Qualcomm DMCA Notice Takes Down 100+ Git Repositories

[rikkinho]

yes

Why not use an Asian based host?

yes from iran or mongolia, no one give problems

[staalmannen]

distributed hosting

Apart fom all the anti-west posts here, one idea that actually makes sense is the distributed hosting idea via the Tor network or similar. This "darknet github" might not be as fast as a traditional server but would be less inhibited by stupid legal departments.

[SebastianB]

Actually the problem in this case isn't the DMCA, USA or possible European/Asian/whatever countries possible copyright takedown procedures(or lack thereof).

The problem is a company complying with a fraudulent/errenous takedown notice without checking the actual facts and the unwillingness of a hoster to fight back. These are frequently used as bullying tactics and most hosters just yield if there is enough legalese speak in them because frankly they can'T afford a court confrontation even if they would win the case.

A 2004 study on EU Notice and Takedown procedures (link PDF) found that 70% of hosts complied with a generic request to remove an article that was clearly in the public domain (the author had been dead for nearly 120 years). This is despite the fact that the sender was using a free Hotmail account and writing on behalf of a fictitious organization.

Of the hosts, only one looked at the page and questioned the validity of the complaint. Another simply did not respond to the queries and a third only denied the request because of the nature of the sender?s account.

This raises understandable concerns for free speech activists that worry the provision could be used to unjustly shut down sites that carry unpopular speech.

However, for people fighting content theft and plagiarism, this means that, when dealing with European hosts, there are very few specifics one needs to follow. Generally, an informal letter to the abuse department of the respective host should take care of matters.

Form http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/...-and-takedown/ its a rather old story, but i have no problem believing it to still be more or less true today in EU/US.

All these laws like DMCA get made on the assumption that someone wrongfully accused will fight back, when in reality thats pretty much impossible for a single individual or a NPO given the prohibitive costs of fighting legal battles in the US and probably some other countries.

So yes, the solution is to get your project out of US soil if you fear you might come under(baseless) scrutinity by patent trolls/DMCA hyenas. Not because of the laws, or because in other countries hosters will be less likely to take down a site if receiving a proper Takedown notice, they will as the study above shows.

The reason simply is that in EU the damages you can sue an individual or hoster for are tiny compared to US, which removes part of the incentive for these trolls. Another reason is language barrier and having a different law system(civil vs common law). If you want to fight a takedown notice against a professional lawyer company specialised in this kind of things ... i'd rather do it in an europe court(not UK), much cheaper, which reflects on the willingness of your hoster fighting such a takedown notice on your behalf or even ignoring it. Yes they might take your stuff down at first, but if you send them an email explaing your pov and why the takedown was unjustified they are much more likely to put the stuff back on and face a possible confrontation in court(which again is pretty rare unless the evidence is overwhelming, these trolls really don't want the various Federal Constitutional Courts to look at these laws to closely and thats where a legal battle might end up).

Also lets not forget that by hosting in a country NOT your own, you place some valuable distance between yourself and the content in question. As an US citizen its much better for you to be accused of breaking german copyright laws while your in the US, than being accused of breaking US copyright laws while your in the US.
Lastly these companies are specialized in takedowns on US soil, its quick and easy buisness as usual for them. A takedown in another nation requires more work and is more expensive(translations etc), they are less likely to bother unless they have a real reason. Sending 100 takedown notices to github is one thing, sending 100 takedown notices to 30 different hosters in 20 different nations ... yeah have fun with that, atleast they would have to work for it.

[robclark]

The best is: they took even one of their own repositories down. Yes, the http://github.com/qca is from their Open Source team at Qualcomm/Atheros. And now they lost the qcamain_open_hal_public repository to their legal department.

Sorry, but Atheros has really gone bad after they belong to Qualcomm. Even most of their software engineers (mostly public visible in their Open Source teams) left the company after the "Qualcomm incident". I think all ath9k developers are now gone and only Kalle Valo from ath10k remains. Most ath10k development for Qualcomm is done by an external team from Tieto.

and also took down a tree from Sony's sonyxperiadev project..

tbh, looking at the takedown request, it doesn't really make much sense. Anyone know anything about QinetiQ? They seem to be the originators of the takedown request.. I wonder if they sent takedown requests to google for the upstream AOSP trees..

[Ibidem]

Qualcomm's "contact us" page leaves one in great doubt who to contact.

Sent to Qualcomm Public Affairs:

Hello,

I recently learned of the DMCA takedown notice sent by Cyveillance
to Github on behalf of Qualcomm. This was on the basis of a
confidentiality notice included in the copyright notice.
A cursory reading indicates that this takedown notice covers, among
other things, parts of the Qualcomm Linux kernel source, wpa_supplicant,
and plaintext configuration files used in final releases of Android
to configure wireless.
From reading source code in the past, I gather that Qualcomm employees
habitually use the confidentiality notice even when contributing to
projects such as wpa_supplicant or the Linux kernel.

