Source: thenewstack.io
This Week in Programming: GitHub Fights Open Source DMCA DisputesCategory: Software, github, artificial-intelligence
This week, GitHub announced that it would be working together with the Stanford Law School to help defend open source developers against Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims. The move follows up on some drama that took place last year around a little library called youtube-dl, which had been removed from GitHub after a DMCA takedown notice.
As GitHub wrote upon youtube-dl’s reinstatement last year, the rule applied to “anticircumvention—an allegation that the code was designed to circumvent technical measures that control access or copying of copyrighted material, in violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA.” As a part of its response to this incident, GitHub promised at the time that it would not only work to change the law itself, but also improve its own response to takedown notices, as well as establish a Developer Defense Fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims.”
According to GitHub’s transparency report, In the past month (as of this writing), they have dealt with some 138 DMCA notices and only one counternotice.
As GitHub wrote upon youtube-dl’s reinstatement last year, the rule applied to “anticircumvention—an allegation that the code was designed to circumvent technical measures that control access or copying of copyrighted material, in violation of Section 1201 of the DMCA.” As a part of its response to this incident, GitHub promised at the time that it would not only work to change the law itself, but also improve its own response to takedown notices, as well as establish a Developer Defense Fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims.”
According to GitHub’s transparency report, In the past month (as of this writing), they have dealt with some 138 DMCA notices and only one counternotice.
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