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In general it's certainly true that private internet companies are not bound by the USA first ammendment in that way, and routinely "censor" speech, I agree. In
by jrochkind1 4y ago
In general it's certainly true that private internet companies are not bound by the USA first ammendment in that way, and routinely "censor" speech, I agree. Including for things that they think will be bad PR for them, or will be legally risky for them. But.
> GitHub makes it clear that they won’t refrain from deleting repos for whatever reason.
What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear?
In general, I have seen Github stick to only taking things down according to the actual DMCA law, more than most companies that take things down pretty much whenever anyone asks them to.
Github has a DMCA Takedown Policy [1], that is better than most companies. Most companies policies -- if they even transparently publish them at all, which they often don't -- go well beyond what the DMCA requires in what they will take down. Compare to eg YouTube [2], which isn't really using a DMCA process at all, doesn't really have a transparent policy at all, and does not allow you to counter-notice. Github's policy is way better than most; but maybe there are occasions where they have been known not to follow their own policy, is that what you're saying?
From what I've seen, github has actually made it much more clear than most companies that they won't just randomly take things down for arbitrary reasons, but have a clear and transparent policy based on the DMCA. But maybe there are things I don't know.
In this particular case, though, someone else pointed out to me in another part of this thread -- it's not totally clear Github is even involved. From the text on the repo, it seems possible that OpenAI contacted the repo owner directly, and the repo owner decided to change the text of the repo README to say that, and that may all that has happened? If Github had actually done a "takedown" according to their usual procedures, I think the repo wouldn't be there anymore? But it's not really clear what's going on, or even what the repo owner _claims_ is going on, unless we have more info than appears in the linked repo README. It's not currently clear that Github is involved at all.
[1] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-policies/dmca-takedown-policy https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...
[2] https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-youtube-removals https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property/guide-to-yo...
- selfmodruntime 4y ago> What actions or speech do you think Github has taken that makes that clear? Github has deleted Iranian / Russian / etc. Repos before purely for political reasons. GitHub belongs to Microsoft, and Microsoft has a stake in OpenAI. Seems like a reason to me.
- jrochkind1 4y agoBy purely political reasons, do you mean to comply with US law? Those are the only cases I can find [1] [2] [3]. Or if there are other cases, I'd love to see a link to more info! I don't like the US law much either, personally. I just don't consider a US corporation complying with US law to be a demonstration they will do arbitrary things for "any reason", it's sort of the default I expect from corporations and very predictable. If there's an example of a US corporation that chose to intentionally violate those sanction laws as an ethical stance, I'd love to find out more about that, and the outcome, too! I would imagine they would be penalized by the US government. Microsoft was in fact recently so penalized [4], but I don't think it had anything to do with github, and I definitely don't think it was an ethical stance, just a mistake/profit-motivated one, or because these laws are a mess and hard to comply with. But I expect US corporations to try to comply with US laws, and don't consider doing so to be arbitrary or unpredictable "any reason". [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-starts-blocking-developers-in-countries-facing-us-trade-sanctions/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-starts-blocking-develop... [2] https://github.blog/2019-09-12-global-software-collaboration-in-the-face-of-sanctions/ https://github.blog/2019-09-12-global-software-collaboration... [3] https://techweez.com/2022/04/18/github-suspending-accounts-russian-developers/ https://techweez.com/2022/04/18/github-suspending-accounts-r... [4] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1394 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1394