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Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

dl.bukkit.org

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Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#11

Post by georgemcbay »

kevingadd wrote: post #6
[deleted] wrote: post #5

[deleted]

No, read the notice. It's not from Mojang.

It wasn't from Mojang but from what I understand (very little, to be honest, I'm not much of a Minecrafter and only read up on this because the circumstances of the DMCA strike me as being so weird), it is due to some of the developers of this software being in a spat with Mojang:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/08/21/minecraft-bukkit-team-lead...

Seems like:

1) Mojang implemented EULA some 3rd party bukkit devs didn't like, they decided to stop supporting their Minecraft API software and publically quit the project, announcing the "end" of the project.

2) Turns out Mojang actually owns (or thinks they own) the project because some members of the bukkit team went to work for Mojang and part of the terms was that they would own it(?)

3) One of the external devs files DMCA to spite Mojang(?) citing GPLv3 incompatibility with being shipped alongside non-Free Software.

There's a lot of legal nuance here that I don't have any answers for, like how copyright assignment worked on this project and whether the people who "sold" bukkit to Mojang had the legal right to do so. If they actually did then Mojang (as copyright holder) could just relicense the project under a different license than GPLv3 and make this all go away in the blink of an eye, so I'm kind of assuming they don't own it as much as they appear to think they do.

Would love to hear more about this from someone who pays attention to this stuff because this seems like a fascinating copyright situation.

In any case, this is a really good case-in-point as to why getting copyright assignment from external developers on any FS/OSS project that you run is a really good idea in general.

Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#13

Post by JoshTheGeek »

Fun fact: Mojang bought Bukkit. (@jeb_ tweeted the other day. This notice states that bukkit uses Minecraft's code without permission, and it did at one point. Now, though, as Mojang owns both, I think it should be allowed. Oh, and a Mojang employee (Dinnerbone) has stated he will be updating it to support 1.8.

Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#14

Post by efstone »

kevingadd wrote: post #8

So, from reading the notice and looking at commits: This guy, whoever he is, has been making fixes/adding features to his fork of Bukkit, and some (most?) of them have been getting merged to trunk. Bukkit's repo is apparently GPL. Now he's pissed off for some reason so he issues a DMCA to take down software he participated in the development of because it violates the GPL by depending on the closed-source Minecraft s…

As a copyright attorney (stonevaughanlaw.com), I can tell you this is total b.s. I've sent hundreds of takedown notices for various clients, namely FUNimation Entertainment. Over 9,000 notices, in fact. And I've actually handled lawsuits involving specifics of the 17 USC § 512(c) provision.

No one can issue a DMCA takedown notice on behalf of Mojang without Mojang's authorization. Period. A regular notice, yes--but not a DMCA takedown notice. This is because a DMCA notice triggers very specific and harsh liability if not acted upon. (Unless the alleged infringer files a counter-notification...but I digress)

As for copyright and the code this guy wrote, it's considered a work of joint authorship and no joint author can prohibit the exploitation of a joint work by any of the other joint authors. They can each do what they want with it. All that the disgruntled dev can do is to sue for an accounting of royalties to be paid based on monies earned from the exploitation of the work. Have fun with that calculation. And notably, such a suit is NOT an infringement suit. So it stays in state court and doesn't carry any of the crazy statutory damages or attorney's fees penalties that an infringement suit would, assuming the work was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, which it isn't.

As for the GPL, it's a nonexclusive license, revocable at will as to new users. Any dev who contributed to the work can license the work however he/she wants. Only the licensees (us users of bukkit) are bound by the GPL if and only if we downloaded bukkit pursuant to a GPL agreement.

All Mojang has to do is file a counter-notification and the files can all be reinstated without the webhost worrying about liability.

Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#15

Post by efstone »

efstone wrote: post #14
kevingadd wrote: post #8

So, from reading the notice and looking at commits: This guy, whoever he is, has been making fixes/adding features to his fork of Bukkit, and some (most?) of them have been getting merged to trunk. Bukkit's repo is apparently GPL. Now he's pissed off for some reason so he issues a DMCA to take down software he participated in the development of because it violates the GPL by depending on the closed-source Minecraft s…

As a copyright attorney (stonevaughanlaw.com), I can tell you this is total b.s. I've sent hundreds of takedown notices for various clients, namely FUNimation Entertainment. Over 9,000 notices, in fact. And I've actually handled lawsuits involving specifics of the 17 USC § 512(c) provision. No one can issue a DMCA takedown notice on behalf of Mojang without Mojang's authorization. Period. A regular notice, yes--but n…

And yes, the "over 9,000" was a Dragon Ball Z reference. :)

Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#16

Post by belorn »

efstone wrote: post #14
kevingadd wrote: post #8

So, from reading the notice and looking at commits: This guy, whoever he is, has been making fixes/adding features to his fork of Bukkit, and some (most?) of them have been getting merged to trunk. Bukkit's repo is apparently GPL. Now he's pissed off for some reason so he issues a DMCA to take down software he participated in the development of because it violates the GPL by depending on the closed-source Minecraft s…

As a copyright attorney (stonevaughanlaw.com), I can tell you this is total b.s. I've sent hundreds of takedown notices for various clients, namely FUNimation Entertainment. Over 9,000 notices, in fact. And I've actually handled lawsuits involving specifics of the 17 USC § 512(c) provision. No one can issue a DMCA takedown notice on behalf of Mojang without Mojang's authorization. Period. A regular notice, yes--but n…

Joint authorship differs strongly between countries, in both definition and legal consequences. Swedish law for example require unanimous permission by all authors, while US law only require permission by any single author. If the developer is from germany, they could also claim that the work was done successively, and thus make it a non-join authorship.

Since copyright itself is bound mostly by legal treaties, it too makes it a bit unclear in which legal rules should be used if a Swedish company who host content on a US company, get sued by a German developer.

"It depends" is the actually answer to what Mojang has to do. Since they are located in Sweden and thus under the Swedish legal system, my view is that they can't distribute the work as it stands.

Re: Bukkit no longer available for download. Hit with DMCA takedown.

#17

Post by LiroXIV »

http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/2fkz55/as_one_of_... contains probably one of the best explanations I've seen of the whole ordeal.

This could have been prevented IF the Bukkit code was under a permissive license rather than the GPL, or they had some type of contributor license agreement.

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