After Restoring YouTube-dl, GitHub Revamps Its Copyright Takedown Policy (engadget.com) 24
On October 23rd GitHub initially complied with a takedown request for the open-source project youtube-dl — and then after 24 days, reinstated it.
"If there's a silver lining to the episode, it's that GitHub is implementing new policies to avoid a repeat of a repeat situation moving forward," reports Engadget: First, it says a team of both technical and legal experts will manually evaluate every single section 1201 claim. In instances where there's any ambiguity to a claim, the company says it will err on the side of developers and leave their repository online. If the company's technical and legal teams ultimately find any issues with a project, GitHub will give its owners the chance to address those problems before it takes down their work. Following a takedown, it will continue to give people the chance to recover their data — provided it doesn't include any offending code.
GitHub is also establishing a $1 million defense fund to provide legal aid to developers against suspect section 1201 claims, as well as doubling down on its lobbying work to amend the DMCA and other similar copyright laws across the world.
"If there's a silver lining to the episode, it's that GitHub is implementing new policies to avoid a repeat of a repeat situation moving forward," reports Engadget: First, it says a team of both technical and legal experts will manually evaluate every single section 1201 claim. In instances where there's any ambiguity to a claim, the company says it will err on the side of developers and leave their repository online. If the company's technical and legal teams ultimately find any issues with a project, GitHub will give its owners the chance to address those problems before it takes down their work. Following a takedown, it will continue to give people the chance to recover their data — provided it doesn't include any offending code.
GitHub is also establishing a $1 million defense fund to provide legal aid to developers against suspect section 1201 claims, as well as doubling down on its lobbying work to amend the DMCA and other similar copyright laws across the world.
Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, but the people in charge should have realized what would have happened before they pulled the repository, but at least they realized the risk and made things clearier.
Buying a company like github, you really need to keep your clients happy, it does not take much to loose your investments which I think was a real possibility. I am sure a lot of people started looking to move their repositories to other places like say gitlab
Hopefully some highly paid Corp. Lawyer got a good reaming over this
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, measured responses to new threats are a good way to go if you're in it for the long haul.
Sometimes, when something arises that you hadn't predicted, if the 'attack' is more than you can deal with, it's best to strategically withdraw, concede the battle without vast expenditure of resources, 'regroup' and decide what's possible. This seems to fit the pattern of what occurred.
Once you have time to consider the vulnerabilities of the "attack", you then formulate a retaliation, except this time, you force the opposition to play to your rules, and against fresh fortifications designed to frustrate the previous attack pattern.
In this case, they pulled the repo, because they couldn't confirm that they could win this particular battle, came up with a robust strategy for countering it that they could verify wouldn't just be a resource sink for no gain, then went and reclaimed the ground they'd conceded previously, except this time, they've got a much stronger defense in place.
Keeping clients happy in a knee jerk reaction without due consideration is a fast way to lose the company due to haemorrhaging resource ineffectually. That keeps nobody happy (apart from the 'opposition'). What people crave most is a general stability, which the moves made actually provide (there is now the general understanding that the provider acts sensibly in the long term benefit of the clients).
If people get antsy over something like a the original moves, then all they're likely to do is go somewhere else, that will encounter the same kind of problem, and then they'll move elsewhere, never achieving any real stability until the long term attrition of the less long term focused entities fail, leaving them the options of the 'survivors'. People that keep an eye on the long term understand that disruption is just part of life, and that maturing a service isn't all a case of perfect steps in one direction; it takes effort and thinking, and acting accordingly to the long term benefit.
So, all that considered, why would some corporate lawyer be chastised? From what I can see, they did things sensibly and by the book.
Pulling the repo... (Score:2, Interesting)
If only Microsoft could buy Spotify (they basically shill for them all over Windows 10) and host a free YouTube alternative, folks might ac
Re: (Score:2)
... it has resulted in positive PR for GitHub and Microsoft, but not for Google ...
FTFY.
GitHub is owned by Microsoft, YouTube is owned by Google, and practically nobody cares for what this extension does and there is a dozen more of them that do the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
FTFY. GitHub is owned by Microsoft, YouTube is owned by Google, and practically nobody cares for what this extension does and there is a dozen more of them that do the same thing.
My comment only mentions YouTube in relation to how Microsoft creating an alternative to it might make them look trendy. Also, do you think that the RIAA would have given a rats ass if it was some no-name project which hardly anybody cared about? It is popularity, combined with the fact that it leverages legal streaming services which made it a target for takedown.
youtube-dl is one of the most popular and most complete implementations of a sane, multi-platform website media downloader for those who do
The cake is a lie (Score:1)
Awesome? I don't think so.
