[jonoc]

"Even if I believe that what I'm doing is morally correct and legally protected, legal processes still have a financial cost. I can't afford to take on that financial risk for something that I do in my spare time to help others." - this is very logical and exactly what I would have done but it still makes me very sad that this is the way the world works right now :(

[all2]

The process is the punishment. Average Joe cannot go toe-to-toe in the legal system as it stands right now. The one with the most money nearly always wins, and - as in this case - the threat of financially ruinous litigation is enough.

[akudha]

The one with the most money nearly always wins

This is true in American elections too. I can’t remember the exact number, but something like 80% (or more) of elections are won by the candidate with more money.

When everything is tied to money like this - legal, democracy etc, the little guy is always going to lose

[liquidpele]

Careful there because it’s more likely that the already more popular person also happens to be the person that gets the most donations.

[ronsor]

And the solution is to nerf copyright into the dirt like you'd nerf an overpowered item in a game.

[AceJohnny2]

Are you aware that copyright law is the foundation of FOSS licenses?

[jimnotgym]

You wouldn't need it if copyright didn't exist in the first place

[AceJohnny2]

Of course you would. For example, thanks to copyright law, Linksys was forced to share their Linux customizations to run on router hardware, which led to the creation of the OpenWRT project.

Without copyright law, any actor can take your open system and close it.

[Filligree]

A lot of people are fine with that. Look at everyone who uses the BSD or MIT license.

[aleph_minus_one]

> You wouldn't need it if copyright didn't exist in the first place

No popular open source license that I am aware of attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation:

If there was no copyright, you could not force anybody to provide the source code of any derivative work (situation for copyleft licenses). On the other hand, in a no-copyright situation, you are not able to sue anybody who attempts to reverse-engineer such a derived binary blob and publish the reverse-engineered source code.

Thus, an open-source license that attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation would in my opinion have clauses like the following:

- you are allowed to create binary-only derived works, and are allowed to sell copies of it

- you must not sue anybody who redistributes these copies (even for money)

- you must not disallow any licensees to reverse-engineer these executables

- you must not disallow any owner of a copy to create any derivative work (even using reverse-engineering techni, as long as this work is licenses under this license. This in particular means that, if you create a derivative work, you have to take care that you cannot redistribute copies that (statically) link the work with parts for which this is disallowed

[maxerickson]

"Free Software" requires making source code available to users. If copyright didn't exist, there would not even be a hypothetical mechanism to require that of publishers.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Average Joe cannot go toe-to-toe in the legal system

This is sort of the point of arbitration.

[ceejayoz]

In theory.

In practice, the company still has a big advantage in arbitration.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-binding-arbitratio...

> The problem is that companies generally know more than customers about an arbitrator’s record and thus are likely to strike out arbitrators who are more inclined to rule in favor of consumers. On average, each securities firm in the study had been involved in 81 other arbitrations. In non-securities disputes, such as those with cellular carriers, the average company had been in 133 hearings. By contrast, most consumers have never been involved in a previous arbitration and tend to strike arbitrators randomly. As a result, the firms’ informational advantage leads to systematically biased outcomes.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the company still has a big advantage in arbitration

Not as big as in litigation. Yes, companies have familiarity. But the win rates in arbitration are way more favourable. Because you can’t starve your opponent as a strategy.

[ceejayoz]

Win rates are one aspect. Win amounts are another.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Win rates are one aspect. Win amounts are another

For JAMS and AAA, compared to federal courts, after accounting for litigation costs, on average, no. (At the tails, yes. But this doesn't apply if you can pull off federal litigation.) Do you have research to the contrary?

[ljm]

If the arbiter is publicly funded and therefore without bias, sure. In the UK that is ACAS. If the business you have a problem with is paying for its own arbitration service then you are automatically on the back foot.

[JumpCrisscross]

The problem is more firms having a voice in selecting the arbitrator than them paying for it [1]. TL; DR If you're going into arbitration, don't be passive about the selection process.

[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/19-046_6706ef32-...

[akira2501]

The DMCA has been a net negative for America. It didn't actually afford any of the intended protections to the industries that bought it and it has destroyed the concept of "ownership" in an increasingly digital world.

[Waterluvian]

And America didn’t just harm itself with DMCA. We all suffer from this mistake.

[throw_a_grenade]

He should have added "I believe buying Mazda was a mistake and I encourage everyone to avoid this brand until they get their Legal together".

They need to be deterred. They should know that every time they do this, people will start recommending their competition.

[pdonis]

This seems like a case where an organization like the EFF could help. Does anyone know if they are aware of this specific incident?

[thomastjeffery]

The EFF would still need a defendant to defend. It sounds like that person is not interested in pursuing a legal battle, so we have already met the end of this road.

[happytoexplain]

I see this attitude a lot where legal is involved (which is a lot of places). It's a very peculiar sort of "if this then that" which seems to subvert normal human communication. E.g. in this case, a standard human train of thought would be that, because one of the reasons given for not pursuing it is funding, the EFF might offer to fund this person, who, circumstances now being different, might then agree to be the defendant. Now maybe there is a problem with that, but my point is that your response seems to choose not to acknowledge it. I don't think it's malicious - I think there is just something about the way legal works that trains people to think and speak in this slightly non-human way.

[thomastjeffery]

In my perspective, it's less about the presentation, and more about the motivations involved.

If the EFF is motivated to reach out to the original DMCA recipient, then they could definitely present this avenue. That leads us to the next question, is the original DMCA recipient interested in pursuing a (now funded) defense? If not, are they interested in handing it off to someone else? Who? Would that person be an effective defendant?

