Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.