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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."
They should file a counter-notice, citing the interoperability clauses :)
Perhaps the real news should be how quickly github caved and removed all of the projects in question.
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.
arent they. the real hacker underground is intertwined with open source. targeting the places where these crowds regular, is not something wise.
but morons which are dubbed as lawyers in some countries naturally would have no idea about that. they got too much used to bullying defenseless citizens through law.
i wonder what will they do to sony's online assets.
Nothing. Stop dramatizing.
Doesn't matter whether it does or not, precedence indicates that this is protected speech. Or at least that's what the courts said about DeCSS, and this even less ambiguously speech. Not to mention that Sony doesn't get to file a DMCA take down notice on this as the code they're requesting be taken down doesn't belong to them. The key itself isn't subject to copyright.
THIS. Anyone hosting DMCA-questionable content should damned well get a server offshore in a country that doesn't care about IP laws and then be sure to take every step to keep their real identity separate from it. I hear Russia is a good 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.
If you google "sony geohot $1" http://www.google.ca/search?q=sony+geohot+%241 you will get some info along the lines that Sony tried to paypal George Hotz $1 dollar ("Attached hereto as Exhibit DD is true and correct copy of a redacted PayPal receipt from George Hotz, using an account registered to..." from http://psx-scene.com/forums/attachments/f6/23998d1294899764-scea-vs-geohot-day-2-more-files-day-3-now-over-more-files-added-04-pdf ). You can imagine why Sony did this ...
Would this be the same courts that reamed 2600 magazine for LINKING to deCSS code?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
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.
All right --- Sony appears to be guilty of perjury after filing a takedown notice for someone else's work.
Who is going to do something about it? Selective enforcement is wonderful, isn't it? If Sony succeeds in this, it'll embolden others to file takedown notices against anything they dislike for any reason whatsoever.
Hay Sony. I think I'm gonna circumvent you now. Seriously regretting buying that PS3.
Yes, but they don't have a leg to stand on otherwise. It's been settled since all that DeCSS stuff that code is protected by the 1st amendment. So the only way that they could file a takedown notice here would be if they owned the copyright to it.
Sony can't legally file the takedown as they have to state under penalty of perjury that there is no legal use for the software that they want taken down.
Back in the day, Sony was a pretty cool company. They made affordable audio equipment with decent performance for the price; through high school and college, my turntable (vinyl LPs... remember them?) was a Sony. I also remember my first Sony Walkman cassette portable (early 1980s) and CD DiscMan with great fondness; Sony pretty much single-handedly invented the portable audio industry. My first camcorder was a Sony too, and I enjoyed the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 immensely.
Somewhere along the line, they lost their way. Maybe it had something to do with their transformation into a combination of consumer electronics giant and content provider; I'm not sure. But the CD rootkit fiasco was an indication of where they were heading. My opinion of them also took a nosedive when my second Sony camcorder (purchased around 6 years ago) turned out to be a piece of crap.
These days, they are solidly on my "avoid" list. I used to consider a Sony nameplate to be a badge of quality; now it is more of a warning label.
I'm not giving out any Sooper Seekrit information, just stuff that's on a public website. If it's illegal to "incite" people to protest things by speaking to the parties responsible, then it's even worse than I thought.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Sony entertainment had no problems a few years ago fubaring up my XP system by installing a rootkit after I inserted one of their music CD's. Seems they can care less about us, but don't reveal their precious encryption keys.
Between all that and their proprietary memory in digital cameras, I avoid ALL thinks Sony. They aren't worth the time. So sad a former leader of technology has descended so low.
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.
Not that there's "no legal use"... just that its primary purpose is illegal. The Other-OS-to-piracy link is pretty straightforward to lawyers.
Because they don't care about customers who don't buy games? And why should they? Why should you care about unprofitable customers?
It's all gone back up at gitorious anyway, which is based in Norway and harder to fuck with.
Which is most unfortunate as it is complete hogwash in practice. Pirates are using psjailbreak devices, not OtherOS. OtherOS doesn't facilitate piracy of any kind. Nor does Asbestos. Nor do the 'Open' SDKs. The clear and obvious fact that everyone seems to be missing is that piracy continues completely unabated by the legal actions of Sony or the censorship it's trying to enforce. People really need to stop confusing these 2 issues as being the same thing.
Do you really think Github can afford a lengthy trial with mammoth Sony? Not in a million years. The legal team of Sony will bury Github's with so many documents they either have to give up or will lose.
Big corporations have big law departments. The only purpose of these law departments, which cost a lot of money each year, is to make life as easy as possible for the employer, Sony in this case. This means: they'll do everything they can to make the life of the opponent as miserable as possible: lawsuits, burying with massive amounts of documents etc. Github doesn't have a chance.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
When faced with the threat of continuing legal bills for asserting your rights, the pragmatic thing to do is comply. The Net is not the anonymous place we all thought it was. It seems America is not the land of the free unless you can afford to pay for it! Note to self: Make sure to have multiple legislatures for any controversial site I put up. E.G. service registered in country A, selling into country B and located in country C :-D.
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.
If corporations like it, it's not good for you.
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.
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.