Really, what we are doing here is speculating on one person's level of disinterest in pursuing the legal defense of their work.

[tough]

What about another person willing to continue with a fork?

What about a DAO specifically built for that purpose exclusively?

Just looking how to fuck back those lawyers

[thomastjeffery]

I would love to see that happen. I also, unfortunately, doubt it will.

[andix]

They could transfer the ownership of the code to someone else. This person/entity could put it back up and wait for Mazda attacking them.

[oh_sigh]

Transfer of ownership isn't even required, since it was open source code hosted on github. All someone needs to do is re-host the files, and wait for the DMCA notice to push back on it.

[andix]

True. It should also be possible to maintain it outside of the US, where the DMCA doesn't apply. In some European countries Mazda probably wouldn't have a lot of options to take it down.

[evan_]

Wouldn't Mazda then go after both parties?

[andix]

Usually you can't go after people for creating content, even if it's a copyright violation. They also can't "uncreate" it, they can't delete the concepts from their brain. You can only stop them from publishing/selling it.

In this case the code was on GitHub before, so they wouldn't even need to give the code to the new target entity, this entity could just copy it from an undisclosed person who has a copy.

[thomastjeffery]

The tool Mazda is using is DMCA. That applies explicitly to whomever is hosting the content. More specifically, it applies to whomever Mazda sends the DMCA notice to.

[pdonis]

They could reach out to him and offer to pay his legal expenses. They could even offer the services of lawyers they are familiar with. IIRC they have done that in similar cases in the past.

[alphazard]

I think we've made a mistake by linking our real world identities to the software we write. If the author released this under a pseudonym, and hosted the git servers in a country without strong copyright enforcement, there's very little Mazda could do to take it down. It's too late for that now since Mazda knows who he really is.

[shiroiuma]

It's not too late for that; the author just doesn't want to be bothered. If he really wanted to, he could move the code to that other country, and put it up under a pseudonym. If anyone asks, he can just claim he doesn't know who that person is, and he has nothing to do with it: how can they disprove him without literally spying on him? The code is open-source: literally anyone could have made a fork of the repo while it was still up, and then posted it somewhere else.

[alphazard]

It's too late for that to be a realistic defense. The Mazda legal team already has a target that they can go after for any further developments with the source code. This post acknowledges that he received the cease and desist letter. The issue isn't just whether you win in court, it's also how much of your time and money is wasted fighting a corporate legal operation. Arguably, a random person publishing the source code would create additional problems for him.

An effective defense has to protect your time and money. One such defense is to never let your real identity be plucked from obscurity and fixated on by a legal team.

[dtgriscom]

Right or wrong, the legal system (in the US and elsewhere) is to be feared and avoided. I've served jury duty several times in the US, and each time it looked like we might be empaneled, the defendant settled with the DA. I've no idea if they were actually guilty of what they were accused of, but in any case they decided that being deemed guilty was less onerous than going through (and paying for counsel in) a jury trial.

[prepend]

I wish GitHub would do more to protect developers from this bullshit.

I know they aren’t required to, but I remember the olden days when more companies would fight dmca requests. But I suppose they were much less common then.

The EFF might help, but even expecting individuals to appeal to the EFF is probably too much work and too much risk.

I’d like to see GitHub partner with EFF to have first look at these requests and choose to fight ones that seem invalid. I’d donate to they cause.

[maxerickson]

What's it look like? The next step to fight this is for the user of the Github service to file a counter notice and wait to see if Mazda files a copyright infringement lawsuit against them.

It probably doesn't make sense for Github to indemnify them, and short of that, there's not really a lot of convincing they can do if someone isn't interested in engaging in litigation with some huge company.

[prepend]

They could auto file a counter notice. They could provide free legal council to help the user file. They could route to EFF or others to file counter notices.

They could even sue for damages from false claims since API can’t be copyrighted.

There’s tons they could do. Microsoft has immense resources and far greater than Mazda.

[maxerickson]

They don't have standing to auto file a counter notice. And then if someone accidentally publishes something copyrighted to github, they probably don't want to go through a lawsuit.

I looked at the code some, there are some app secrets stored and used, so they probably have at least a thin claim.

[prepend]

They can certainly evaluate the request and deem it spurious, as long as they are willing to defend their decision.

They can also autogenerate the counter claim so an author just needs to click “dispute.”

I’m sure there are lots of valid dmca complaints against GitHub repos, like any site that allows hosting random files. But I think if GitHub wants to encourage programming, they need to invest and be more proactive in supporting programmers from people like the jerk lawyer at Mazda (or probably some stupid “ip protection” consultant) who filed this spurious seeming complaint.

[j1elo]

> this is very logical and exactly what I would have done

I made a comment regarding this, before realizing yours, so I'm kinda repeating myself here, but it's something that piques my curiosity:

What would stop you from just continuing in a different repo (even different host like Gitee), with a pseudonymous, and claim that you have no idea who's that mysterious person that forked and continued working on the project?

[Dalewyn]

As President Andrew Jackson once said, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

As it turns out, you need both the piece of paper underwriting your rights and the force necessary to exercise them.

[cooper_ganglia]

My freedom and financial future aren't the kinds of things I'd like to test their enforcement with. We need laws that prevent this type of bullying behavior.

[Dalewyn]

You're back to square one: You have to exercise the laws preventing that bullying.

Lines of ink on plant fiber by themselves have never stopped anyone.

[shiroiuma]

So why don't you do this then? The author doesn't have to be the one to take the risk: YOU can do it yourself! Just get a copy of the code and post it up on your own account, under your own name.