They say they will manually decide, which means they will allow humans to make this decision, which can mean anything from true honesty, to a coin toss, to political lobbying or even plain old bribery. To be clear, they are not giving you control over what goes on there. This manual decision making will include the access to these promised funds. Don't think anyone would get them.
Re: (Score:2)
Since the old way was to automatically remove and DMCA'd content and the new way is to review the case to see if it is warranted, it seems like a step in the right direction to me. Keep in mind that someone could create a GitHub repo filled with actual copyright violations, there should be some process in place. I much prefer a manual check rather than an automatic takedown.
Re: (Score:2)
... there should be some process in place. ...
There was "some process" in place, and now there is a new "some process" in place. Nothing but the people behind it are claiming that this new process is better than the old, only is it used to create PR for big tech. And people believe it as it was given out by PR without any criticism and doubt.
It doesn't actually need a new process, because there are many ways to host source code. And even when content is known to be illegal do we find sites that willingly host illegal content. Not saying that it was ok
Re: (Score:2)
Streisand Effect in Play (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Probably few people. I didn't know it. I mean that didn't stop me downloading video or audio from Youtube. The absurdity about all of this is there are literally 100s of programs out there which do this. e.g. JDownloader, which even has the lovely feature of ripping just the audio file demuxed from the video.
Not that it makes sense to pirate 128kbps AAC files.
Re: (Score:2)
100s of programs out there which do this. e.g. JDownloader, which even has the lovely feature of ripping just the audio file demuxed from the video.
Not that it makes sense to pirate 128kbps AAC files.
FYI the syntax to make youtube-dl do that would be:
youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format best URL
(That's not to say that command line options are as friendly as checkboxes in a UI.)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd never heard about it - I hadn't spent a lot of time looking, but I was about to.
A couple years back if I was watching Netflix, and there was a funny or interesting moment, I'd screencap it using the NVIDIA screen recording stuff and just make a little clip of it just for personal use.
I tried this again recently and was surprised that it didn't work any more - screencapping Netflix in the desktop browser just resulted in a black rectangle of nothingness.
After some reading and experimenting I eventually f
Re: (Score:2)
I think there is a different phenomenon in play here. The younger generations are getting used to videos and medias being 'in the cloud' and have less and less reason to download them. In 20 years or so, having a large local disk will be "something only old people do", a bit like writing checks or having a landline phone.
Justice Delayed... (Score:2)
Yeah, those companies that complained committed Fraud. They got stuff taken down using a process that requires you to claim it contained copyrighted material. They admitted it did not and used "It can let you steal copyrighted material" as a n excuse. But we have methods of taking down things that 'let you steal copyrighted material', it is called a court order.
They abused the system to gain 'speed', and should be held in contempt of court for making false statements. Major financial penalties are du
Re: Justice Delayed... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No, takedown notices are DMCA section 512. Anti-circumvention is DMCA section 1201. There's not takedown provision in 1201.
Re: Justice Delayed... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's not takedown provision in 1201.
There is also no safe harbour provision. This wasn't a formal DMCA takedown request like you normally get in section 512. This was a legal letter to Github threatening legal action. Github responded by voluntarily removing the project.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, those companies that complained committed Fraud. They got stuff taken down using a process that requires you to claim it contained copyrighted material. They admitted it did not and used "It can let you steal copyrighted material" as a n excuse. But we have methods of taking down things that 'let you steal copyrighted material', it is called a court order.
Yeah we did until 1998. But after 1998 we had another method for taking things down which was sending DMCA complaints under Section 1201 of the law. Copyright material and its infringement is a very small section of the DMCA. The majority of the law is about anti-circumvention.
This wasn't an abuse of the system as much as it was an error in judgement on all parties, the studios for thinking this was anti-circumvention, and the repo owner for not filing a counterclaim and seeking legal advice earlier.
Re: (Score:2)
> They abused the system to gain 'speed', and should be held in contempt of court for making false statements.
This wasn't about music. The corporate media, RIAA included, favors itself and is against independent voices.
Just before the election, the #1 tool used by indymedia news reporters to capture footage for commentary got nuked from orbit.
Now, after the election, it looks like the allies of the corporate media will be in power. RIAA will suffer no consequences. In fact, they will likely be rewarde
This is a bit petty but... (Score:2)
Techies (Score:2)
You need also techies, not just lawyers, when you handle complaints with technical contents!