It's important to remember that these projects are not violating copyright law, are not circumvention tools, and that filing a DMCA notice against them is in fact unlawful.
In general no! The EFF is not interested in litigating laws that are firmly established! They spend their resources on cases that can set legal precedent.
When you call about something like this, they’ll try to give you some general advice and refer you to a law firm.
Sadly, you're mostly right and the comments section saying to find a pro-bono lawyer is laughable. I think anyone who believes that exists should actually reach out to a real lawyer and see how that conversation goes. I've had those conversations.
Firstly, they can't exist most of the time you can't actually call a lawyer and talk to them - you get their office and their "job" is to gatekeep that lawyer from making any discussions with anyone who isn't represented or paid for a consultation.
Secondly, once you do get into contact with them you'll get a blank stare or phone silence. This is not how most lawyers view pro-bono work. Most of them have a very small quota of pro-bono work to be done and that's it. They get assigned a case by their firm or go and accept a few a year from the state and they're done with it. The idea that an altruistic lawyer exists out there ready to do free and unpaid work is virtually non-existent today.
Both should be done. Often the actual illegally hosted materials are on servers not friendly with takedown requests or will get immediately reloaded by the pirates. By going after the links it can cut off the ability for people to find the illegally hosted materials.
Is this like how in France, DNS resolvers are legally required to block certain websites? That's right, if you run "unbound" with default options in France you're a felon.
Which is heartbreaking (and I'd argue misleading too), but not the whole story.
You can only issue takedowns in relation with material that you have copyright over. At least one of these sites I know for a fact routinely scrubs FAKKU licensed content, and abides by takedown requests.
It's lawful if you have a good faith belief that it's a circumvention tool.
It might even be true. Not having a download button is a copy protection measure as defined in the DMCA. If this project bypasses not having a download button, it's an illegal circumvention measure under DMCA.
I'm Jacob, the CEO of FAKKU. The notice being discussed was sent by a 3rd party DMCA agent without our approval or permission. It seems they are using AI to find repositories related to legitimate issues and projects like this one got caught up in it. I've informed them NOT to continue doing this and to immediately cease.
The underlying issue is similar to if there was a website that illegally hosted Netflix content it had downloaded from torrents. Then that illegal website put up advertisements next to the content, or even a paywall cheaper than Netflix to make money. Obviously, that's against the law and Netflix would do something about it. That's generally what we are having to fight against.
Ironically projects like this actually hurt that illegal website, by circumventing THEIR paywall or advertisements, and serving the content inside an app for free (which was originally paid content). It's a complicated issue, but going after projects like this doesn't solve the root problem.
If you want resistance from USA's bullshit, host in China or Russia. If you want resistance form China's bullshit, host in USA or Russia. If you want resistance from Russia's bullshit, host in USA or China.
For purposes of this chat, Europe == USA since they do as USA says when it comes to copyright.
What's up with people insisting that you need a lawyer to respond to a DMCA notice? That's some hilariously poor advice, like holy shit. I wonder if these same (presumably) rich idiots also hire a lawyer to read the terms of service when signing up for a service?
You absolutely do not need and should not spend money on a lawyer for this. The only way you're possibly going to get in trouble is if you're acting in bad faith, you don't need a lawyer to tell you if you are.
It's exciting to me recently with the increase in copyright abuse and AI blurring the lines that more people are going to be involved with decentralized systems.
There have been multiple different ways to host git repositories over DHT networks such as BitTorrent. Similarly there have been ways to run DHT backed commands for Linux package managers like apt.
These tools often receive little praise because the value of decentralized systems seems low when centralized systems are working to most users without too many issues.
The enshittification is ramping up so quickly recently that more people are reaching out to me on how to setup Linux syatems, home media servers, etc. I genuinely enjoy these technologies, but for the last decade I had more or less just shut up about them to avoid being that guy.
61 comments
When you call about something like this, they’ll try to give you some general advice and refer you to a law firm.
Firstly, they can't exist most of the time you can't actually call a lawyer and talk to them - you get their office and their "job" is to gatekeep that lawyer from making any discussions with anyone who isn't represented or paid for a consultation.
Secondly, once you do get into contact with them you'll get a blank stare or phone silence. This is not how most lawyers view pro-bono work. Most of them have a very small quota of pro-bono work to be done and that's it. They get assigned a case by their firm or go and accept a few a year from the state and they're done with it. The idea that an altruistic lawyer exists out there ready to do free and unpaid work is virtually non-existent today.
You can only issue takedowns in relation with material that you have copyright over. At least one of these sites I know for a fact routinely scrubs FAKKU licensed content, and abides by takedown requests.
It might even be true. Not having a download button is a copy protection measure as defined in the DMCA. If this project bypasses not having a download button, it's an illegal circumvention measure under DMCA.
> I'll tell our DMCA agent you're in the clear
https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/discussions/9304#discussi...
similar to patent trolls, there is now a DMCA trolls for hire.
The underlying issue is similar to if there was a website that illegally hosted Netflix content it had downloaded from torrents. Then that illegal website put up advertisements next to the content, or even a paywall cheaper than Netflix to make money. Obviously, that's against the law and Netflix would do something about it. That's generally what we are having to fight against.
Ironically projects like this actually hurt that illegal website, by circumventing THEIR paywall or advertisements, and serving the content inside an app for free (which was originally paid content). It's a complicated issue, but going after projects like this doesn't solve the root problem.
If you want resistance from USA's bullshit, host in China or Russia. If you want resistance form China's bullshit, host in USA or Russia. If you want resistance from Russia's bullshit, host in USA or China.
For purposes of this chat, Europe == USA since they do as USA says when it comes to copyright.
You absolutely do not need and should not spend money on a lawyer for this. The only way you're possibly going to get in trouble is if you're acting in bad faith, you don't need a lawyer to tell you if you are.
There have been multiple different ways to host git repositories over DHT networks such as BitTorrent. Similarly there have been ways to run DHT backed commands for Linux package managers like apt.
These tools often receive little praise because the value of decentralized systems seems low when centralized systems are working to most users without too many issues.
The enshittification is ramping up so quickly recently that more people are reaching out to me on how to setup Linux syatems, home media servers, etc. I genuinely enjoy these technologies, but for the last decade I had more or less just shut up about them to avoid being that guy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakku#History