[bad_user]

Once a piece of software is released as open source, it can be freely distributed. And Maven Central packages require an open source license. The author might own the copyright, but he licensed that copyright away when publishing on Maven Central.

In other words a "copyright takedown request" isn't valid, unless the author was in violation of the copyright of somebody else while publishing those packages and this was decided in a court of law.

It might happen, but I have never heard of Maven Central packages being removed.

But I do see GitHub repos being renamed or removed all the time and I have seen NPM packages removed, for no reason other than the author wanted so, screwing the entire JavaScript ecosystem.

[lmm]

> In other words a "copyright takedown request" isn't valid, unless the author was in violation of the copyright of somebody else while publishing those packages and this was decided in a court of law.

The DMCA process is law. Maven Central (like anyone else who hosts things) have to respond to valid takedown requests (which means taking down content long before any court case; even if a counter-notice is filed the content still has to be taken down temporarily) or else they'd become liable for infringement themselves. It's less common than on github or NPM, sure (which I suspect has more to do with the complexity of maven central's registration process than anything else), but it happens and any host on the scale of maven central needs a process in place for doing it.

[juliusmusseau]

Even bad_user's assertion that "Once a piece of software is [legitimately] released as open source, it can be freely distributed" is not 100% true. There is a mechanism in US copyright law through which copyright holders and their heirs can unilaterally retract copyright grants and licenses 56 years after the initial grant or license.

Granted this is quite the esoteric edge case... at least for now. ;-)