If the source code I describe above becomes unavailable, it will be
impossible for open-source operating systems such as the Android Open
Source Project; Cyanogenmod; other Android roms; or standard Linux
versions such as Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu to run on Qualcomm hardware.
Many people, including myself, buy Qualcomm-based hardware only because
it can run alternate distributions of Android or Linux. The natural
effect of the takedown notice will be to render Qualcomm's hardware
completely useless to us.

In fact, removing all source code bearing the confidentiality notice
would render it impossible for manufacturers to legally support Android
on Qualcomm hardware; the license of the Linux kernel requires that the
full source be provided, and Qualcomm contributed parts essential to
their own hardware under the said confidentiality notice.

I am sure that Qualcomm's intent is not to render their own hardware
worthless, but this is the effect of Cyveillance's efforts.
I look forwards to hearing how Qualcomm intends to ensure the continued
relevance of their hardware for those running Android and Linux.

Yours truly,
Isaac Dunham

[nslay]

When I was a teenager Ronald Reagan tried to bring back the draft so he could invade El Salvador with conventional forces. I refused to register and dared the US goverment to fight me over it, they chumped out, as they did in all but 21 cases. I sided with insurgents defending their own villages, Reagan sided with 14 families that wanted to keep all the land in El Salvador. In El Salvador they could not wait for Ronald Reagan to be voted out, they had to resist his proxy fighters with arms of their own-and over the next 14 years fought the US backed regime to a standstill and a negotiated peace. Now the FMLN runs the government there. Victories on the battlefield made the later political victories possible.

In the world of tech, this means being able to "hack it" when your enemies come calling, being able to conceal identities when needed, secure systems against governmental and corporate intrusion, make search warrants as well as bulk data collection physically useless with encrypted data and obfuscated metadata, and utterly defeat any and all efforts to censor your work. Both symetric and asymmetric responses to attack are possible when dealing with computers and networks.

I see. To summarize:
- Draft sucks
- Ronald Reagan
- El Salvador

This is your explanation of why you would think of details about how to avoid/break copyright laws in the US with computers and get away with it?

This is the style of thinking of a madman. Can't you see that your explanation is completely irrelevant?

You want to keep your servers up and running without potentially ruining your life? Just follow the law. Obviously if you're going to do something like run a service that hosts user-created content, some of your users are probably going to violate copyrights. It's not censorship; you don't get to host others' work without their permission (duh!).

[Del_]

So you're switching from a service that publicly documents it's DMCA claims in the US to a company that's hosted in the EU that has to abide by the exact same laws considering the EU is just as bad as the US for the sole reason that they (Github) received DMCA claims? They did EXACTLY what they should have done, which is abide but make a fuss. It's not Github's fault that the DMCA laws exist and it's obvious that they don't like them. Additionally, thanks to Git, it's extremely easy to replicate those repositories which means that it's highly unlikely that any data was lost. What's the big deal with Github? Gitorious would likely have done either the exact same thing or just not posted about it publicly like Github did.

http://blog.gitorious.org/2011/02/02/gitorious-receives-dmca-takedown-notice-from-sony/

So they had the exact same response. They didn't give out personal information and they took down the repository. If you don't like it, create your own service that doesn't respond to DMCA claims and find out where that gets you.

Actually Norway is not part of the EU, and if you read the link you will see reference to Norwegian law protecting the identities behind the repositories. Here is a little educational info for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93European_Union_relations

[jimbohale]

Actually Norway is not part of the EU, and if you read the link you will see reference to Norwegian law protecting the identities behind the repositories. Here is a little educational info for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%...nion_relations

You actually think that you're safe if you're not in the EU? You're wrong. Additionally, there is no evidence to suggest that the users' identities were disclosed. Also, the US companies could easily pressure the Norwegian companies to comply or face domain seizures (the US is pretty bullshit about those sorts of things) and extensive lawsuits. The world isn't fair and we need to do something about that rather than run into a hiding spot that isn't hiding.

[energyman]

with DMCA you have to take down and fight back later.

BUT:

if somebody sends a bogus DMCA take down message THAT is a criminal act.

Looks like a lot of people could sue qualcomm if they want.

[highlandsun]

with DMCA you have to take down and fight back later.

BUT:

if somebody sends a bogus DMCA take down message THAT is a criminal act.

Looks like a lot of people could sue qualcomm if they want.

And so they should. A class action, so no single person has to take on Qualcomm all by themselves. And Qualcomm and Cyveillance should suffer criminal penalties, not just civil penalties from the peoples' lawsuit.