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Sony Sends DMCA Takedown Notice To GitHub
Plombo writes "Sony's war against PS3 hacking continues. On January 27, Sony Computer Entertainment America sent a DMCA takedown notice to GitHub demanding the removal of 6 repositories under the 'circumvention device' clause of the DMCA. All of the repositories in question were related to jailbreaking or homebrew development for the PS3."
Screw their "online assets." The link to the contact list of offices for the law firm responsible is right here. Sony's corporate contact numbers are here. I suggest that each of their offices should receive a good few calls Monday, letting them know what we think about free speech and about restraining it.
It takes a lot fewer calls to pull off a denial of service than it takes packets.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
On the other hand, as a response to Sony's takedown notice, they started posting all of their DMCA takedown notices publicly. That's what enabled me to find this information in the first place.
The notice they filed isn't about copyright infringement, so it doesn't matter, that the code is not theirs, nor would it make sense for the code to be theirs. The claim they're making is that those repositories contain circumvention devices. I'd imagine the takedown isn't a big deal at all, as whoever put the code on GitHub has a complete copy of the history on their own machines.
Would this be the same courts that reamed 2600 magazine for LINKING to deCSS code?
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It's already been done for the original repositories; they've been uploaded to Gitorious, which is hosted outside of the US. A remaining problem, though, is that all forks of the repositories were also taken down. Those weren't uploaded to Gitorious, and there were too many of them to count.
It's not a real takedown. It's a normal cease-and-desist letter, and even if it were a real takedown notice, it's only perjury if the person submitting it isn't authorized to act on behalf of the person claiming ownership of a work being infringed. Neither the copyright holder or his lawyer are guilty of perjury if the copyright holder lies to his lawyer (or is mistaken) and thus causes a frivolous takedown notice to be sent.
all but GaiaManager can be found here:
http://gitorious.org/ps3free
there's also a story:
http://www.ps3-hacks.com/2011/01/29/dmcaed-ps3-git-repositories-cloned/
but the site is a bit... busy right now.
It's all gone back up at gitorious anyway, which is based in Norway and harder to fuck with.
First of all, Universal WON that DeCSS case, so it's actually unfavorable.
Second, Sony can file any takedown notice they darn please. All they have to worry about is how much trouble they'll get in if they're caught.
According to the law at issue, the only portion of a DMCA takedown notice that is under penalty of perjury is that the person filing it is authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner alleging infringement.
For a DMCA takedown counter-notice, the poster needs to assert under penalty of perjury that they have a good faith belief that the takedown was a mistake or misidentification. The lack of a requirement that the party issuing the takedown make a similar statement of belief under penalty of perjury is the real bullshit here, as it violated the principle of equal protection under law.
The DeCSS case specifically was "settled" exactly the opposite way. Freedom of speech didn't do jack to help the glider or bnetd authors either.
Actually GitHub can have every chance. What they needed to do in this case was simple enough. Contact the owner of the repository and hand over the responsibility to them. If the owner decides that Sony has acted badly and made an incorrect claim then GitHub is cleared of any legal responsibility and can put the work back online.
The procedure is explained at Chilling Effects. Although the DMCA is widely detested, one of the (only?) things that it does get right is that the legal battle is not between Sony and Github. If Github comply then they get to step to one side with any liability.
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No. A DMCA takedown notice is a specific type of notice which follows the provisions of 17 USC 512. The anti-circumvention provisions are a completely separate part of the DMCA, codified in 17 USC 1201. And the DMCA does not provided a process for filing a takedown notice for circumvention devices.