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“The infringer is my alt account”
- Mathnerd314 5y agoI feel like he didn't need a DMCA for this - is Github support really that bad?
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y agoI think this would allow anyone with enough information on an account to claim it to be their own and have it removed which puts GitHub in a tough spot, DMCA claims on the other hand have legal ramifications so this route is more difficult to abuse so easily, although as seen with youtube-dl it's still abused sometimes.
- dannyw 5y agoJust imagine if there was a GDPR-like law that allowed for private enforcement.
- Dylan16807 5y agoIf all the commits on an account have person X's name on it, letting person X hide the repo isn't going to do much harm. And you can send an email to the account owner asking if they dispute the claim.
- usui 5y agoYes, GitHub support is pretty bad. I have an alt account that I want to log into that I can't remember the exact <myemail>+<suffix>@gmail.com I used to register the account. They won't tell me what the email address is, I can't prove to them I made the commits on the account, no matter how much information I give them. The only recourse I have is to wait a certain number of years when GitHub classifies the account as dormant and then I can request the account be reclaimed due to it having the username I prefer (my name). I completely understand the security reasons for not leaking any information such as the email address but come on, I already know the password to the email if I could send a password reset and every other related piece of info, etc. They won't even send a password reset on my behalf. All I ask for is the email address. I didn't activate any advanced security features like 2FA on the account. In addition, they take around a week or more to respond to the contact form, so disregarding my specific situation entirely, their response time is a bit meh
- crumpled 5y agoHave you searched your inbox for emails related to your GitHub account so you could see which address they were sent to?
- GrayShade 5y agoIt's not that bad. I contacted them after getting phished (yeah, I know..) and they were quite helpful.
- phowat 5y agoNow I’m really curious about what was this project.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 5y agoA desktop client for f-chat, an adult furry roleplaying chat. Yes, really.
- Open-Sourcery 5y agoWell that explains why he didn't want it linked to his main accout then.
- stOneskull 5y agowe aren't going to hold it against him. we all have our hobbies.
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y agoThis definitely feels like the Streisand effect in action, I wonder if they could ask for the DMCA letter to be removed as it's their own content on both sides of the claim.
- CameronNemo 5y agoMaybe. But why? The code they wanted gone is now gone.
- uo21tp5hoyg 5y agoMaybe I'm reading too much into it but "I absolutely do not want this activity linked to my main account." gave me the impression they didn't want it known to be connected to them and now there's a HN thread about the connection and a GitHub DMCA post about the connection.
- kyleee 5y agoYep their public account likely shows up as a contributor to the furry side-project they were working on at the time.
- CameronNemo 5y agoNot anymore. Now someone has to find this DMCA takedown request then go to archive.org to see the association.
- CameronNemo 5y ago1. The DMCA notice itself only contains the repo name and the DMCA submitter. Connection, sure. But a connection to what? Which brings me to... 2. If the person keeps going up the chain and sending takedown request to any copies, like archive.org and this website, the connection will be even more muddy.
- kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
- function_seven 5y agoLocked out of your old account? This One Weird Trick will allow you to remove it! This is funny.
- sdfsadfjaslj 5y agoI actually used this trick to nuke my old (pre-google) youtube account that I lost the password to. They deleted it immediately.
- amingilani 5y agoTangentially related. Facebook doesn't care if people use your photo as their profile photos. I once used DMCA like this to get fake Facebook accounts to stop using my face. I bought the photograph from the original photographer for a tiny fee and used the agreement (a digitally signed PDF) as a proof of ownership to send a DMCA.
- tsjq 5y agodoes this work to stop others from using your photos? and: do you need to do this signed-pdf procedure for each photo that you upload to FB ?
- amingilani 5y agoI can't recall the exact procedure. I did write an article that I haven't published, if I can find it. I'll post it to HN. But I think I reported several URLs in my initial report, and they were all handled. The problem didn't crop up again, and so I didn't need to file an additional DMCA. If I had to, however, I'd used the same signed PDF as proof of ownership.
