> The TOS says that Github will take down the offending content (or if, necessary, account) No. It doesn't say "offending content." It says "repeat infringers

> The TOS says that Github will take down the offending content (or if, necessary, account) No. It doesn't say "offending content." It says "repeat infringers of this policy," referring to the aforementioned paragraphs. > Github is not a thing people use outside of programming. Which is increasingly close to zero major industries. > The end result would simply have been the RIAA issuing more requests, possibly even formal requests, which Github would have led Github to doing the same thing it did proactively. Exactly, and the opportunity for people with non-infringing uses, such as myself, to pick up the torch. It's a lot easier to take down youtube-dl than it is to take down obviously non-infringing educational tools used by kids to learn from home during a pandemic. > It's doing what the law requires to prevent disruption of services to their other customers, most of whom aren't opening flaunting the law. The law requires a very specific process. github went above and beyond that process, for no positive reason. The safe harbor provisions in DMCA hinge on being a "service provider," which is not very well defined, but the provisions were inspired by the concept of a common carrier. If all I'm doing is hosting people's content, with no control over that, or providing bandwidth, or a caching layer, I shouldn't be liable for the actions of those people. Comcast has no liability for what I send over their network. If I run something illegal on AWS, that's not AWS' liability either. That's reasonable. There's a fuzzy line from there to a service like github or Youtube, to a service like pip or npm, to something like the Debian package repository. If the Debian package repository, which is controlled and curated by Debian, has infringing content, Debian would almost certainly be liable. github can be viewed as "like Comcast/AWS" or "like Debian," depending on how much control it exerts over what goes on github. Exerting more control than it absolutely needs to -- as it did in this case -- increases their liability in the long term. This shouldn't put them out of the service provider category, but a pattern of exerting control might.