Skip to main content

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

After YouTube-dl Incident, GitHub's DMCA Process Now Includes Free Legal Help
Published on July 31, 2021 at 08:04PM
"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."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Slashdot: AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems

AT&T Says Leaked Data of 70 Million People Is Not From Its Systems Published on March 20, 2024 at 02:15AM An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: AT&T says a massive trove of data impacting 71 million people did not originate from its systems after a hacker leaked it on a cybercrime forum and claimed it was stolen in a 2021 breach of the company. While BleepingComputer has not been able to confirm the legitimacy of all the data in the database, we have confirmed some of the entries are accurate, including those whose data is not publicly accessible for scraping. The data is from an alleged 2021 AT&T data breach that a threat actor known as ShinyHunters attempted to sell on the RaidForums data theft forum for a starting price of $200,000 and incremental offers of $30,000. The hacker stated they would sell it immediately for $1 million. AT&T told BleepingComputer then that the data did not originate from them and that its systems were not breached. &q

Slashdot: US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility

US Plans $825 Million Investment For New York Semiconductor R&D Facility Published on November 02, 2024 at 03:00AM The Biden administration is investing $825 million in a new semiconductor research and development facility in Albany, New York. Reuters reports: The New York facility will be expected to drive innovation in EUV technology, a complex process necessary to make semiconductors, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Natcast, operator of the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NTSC) said. The launch of the facility "represents a key milestone in ensuring the United States remains a global leader in innovation and semiconductor research and development," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. From the U.S. Department of Commerce press release: EUV Lithography is essential for manufacturing smaller, faster, and more efficient microchips. As the semiconductor industry pushes the limits of Moore's Law, EUV lithography has emerged as a critical technology to

Slashdot: AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices

AT&T, T-Mobile Prep First RedCap 5G IoT Devices Published on October 15, 2024 at 03:20AM The first 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices are launching soon. According to Fierce Wireless, T-Mobile plans to launch its first RedCap devices by the end of the year, while AT&T's devices are expected sometime in 2025. From the report: All of this should pave the way for higher performance 5G gadgets to make an impact in the world of IoT. RedCap, which stands for reduced capabilities, was introduced as part of the 3GPP's Release 17 5G standard, which was completed -- or frozen in 3GPP terms -- in mid-2022. The specification, which is also called NR-Light, is the first 5G-specific spec for IoT. RedCap promises to offer data transfer speeds of between 30 Mbps to 80 Mbps. The RedCap spec greatly reduces the bandwidth needed for 5G, allowing the signal to run in a 20 MHz channel rather than the 100 MHz channel required for full scale 5G communications. Read more of this story at