- kyleee 5y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20201216200839/https://github.com/zmessenger-dev/zmessenger https://web.archive.org/web/20201216200839/https://github.co...
- kyleee 5y agoThe incriminating info would show up under Insights -> Contributors but it doesn't seem to load on the archived page
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thrdbndndn 5y agoI don't fully understand what going on here. I assume by "I have no means of logging into the alt account" they meant they lost the login info? "I absolutely do not want this activity linked to my main account." What does this mean? How would it link to their main account in anyway, regardless of this request?
- searchableguy 5y agoThey may not have changed their git email when committing from the looks of it. Which could be associated with them.
- hooksfordays 5y ago“zmessenger-dev” is, I believe, the “alt account” they lost the login info to. Their main account, presumably tied to their identity, was used to author a commit that was pushed the DMCA’d repo. They later lost access to the alt (zmessenger) and so cannot remove the repo. This is possible since GitHub attributes commits to certain accounts based on the email that authors the commit, so they used an email tied to their main account to author the commit. Only the email is actually attached to the commit though, GitHub just associates the account based on a lookup. They then push the commit to the repo using their ssh or password authentication for zmessenger, which they later lose, and so they can no longer alter the repository and remove the offending commit/email
- barosl 5y agoGitHub identifies commits only by their associated email addresses, and it is easy to manipulate them. This has a consequence that anyone can masquerade as any others.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10005577
- arglebarglegar 5y agothe inaccessible alt account contained some identifying information this person wanted to remove, so as the copyright owner they issued a DMCA takedown request
- t0ps0il 5y ago
- jkaplowitz 5y agoOddly, this DMCA report is a straightforward (though harmless) example of perjury, since one literally cannot infringe one's own copyright, and the report alleges a self-infringement of copyright under penalty of perjury as required by the statutory DMCA regime. Being therefore self-evidently invalid without needing external information beyond its text, the notice certainly doesn't impose any takedown obligation stemming from the DMCA even if GitHub wants to stay within the DMCA safe harbor. GitHub can, of course, still choose to respond to the perjurious invalid notice by voluntarily destroying the repository as requested. That seems like the right thing to do in this case, so I hope they do it.
- whatshisface 5y agoI wonder if even a single entity has been convicted for perjury in the history of the DCMA.
- dannyw 5y agoI have not been able to find a single example of prosecution of perjury relating to DMCA.
- jerf 5y agoI believe the complaint is that Github is violating the copyright by leaving it public, not that the submitter is infringing against the submitter. Though in this case there is the problem that when you push to GitHub you give them a license to provide it, and my first-pass skim doesn't show that you have arbitrary abilities to revoke it: https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-service#l-cancellation-and-termination https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-o... You can revoke most of the rights by closing your account, but in this case that would be begging the question. That said, I'd agree it's the right thing to do, except they should make some direct effort to double-check the ownership so that people can't just arbitrarily claim to own things like this and take them down.
- devmor 5y agoI wonder if github continuing to host the code despite his wishes for it to be removed would constitute a violation of DMCA?
- balaksakrionon 5y agoit looks like the project's in this archive which shows the contributor: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/log/?branch=refs/heads/master&origin_url=https://github.com/zmessenger-dev/zmessenger&revision=9c353383cb27535bfd9a3548f8d501f3f0a8d823 https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/log/?bran...
- maccolgan 5y agoI wonder if the Artic Capsule can be DMCA'd
- usui 5y agoThe person probably would have had greater chances of the request being taken seriously if he or she did not disclose the fact. Now that the powers that be know that it's difficult to harm oneself with one's own copyright, it might not take the request seriously. Should have made a cloaked attempt at least In my experience, grievances are dealt with more priority when the listener believes a party actually feels wronged
- xurizaemon 5y agoTIL that GitHub are still using Hubot (or at least an account in its name) ... to process DMCA submissions! Hubot (the framework) has seen little to no maintenance activity from GitHub since a few years back - I'd love to see something from GitHub for how the project could continue. https://github.com/hubotio/hubot/issues/1541 https://github.com/hubotio/hubot/issues/1541