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by teraflop 3233 days ago
I think it's worth mentioning that even if an easylist filter entry counts as "circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access" -- which I think is debatable for multiple reasons -- the DMCA takedown procedure only covers copyright infringement. It does not apply to anti-circumvention measures.

As Admiral's blog post points out, Github recommends using the same contact procedure for anti-circumvention takedown requests as for normal DMCA takedowns. But as far as I can tell, they're doing so purely on their own initiative; such a takedown request doesn't have the force of law in the same sense that a claim of copyright infringement does.

2 comments

> Github recommends using the same contact procedure for anti-circumvention takedown requests as for normal DMCA takedowns

I made this mistake to, Admiral's blog post does imply it. However, they were making a DMCA take down request, based off the reasoning it was for anti-circumvention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

It most certainly does apply to anti-circumvention in many cases.

I don't understand how your comment is a response to mine. Could you please clarify?

The DMCA is a set of laws. The DMCA takedown procedure is a part of those laws, defined in a fairly rigid way: it has specific notification requirements, timeframes, and is clearly defined to only apply to copyright infringement. Just because the DMCA also prohibits circumvention, it doesn't automatically follow that circumvention is the same as copyright infringement. And the Wikipedia section that you linked to doesn't mention the takedown process at all.

But nothing prevents Admiral from notifying Github about a DMCA violation informally and Github removing the code.
But isn't that referring to DRM?