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> and Github, for their part, cravenly pulled the code as part of DMCA request. That's a very weirdly-opinionated statement. Isn't GitHub legally required to o
by eridius 11y ago
> and Github, for their part, cravenly pulled the code as part of DMCA request.
That's a very weirdly-opinionated statement. Isn't GitHub legally required to obey the DMCA request?
- sp332 11y agoNot required exactly, but if they refuse to take down the content, then they can be sued for copyright infringement themselves. The DMCA removes their liability and makes the fight between the uploader and the copyright holder. But if they step outside of the "safe harbor" they become potential targets.
- poizan42 11y agoIANAL, but can't github still be sued in India where the DMCA doesn't apply? GitHub is doing business in India as well, so wouldn't they be subject to the jurisdiction of an indian court?
- mikecb 11y agoThey may be able to, depending on Indian Court's jurisprudence on personal jurisdiction, but unless they have assets in India, the Indian judgement would have to be brought to the United States for enforcement. The U.S. has laws and procedures outlining what sorts of foreign judgements will and will not be honored and enforced by U.S. Courts. For example, a U.S. Court will not enforce a libel judgement from a UK court, because of the SPEECH Act. See more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments#Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments_in_the_U.S http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgment....
- dilippkumar 11y agoDidn't India ban Github a while back? http://thenextweb.com/in/2014/12/31/vimeo-github-30-sites-blocked-india-content-isis/ http://thenextweb.com/in/2014/12/31/vimeo-github-30-sites-bl...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- duskwuff 11y agoNo, it's absolutely not. Placing content in the public domain takes an explicit public domain dedication; simply making it available doesn't have that effect. (Edit: Alternatively, content can enter the public domain if all copyrights on it have expired. But that's certainly not the case here either.)
- errtnsd 11y agoNo, the code is still copyrighted by Networks Layer8 or Airtel. Publishing or delivering it on request doesn't make it public domain. Here is one definition of public domain: the status of a literary work or an invention whose copyright or patent has expired or that never had such protection.
- MichaelGG 11y agoHow was it in the public domain?
- Sanddancer 11y agoYep. Part of DMCA safe harbor is that you have to pull it down for a couple weeks, regardless of frivolity.
- ikeboy 11y agoGoogle rejects many DMCA requests, does that mean they aren't covered under safe harbor?
- sp332 11y agoI think they only reject badly-formed ones or cases where an automated system clearly mis-identified content. https://torrentfreak.com/google-further-highlights-wrongful-dmca-takedowns-130320/ https://torrentfreak.com/google-further-highlights-wrongful-... So they could be sued, but since they would obviously win in court, no one bothers suing over these.
- masklinn 11y agoFor the DMCA they rejected and if the request is found to be valid, yes, they become potential party to the legal action. I'm guessing they reject obviously spurious and incomplete/ill-formed ones.
- wnevets 11y agoit means the people who made the request can sue google.
- duskwuff 11y agoGoogle is in the unusual situation of receiving a lot of blatantly invalid DMCA takedowns. Like, a movie studio (or a company under contract to them) will do a Google search for something broad, like "download game of thrones", and issue a mass takedown for every single link that shows up, often without even looking at the links. So a lot of perfectly legal content (e.g, a news article that says "Game Of Thrones is one of the most commonly downloaded TV shows") gets swept up, and Google is being good enough to spot those and reject them. (Sometimes the DMCA agents screw up even worse. For instance, there's evidence that some of them forget important keywords sometimes, and end up issuing a takedown on all the top links for searches like "download".)