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DMCA Notices Remove 8,268 Projects On Github In 2015 (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Github's transparency report for 2015 shows that the site received many DMCA notices that removed more than 8,200 projects. "In 2015, we received significantly more takedown notices, and took down significantly more content, than we did in 2014," Github reports. For comparison, the company received only 258 DMCA notices in 2014, 17 of which responded with a counter-notice or retraction. In 2015, they received 505 takedown notices, 62 of which were the subject of counters or withdrawals. TorrentFreak reports: "Copyright holders are not limited to reporting one URL or location per DMCA notice. In fact, each notice filed can target tens, hundreds, or even thousands of allegedly infringing locations." September was a particularly active month as it took down nearly 5,834 projects. "Usually, the DMCA reports we receive are from people or organizations reporting a single potentially infringing repository. However, every now and then we receive a single notice asking us to take down many repositories," Github explains. They are called 'Mass Removals' when more than 100 repositories are asked to be removed. "In all, fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content GitHub took down in 2015."
GitHub actually them available online: https://github.com/github/dmca
Some of them are like someone using one of Adobe's .svg graphics or a commercial script file or source code file being distributed.
And some of them are abuse. Like this: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2016-01-15-AlgoTrader.md and they did license their source code under the GPL as shown here at the bottom https://web.archive.org/web/20140208002555/http://code.google.com/p/algo-trader/
So it looks like most DMCA takedown requests are legitimate, but presumably a small percent are abuse.
On github, what constitutes being a valid target for a DMCA takedown?
Well, you can look at the full list of DMCA complaints they have received and see for yourself.
I randomly looked through them and many appear to be pretty reasonable. Many are related to simple copyright infringement, such as storing textbooks or published homework and test questions and answers. This isn't surprising, as GitHub is basically just a place you can store files.
Some say the code or data is internal or non-public and was uploaded without permission. There are also a bunch from Qualcomm complaining about firmware images and driver code. VMWare complained about internal roadmap documentation.
Some are just files with links to other materials, such as TV shows and movies. Sony and Marvel make appearances.
The line blurs some for others. There are HTML5 versions of classic games, such as ones from Nintendo and Blizzard, that got pulled down. A few companies appear to have searched GitHub for serial numbers and license keys of their products, and requested the entire repo be pulled if it contains a single file with a serial number in it. Many of these appear to be honest mistakes and have counter-notices.
In any case, it's nice to see GitHub being transparent. The DMCA requests themselves are pretty interesting, but since the vast majority of the targeted repos are no longer accessible, it's hard to gauge how justifiable most of the complains really were.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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For the DMCA takedowns, yes we can - they are at https://github.com/github/dmca (it's in the second-to-last paragraph). I don't think they're allowed to for the NSLs. I didn't spot any listings for other forms of takedowns.
It appears that the massive majority (>5000, according to https://github.com/github/dmca... ) is one project; judging by Google results of the repo name, it's some Chinese e-commerce site's source code. Not sure why people would be so interested in forking it that there's that many copies floating around...
Believe it or not, this comment section here on Slashdot existed LONG before the DMCA, which helped it NOT ONCE.
GitHub has gone full retard.
The GamerGate repository was removed for TOS violations, specifically that it was being used to collect information used to harass and dox people. Interestingly it also rather gave the game away for GamerGate; the readme.md file didn't mention ethics in journalism until several paragraphs down. Instead it started with a rant about feminism.
As for WebM, they were asked to remove the word "retards", and did so. It really helps if you explain these things so that people can make up their own minds as to if it was justified. It's almost as if you were hoping they wouldn't bother to check.
In any case, those things were not included in the transparency report because they were widely reported (i.e. already transparent). The transparency report is a list of otherwise non-public requests from outside parties.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC