After YouTube-dl Incident, GitHub's DMCA Process Now Includes Free Legal Help

"GitHub has announced a partnership with the Stanford Law School to support developers facing takedown requests related to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)," reports VentureBeat: While the DMCA may be better known as a law for protecting copyrighted works such as movies and music, it also has provisions (17 U.S.C. 1201) that criminalize attempts to circumvent copyright-protection controls — this includes any software that might help anyone infringe DMCA regulations. However, as with the countless spurious takedown notices delivered to online content creators, open source coders too have often found themselves in the DMCA firing line with little option but to comply with the request even if they have done nothing wrong. The problem, ultimately, is that freelance coders or small developer teams often don't have the resources to fight DMCA requests, which puts the balance of power in the hands of deep-pocketed corporations that may wish to use DMCA to stifle innovation or competition. Thus, GitHub's new Developer Rights Fellowship — in conjunction with Stanford Law School's Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic — seeks to help developers put in such a position by offering them free legal support.

The initiative follows some eight months after GitHub announced it was overhauling its Section 1201 claim review process in the wake of a takedown request made by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which had been widely criticized as an abuse of DMCA... [M]oving forward, whenever GitHub notifies a developer of a "valid takedown claim," it will present them with an option to request free independent legal counsel.

The fellowship will also be charged with "researching, educating, and advocating on DMCA and other legal issues important for software innovation," GitHub's head of developer policy Mike Linksvayer said in a blog post, along with other related programs.
Explaining their rationale, GitHub's blog post argues that currently "When developers looking to learn, tinker, or make beneficial tools face a takedown claim under Section 1201, it is often simpler and safer to just fold, removing code from public view and out of the common good.

"At GitHub, we want to fix this."

Youtube-dl incident?

[Arzaboa]

I sure wish the article would have opened with their premise.

Can someone fill in the rest of us, what is "The youtube-dl incident?"

--
There are always going to be bad things. But you can write it down and make a song out of it. - Billie Eilish

Re:Youtube-dl incident?

[Entrope]

Previously, on Slashdot:
https://slashdot.org/story/377... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/story/378... [slashdot.org]
https://slashdot.org/story/378... [slashdot.org]
(That's a lot of 8s!)

Not a copyright issue

[cygnusvis]

A tool that accesses publicly accessible data is not violating any copyright

Re:

[J.L. Pettimore]

What's the difference between youtube-dl and the VCR? I thought this issue was settled 40 years or so ago?

Re:

[Cajun Hell]

It's about 1201, not classical copyright as most people understand it. A tool can easily violate that part of the law, regardless of how publicly accessible something is. IMHO the best (and also easiest) solution is to just repeal 1201. Then everyone wins.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Repealed would be nice. Alternately, just having it changed to force companies to abide by the DMCA counter notice clause would fix the problem.

A hosting provider that ignores a takedown request can be found equally liable as the infringer.
Change the counter notice clause from "optional" to say a provider ignoring a counter notice is automatically liable for a million dollars in damages for every day the counter notice is ignored beyond the allowed for 10 days.

Specifically, mandate these clauses:

(B) upon receipt of a counter notification described in paragraph (3), promptly provides the person who provided the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) with a copy of the counter notification, and informs that person that it will replace the removed material or cease disabling access to it in 10 business days; and

(C) replaces the removed material and ceases disabling access to it not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days following receipt of the counter notice, unless its designated agent first receives notice from the person who submitted the notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) that such person has filed an action seeking a court order to restrain the subscriber from engaging in infringing activity relating to the material on the service provider's system or network.

Force the

Re:Not a copyright issue

[shentino]

The problem is that the DMCA's perjury provisions are very one sided and in favor of the copyright holder. And everyone knowing what they do on slashdot about politics I doubt anyone here thinks that's an accident.

Re:

[fafalone]

No, not regardless of how public something is, that's the issue. 1201 addresses tools that circumvent technological access control mechanisms. YouTube doesn't have anything that meets that definition. No security mechanism is being bypassed, no encryption is being broken, all the data is downloaded straight from a freely accessible web page. It's no more illegal than saving a page's HTML to a file (really, copying it from your cache to elsewhere).

