[than3]

Well, its tough to say what the situation actually is.

9 days with no response, is a surefire way to force any professional group off your host, and embroil yourself in bad press, and potential litigation. That said the group may not be that professional but they deserve a timely response.

Can't say for sure but this sure looks and sounds more like potential antitrust violations/issues on the MS/Github side, than DMCA stuff.

I mean the silence speaks absolute volumes, and companies that do this to free customers will do this to paying customers. There is no financial benefit to doing this and keeping quiet, only damage.

Everyone in business knows the classic age-old wisdom, what you do in small things that don't matter, dictates how you handle big things when real risks are on the line.

They haven't clarified or communicated with the maintainers aside from vague boilerplate which doesn't say or point to any reasonable knowledge of what their (customers) did wrong.

So, just what everyone has been saying for years as opinion (but confirmed now). You can't use Github for anything where you need a professional response.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Sorry, I don't understand your post. Could you share where you are getting this information (e.g. you say "9 days with no response", where is that coming from?)

All I can see from the link is that the repo was taken down due to a terms of service violation. If there is more info/details/etc. about why this repo was taken down, would be nice if there were some links to that instead. Get's kinda frustrated that article submitters think we're somehow privy to the same "inside baseball" as they are, without providing any more information.

[than3]

Discussion link was posted below as one of the first links, https://github.com/orgs/iptv-org/discussions/12.

Maintainers had commented, said they had an open ticket but no response, and didn't know what was going on, and the ticket was 9 days old. That's where it came from.

[naikrovek]

the law says that GitHub (in this case) must take down the repo if a DMCA claim is made. the reason doesn't matter, the identity of the claimant doesn't matter, and the repo in question doesn't matter.

the owner of the repo that has been taken down can file a counterclaim (that may not be the word, I am not a lawyer) which the original DMCA-thrower must respond to within 10 days. if they do not respond in 10 days, or the response is insufficient in some way, the repo goes back up.

this whole time there is nothing GitHub can say to anyone that changes anything, and they would be foolish to comment on ongoing legal disputes, anyway.

most repos come back up after 10 days, I imagine, especially the ones taken down by unjust claims.

so, just because it's been 9 days with no communication means exactly nothing.

the law mandates this process, and GitHub must follow it.

[Someone1234]

So if I sent a DMCA notice against every one of Microsoft's Repos on Github, they would go down for ten days if I ignored the counter-claim? Because if not, why not?

[olliej]

You should give it a go - in reality these rules are for people hosting other people’s content (as in GitHub hosting your project), and filing against MS repos probably falls in a grey area, or an area where MS is more likely to say F you.

The problem is that the DMCA is designed to explicitly allow and encourage weaponisation of fraudulent take down claims. Specifically in GH doesn’t obey the DMCA and pull the repo the DMCA makes them legally liable for the alleged infringement. Why would they take on that risk for any random organization/project that likely can’t afford the legal costs?

[bawolff]

Github is allowed to ignore dmca requests which are blatently not valid. (As an example, wikimedia ignores about 95% of dmca requests it gets https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/transparency/2022-1/dm... )

Not a lot of incentives to do so though because if they are incorrect about it they just took on a lot of liability.

[paraselene_]

Because that'd be perjury, which is a federal crime.

https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...

I'm just gonna quote GitHub "The DMCA requires that you swear to the facts in your copyright complaint under penalty of perjury. It is a federal crime to intentionally lie in a sworn declaration. (See U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1621.) Submitting false information could also result in civil liability — that is, you could get sued for money damages. The DMCA itself provides for damages against any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity is infringing. "

[mrgalaxy]

Seems like no one has ever been prosecuted for perjury on a DMCA take down notice. This feels like more of an empty threat by Github to prevent false DMCA complaints, but of course submitting claims on their repos would be one heck of a way to test that.

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/51541/has-anyone-bee...

[naikrovek]

a lot of the "infrastructure" within the legal community, including laws themselves, assume that the attorneys practicing the law are operating in good faith and with ethics in mind. It's clear these days that there are quite a few attorneys who are simply not operating in good faith.

The law also recognizes that attorneys work for their clients and with in many ways are obligated to do what the client wishes. that includes "fucking around" with the law, it seems. Legal ethics rules are supposed to prevent the worst of it, but because it happened so rarely prior to the current day, the legal system has developed no "antibodies" against this kind of behavior.

it is also becoming clear to attorneys that there is little or no punishment for malevolent behavior except in extremely egregious situations, so expect this trend to continue for a while until some remedy is developed.

[bawolff]

I dont know how it all ended up, but there was this whole thing https://torrentfreak.com/digital-trails-how-bungie-identifie... [not for purjury though]

[ranger_danger]

Wouldn't there effectively be no penalty if it were submitted by a user in another country? Also good luck proving that anyone "knowingly materially misrepresents" anything.

[ajsnigrutin]

Do yout get reimbursed for 10 days of lost traffic/productivity then? There should be a safeguard, that the maker of the claim would cover damages caused by the invalid claim...

[jeroenhd]

Lying in legal documents is already illegal. DMCA takedown done in bad faith can in theory be prosecuted or brought to trial but in practice nobody cares enough to spend time and effort on getting false claiments in front of a judge.

[thayne]

My understanding is no.

[djbusby]

Would it be different if one is paying GitHub? It should be (I hope so). And same should be true at GitLab? Anyone tested it? Or am I paying for "nothing"?

[than3]

It is doubtful, its age old wisdom for a reason.

Most cases these days, you pay for the value add features (differentiation strategy) but the base ... (free) is in most cases monetized through alternate strategies. It is how they can cover costs to provide free to anyone that wants to sign up.

Unless you have a written SLA that makes guarantees, with firm timetables, you most likely aren't getting what you think you bought.

[naikrovek]

the DMCA does not care if you pay or not. the 10-day counterclaim response window is required by law.

[than3]

but those notices are posted in a conspicuous place, and there is no notice posted for those repos, at least according to others that have had the time to look.

What makes you think this is DMCA when no notice is posted, and the posts on the discussion forum from the maintainers show it was for breach of TOS which hasn't been elaborated on by GitHub staff 9 days later...

[moremetadata]

> the 10-day counterclaim response window is required by law.

Punitive towards individuals and small businesses.

From what I can see, it seems to be a curated list of IPTV sources [1]

Which puts it in search engine activity territory.

I'm reminded that Github stood up to the UK's City of London Police who issued a DMCA for the PirateBay Proxy on GitHub. [2]

However Law can be used to resource burn entities where no compensation for failed legal attempts exist as the City of London Police demonstrated with their actions.

[1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0Ku53I... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34659768

[naikrovek]

> Punitive towards individuals and small businesses.

take it up with Congress via your local representatives. I didn't write the law.

The DMCA makes almost no requirement that the claim be valid. It is only obviously invalid claims which are allowed to be ignored by the hosting provider receiving the DMCA claim. All other DMCA claims must result in the takedown of the cited content, and it doesn't matter if the claim is valid or not, it doesn't matter if there is precedent regarding other content; the only thing that matters when a claim is received is that it not be an obviously false claim.

There is no due process between the time a claim is received and the time of the takedown of the content cited in the claim. It is an assumption of infringement, with the 10-day thing I previously described being the only way out unless the victim chooses to sue.

I'm a bit annoyed that people (who were apparently educated on the DMCA by Slashdot comment sections alone) seem to have a lot of detailed knowledge about the DMCA but not about the portion of the DMCA which describes the 10-day counterclaim response window.