[morelish]

I forked a repo on GitHub. A few weeks later a DMCA take-down notice was issued against the repo (and all forks). Someone claimed the repo had stolen their copyrighted stuff.

Unfortunately, I couldn't verify whether the claim was correct because I wasn't provided with a copy of the original copyrighted material. So it wasn't possible for me to tell if the DMCA was genuine or not. I suspect the DMCA claim was valid but it was impossible for me to tell.

GitHubs process around the DMCA did not fill me with joy.

[rosndo]

> I couldn't verify whether the claim was correct because I wasn't provided with a copy of the original copyrighted material

> GitHubs process around the DMCA did not fill me with joy.

It sounds like Githubs DMCA process works exactly as legally mandated, and you have completely unreasonable expectations

Github is in no position to demand a copy of the original material from the complainant. That’s just not how it works.

[morelish]

Yeah I didn't really expect they would get an original copy of the material. However, what worried me was how does the process prevent malicious DMCA notices? Could I just start filing DMCA notices against repos I don't like?

[rosndo]

> Could I just start filing DMCA notices against repos I don't like?

Yeah, and unless they file counter notices Github has to take down those repos.

> However, what worried me was how does the process prevent malicious DMCA notices?

Well, it can’t. It’s just illegal to do that.

[morelish]

There's a wider issue around any cloud SAAS offering. You really need to keep local copies of stuff if you want to be sure you can reproduce your build. As there's a chance, even a good-natured cloud provider will be forced to take something that you rely upon down.

[nulbyte]

> It sounds like Githubs DMCA process works exactly as legally mandated...

I would hesitate to say 'mandated' here. It is available, but not mandated. You canegally ignore DMCA takedown notices. You lose your safe harbor in the process, but in and of itself, it is not illegal.

[Beltalowda]

It does publish the DMCA notices at https://github.com/github/dmca, which is a lot more transparent than most companies.

At the end of the day GitHub has to comply with the law, whether they like it or not. And looking through that list of DMCA notices many of them seem fairly valid on the face of it.

[riedel]

Fun to read through those. A strange one is a DMCA issued by an open source project/company: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2022/04/2022-04-0... . Does anyone know anything about this strange war between the maintainer and some other guy.

[hyperdimension]

Not only that, apparently this KeyAuth software has none other than Steve Jobs giving a glowing testimonial. I'm not sure what to make of this.

https://keyauth.win