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by jrochkind1 3467 days ago
It is unlikely your contact details are copyrightable in the first place, in the US anyway.

It is unlikely you have the legal ability to prohibit someone from publishing your contact details... _under copyright_. There may be other laws related to privacy that are relevant.

If the publisher in question is referring to "public domain", they probably have no idea what they're doing legally, "public domain" is unlikely to be relevant.

Practically, I would complain to Github itself, who is likely to frown at them doing that, and cut off their API access or what have you.
2 comments
hnysacct 3467 days ago
Yeah, contact details as far as I know aren't copyrightable nor under public domain. Things like your personal contact details though are subject to privacy violation laws if they are used without your consent, I believe. So nothing stopping from one publishing them, but if one asks to have personal detail taken down, they should be honoured without hesitation.

I've brought the issue to Github as well for them to judge whether there is any breach. They are best to decide I guess.

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JoshTriplett 3467 days ago
> Things like your personal contact details though are subject to privacy violation laws if they are used without your consent, I believe.

Far fewer laws about that exist than most people think, especially in the US. Some law and case law exists, but fairly narrowly. "Public disclosure of private information" doesn't apply here, since you posted the information publicly. "Intrusion of solitude" and "false light" don't apply. You could perhaps make a case for "appropriation" (using someone else's information for commercial gain without consent), but submitting that information to Github (and thus granting permission to Github under their terms, which they can choose to further grant to others) would negate that.

In any case, making legal threats doesn't seem likely to help here, and seems like overkill given the current state of the situation.

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hnysacct 3467 days ago
Good clarification! However, no legal threats have been made as of yet. Simply pointing out TOS clauses, and discussing the matter with the community.

By the time lawyers get involved, which would be after the New Year, then the author might have already merged the PR and problem solved.

At the moment, it's simply a matter of discussion.

No urgency to push the developers to take action either.

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jrochkind1 3466 days ago
> So nothing stopping from one publishing them, but if one asks to have personal detail taken down, they should be honoured without hesitation.

I don't think that sentence describes any actually existing law in the US.

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JoshTriplett 3467 days ago
Contact information, yes (though in other countries it may fall under "database rights", but those same countries have stricter laws about uses of personal information). But copyright would definitely apply to some other types of profile information, such as pictures and bios.

And yes, if the project refuses to fix this issue, contacting Github seems like the right next step.

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