I agree it should be repealed anyway, but since that's neve

Microsoft is amusing

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

They once were the champions of closed-source software and used to go after creative coders "abusing" and cloning their APIs and functionalities in their products like rabid dogs on steroid. Now they defend open-source and open-source developers. Whodathunkit eh?

I still don't trust them though. They must have some motivation that isn't the developers' best interest. They're like new converts who sing the hymns and praise the lord louder everybody else in church: they're suspicious - and slightly annoying too, cuz nobody likes holier-than-thou johnny-come-latelies.

After decades of old Microsoft, they'll need a lot more time to convince me they've seen the light.

Re:Microsoft is amusing

[samdu]

Same here. I lived through the decades of MS doing everything in their substantial power to eliminate competition and own every market they put their eyes on. Through both acceptable and very unacceptable ways. I'm not sure there is enough time to allow me to trust them or not. But I know enough time hasn't elapsed yet.

Re:

[zkiwi34]

Simple. They own GitHub. They will be scraping any and all code and incorporating bits they like into their own code. Proving it, pretty nigh impossible. Maybe a honeypot thing where code that is incredibly tempting that has some pretty much unnoticeable hook that can be used to proved they jacked your code. But then they will just drown you in lawyers. Simply go nowhere near GitHub. Cannot see a reason why a local drive, usb even, would not be a better place to develop personal code.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Now they defend open-source and open-source developers. Whodathunkit eh?

It's almost like companies are defined by their leadership and when new leaders who are dramatically different than previous leaders take over a company the company's strategy changes.

Though the idea of watching Nadella run around shouting "developers developers developers developers developers" while sweating profusely and throwing chairs is incredibly intriguing.

My private video got DMCA'd

[Anonymous Coward]

I uploaded a video to youtube which was set to private before if finished uploading. It was a game clip that had song playing in the background. It should have 1 viewer:me. Within a couple days it got a second view, and a DCMA from someone claiming to have copyright to the song.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

Never having considered uploading anything to youtube - nor ever seen any reason to do so - I've always assumed that somewhere in their Ts&Cs there is a phrase about them examining uploads for copyright violations.

I also don't understand this thing people have for putting up videos which are intended to be functional of some sort - tear-downs and HOW-TOs and the like - with some irritating music track laid over the top. Just, why? You've got your content ; it's functional ; why make it harder for peopl

Re:

[Agret]

As much as we all love a good conspiracy theory it's been known for a long time that YouTube uses algorithmic audio matching, same technology as used for Shazam/Soundhound to identify songs. YouTube normally gives you a button to just remove or replace the audio of the video with a royalty free track to have it reinstated.

Gotta kill the DMCA, and CDA while we're at it

[fustakrakich]

Sure wish we would stop reelecting people that created this mess and vote for people that will do the job

Just leave Youtube - it sucks anyway

[walterbyrd]

There are plenty of alternatives. Those alternatives allow freedom of speech, and don't expect you to watch 14 minutes worth of ads before being able to watch a 4 minute video.

Did the citizens of the USA ask for DMCA

[Malays2 bowman]

No? Then it should be null and void.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

Did the citizens of the USA ask for a taxation system?

Re:Did the citizens of the USA ask for DMCA

[shentino]

Yes we did, when we decided taxes should be collected by a democracy instead of a monarchy.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

And you've delegated your decision-making powers to your government, so there you are. Yes, you've asked for it. And you've got it. Sideways and lube-free.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

Spoken like someone who will get the civilization they ask for.

I look forward to

[nagora]

MS publishing the source code for Windows, for "the common good".

owners

[shentino]

Isn't Github owned by Microsoft?

Interpret as you will.

And yes, I am well aware that this is slashdot.

Please try to bear in mind any bias on the part of the reader, and that includes but is not limited to any responses to this post.

Lack of updates?

[antdude]

youtube-dl is quiet again. :(

Multiple Microsofts

[stikves]

Do not assume there is only *one* Microsoft. As other large entities, there are competing "mini Microsoft" inside Microsoft, and the dev team among those is known to push for more open source.

I would recommend starting with this blog: https://www.hanselman.com/ [hanselman.com]. I got the chance to meet Scott in person once, and he was a very nice fella, and is really a good advocate of open source. And they have pushed for many things in the past, like .Net, VSCode, TypeScript. The common theme: they are all dev tools. Als