In all, fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content GitHub took down in 2015."
Seems my prediction didn't count on those ten people who sent most of them. The "90% by 10 people" figure is similar to patent law suits. About four or five "companies" file over half the patent law suits in the US.
I wonder, though. Other commenters who looked at the DMCA notices say most of them se