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by ratww 1881 days ago
On the link you posted:

> Otherwise, I will have to transfer information about you to lawyers who will cooperate with github.com and Chinese government to physically find you and stop the illegal use of licensed content.

This is by far the worst takedown request I've ever seen in Github. The physically find you is especially concerning, since the owner of the repository seems to be a Chinese national.

Apparently by the time the takedown was written, the API was public but the documentation was taken down. The next replies don't make it better, and it seems they don't have a leg to stand on to send a proper DMCA.

I also had no idea they belonged to Ultimate Guitar. Honestly I lost some of the respect I had for MuseScore and Audacity teams after seeing this.

This is IMO worse than the youtube-dl debacle.

EDIT: The same developer who wrote the email seems to be making threats involving the police in another repository: https://github.com/Xmader/musescore-downloader/issues/42#iss...
1 comments
zxzax 1881 days ago
If you do illegal things, the authorities will get involved. That's how that works.
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ratww 1881 days ago
The way the issue is worded is not how things work in the civilised world.

The affected parties have first to prove or at least argue that the software is doing anything illegal. The repository owners were using a documented, public, authenticated, third party API that was only taken down after the issue was posted. This is not illegal.

If there were anything illegal like piracy happening, it should have been resolved is by having the affected parties send a DMCA to GitHub, just like in the YouTube-dl situation, just like the repo owner asked Daniel J. Rey to do.

This is how it's done. Not by sending lies ("illegally using our private API" that was actually publicly documented) and making mafia-like threats ("will physically find you").

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zxzax 1881 days ago
If you are committing crimes in China, the police (i.e. the Chinese government) will find you and stop you. I don't know why this is a point of contention. That is a fact.

If the API was protected in any way, the usage can fall under anti-circumvention. That's how the DMCA works. This is also a fact.

We can dispute what actually happened, and we can dispute invididual laws in China (or in EU, or the US), but your assertions seem to be suggesting that it's wrong that these things happen at all, which is not true.

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ratww 1881 days ago
Making a program is not illegal, as long as it's not circumventing anything. If it were, SEND A DMCA. FOLLOW THE LAW.

The API was public, authenticated, documented and intended for third party developers. Even if it was reverse engineered there is still legal grounds for that, as seen by the YouTube-dl situation.

If there was any law-breaking, it would be the people downloading scores and MuseGroup for distributing them.

Repeating what I said below:

Even if musescore-downloader was doing illegal things (and I would argue it wasn't, since there was no circumvention of anything), the law should be followed by both sides, no excuses. That means sending a DMCA instead of a threat.

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zxzax 1881 days ago
This may have been an accident where the legal notice was sent out before taking the API offline. If that's the case I agree they messed up. The DMCA may not apply here.
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