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As a copyright attorney (stonevaughanlaw.com), I can tell you this is total b.s. I've sent hundreds of takedown notices for various clients, namely FUNimation E

by efstone 12y ago

As a copyright attorney (stonevaughanlaw.com), I can tell you this is total b.s. I've sent hundreds of takedown notices for various clients, namely FUNimation Entertainment. Over 9,000 notices, in fact. And I've actually handled lawsuits involving specifics of the 17 USC § 512(c) provision. No one can issue a DMCA takedown notice on behalf of Mojang without Mojang's authorization. Period. A regular notice, yes--but not a DMCA takedown notice. This is because a DMCA notice triggers very specific and harsh liability if not acted upon. (Unless the alleged infringer files a counter-notification...but I digress) As for copyright and the code this guy wrote, it's considered a work of joint authorship and no joint author can prohibit the exploitation of a joint work by any of the other joint authors. They can each do what they want with it. All that the disgruntled dev can do is to sue for an accounting of royalties to be paid based on monies earned from the exploitation of the work. Have fun with that calculation. And notably, such a suit is NOT an infringement suit. So it stays in state court and doesn't carry any of the crazy statutory damages or attorney's fees penalties that an infringement suit would, assuming the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, which it isn't. As for the GPL, it's a nonexclusive license, revocable at will as to new users. Any dev who contributed to the work can license the work however he/she wants. Only the licensees (us users of bukkit) are bound by the GPL if and only if we downloaded bukkit pursuant to a GPL agreement. All Mojang has to do is file a counter-notification and the files can all be reinstated without the webhost worrying about liability.

efstone 12y ago
And yes, the "over 9,000" was a Dragon Ball Z reference. :)
belorn 12y ago
Joint authorship differs strongly between countries, in both definition and legal consequences. Swedish law for example require unanimous permission by all authors, while US law only require permission by any single author. If the developer is from germany, they could also claim that the work was done successively, and thus make it a non-join authorship. Since copyright itself is bound mostly by legal treaties, it too makes it a bit unclear in which legal rules should be used if a Swedish company who host content on a US company, get sued by a German developer. "It depends" is the actually answer to what Mojang has to do. Since they are located in Sweden and thus under the Swedish legal system, my view is that they can't distribute the work as it stands.
bradleyland 12y ago
It appears the basis for the takedown is that the distribution includes code that is in violation of the license. Specifically, Bukkit includes code that is not GPL licensed. The GPL prohibits this, and so the author is able to exercise his rights under the GPL. To restate it more concisely, the claim made is that the code authored by the DMCA issuer is being distributed in violation of the license under which it was written (the GPL). What makes this extraordinarily messy is the fact that it is almost indisputable that the author was aware of this at the time he contributed. IANAL, so I don't know how that effects the license, but entering in to agreements that you are knowingly violating at the moment you enter them has the effect of providing a basis to challenge the validity of the agreement. Again, IANAL, but my concern would be that if the license were found null and void, the whole situation would fall back to copyright law, which still gives the author ownership of the code he has written, because there was no explicit assignment of copyright. Basically, the choice of GPL for the Bukkit project was a timebomb from day one. Any project using the GPL would be wise to take note of what has happened here. Should someone find any significant amount of proprietary code in your GPL project, they can quite simply nuke your entire project with a single DMCA.

by efstone 12y ago

efstone 12y ago

And yes, the "over 9,000" was a Dragon Ball Z reference. :)

belorn 12y ago

Joint authorship differs strongly between countries, in both definition and legal consequences. Swedish law for example require unanimous permission by all authors, while US law only require permission by any single author. If the developer is from germany, they could also claim that the work was done successively, and thus make it a non-join authorship. Since copyright itself is bound mostly by legal treaties, it too makes it a bit unclear in which legal rules should be used if a Swedish company who host content on a US company, get sued by a German developer. "It depends" is the actually answer to what Mojang has to do. Since they are located in Sweden and thus under the Swedish legal system, my view is that they can't distribute the work as it stands.

bradleyland 12y ago

It appears the basis for the takedown is that the distribution includes code that is in violation of the license. Specifically, Bukkit includes code that is not GPL licensed. The GPL prohibits this, and so the author is able to exercise his rights under the GPL. To restate it more concisely, the claim made is that the code authored by the DMCA issuer is being distributed in violation of the license under which it was written (the GPL). What makes this extraordinarily messy is the fact that it is almost indisputable that the author was aware of this at the time he contributed. IANAL, so I don't know how that effects the license, but entering in to agreements that you are knowingly violating at the moment you enter them has the effect of providing a basis to challenge the validity of the agreement. Again, IANAL, but my concern would be that if the license were found null and void, the whole situation would fall back to copyright law, which still gives the author ownership of the code he has written, because there was no explicit assignment of copyright. Basically, the choice of GPL for the Bukkit project was a timebomb from day one. Any project using the GPL would be wise to take note of what has happened here. Should someone find any significant amount of proprietary code in your GPL project, they can quite simply nuke your entire project with a single DMCA.