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FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

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Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#111

Post by martey »

cryptica wrote: post #77
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here we have the good guys using the law and ... at least temporarily ... winning... so what's your point?

You can see it everywhere. In this case, the fact that it took 2 years. And of course now that FFmpeg is getting more exposure in the media due to their association with AI hype, now they finally get 'fair' legal treatment... I don't call that winning. I see this over and over. Same thing all over the west. I remember Rowan Atkinson (the UK actor) made a speech about this effect a couple of years ago and never heard…

> In this case, the fact that it took 2 years. And of course now that FFmpeg is getting more exposure in the media due to their association with AI hype, now they finally get 'fair' legal treatment... I don't call that winning.

It took 2 years because FFmpeg waited 2 years to send a DMCA notice to Github, not because of delays in the legal system. I think you are conflating different unrelated issues here.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#112

Post by dzaima »

Telaneo wrote: post #105
iLoveOncall wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This perfectly summarizes my feeling about software licenses. I've always found it beyond ridiculous. Either you post your code in public and you accept it'll be used by others, without any enforceable restriction, or you don't. It's as simple as that. The rest is self-importance from bitter old men.

> I've always found it beyond ridiculous. Either you post your code in public and you accept it'll be used by others, without any enforceable restriction, or you don't. It's as simple as that. If we can have this, but for everything, so films, books, TV, music and everything else, I'd agree. This however is not the world we live in. The amount of culture we could have from people remixing the past 50 years worth of c…

Or even just, have this also apply to the code produced by those using my code. But while that's not the case, copyleft licenses (especially GPL (not LGPL)) are a way to force it to be the case to at least limited extent.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#113

Post by ranger_danger »

beardbound wrote: post #106
ranger_danger wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything humans make up also comes from source material. The real (legal) question in either case, is how much is actually copied, and how obvious is it.

I mostly agree with you, but if a human straight up copies work under copyright they’re violating the law. Seems like a LLM should be held to the same standard unless they should be even less beholden to the law than people. It’s also incredibly hard to tell if a LLM copied something since you can’t ask it in court and it probably can’t even tell you if it did.

From what I have seen, the (US) courts seem to make a distinction between 100% machine-automated output with no manual prompting at all, versus a human giving it specific instructions on what to generate. (And yes I realize everything a computer does requires prior instruction of some kind.)

But the issue with copyright I think comes from the distribution of a (potentially derivative or transformative in the legal sense) work, which I would say is typically done manually by a human to some extent, so I think they would be on the hook for any potential violations in that case, possibly even if they cannot actually produce sources themselves since it was LLM-generated.

But the legal test always seems to come back to what I said before, simply "how much was copied, and how obvious is it?" which is going to be up to the subjective interpretation of each judge of every case.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#114

Post by larschdk »

habibur wrote: post #97

LGPL allows compiling the whole of ffmpeg into a so or lib and then dynamically linking from there for your closed source code. That's the main difference between LGPL and GPL. But if you change or add something in building ffmpeg.so that should be GPLed. Apparently they copied some files from ffmpeg mixed with their propitiatory code and compiled it as a whole. That's the problem here.

Copyright law defines derivative work by substantial similarity and dependence, not by technical mechanisms like linking. Technical measures such as linking is not a copyright concept.

Dynamic linking is a condition for LGPL compliance, but it is not sufficient. Dynamic linking does not automatically prevent a combined work from being a derived work.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#115

Post by booleandilemma »

cryptica wrote: post #66

The law doesn't seem to work anymore. There are so many cases where someone can do illegal stuff in plain sight and nothing can be done about it. Not everyone has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spare to get a lawyer. By the time you manage to save up the money, you realize that this system is absolutely crooked and that you don't trust it to obtain justice anyway even with the lawyers and ev…

I can't help but look at it as the sign of an empire in decline. It's only a matter of time before more people realize what you're saying (particularly the last two paragraphs) and the system falls apart.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#117

Post by helterskelter »

mystraline wrote: post #6
a_void_sky wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they waited for more than 1.5 years and they did not forgot

They were given 1.5 YEARS of lead time. And FLOSS should treat commercial entities the same way they treat us. Seriously, if we copied in violation their code, how many hours would pass before a DMCA violation? FLOSS should be dictatorial in application of the license. After all, its basically free to use and remix as long as you follow the easy rules. I'm also on the same boat that Android phone creators should also…

My understanding is that the GPL doesn't have fucktons of precedent behind it in court. You bet the house on a big case and lose, the precedent will stick with GPL and may even weaken all copyleft licenses.

Also, it's better to gently apply pressure and set a track record of violators taking corrective measures so when you end up in court one day you've got a list of people and corporate entities which do comply because they believed that the terms were clear enough, which would lend weight to your argument.

Saying this as a GPL hardliner myself.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#118

Post by Dylan16807 »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #99
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a multi-terabyte sized dice that is not at all random AND has most definitely copied the source code in question to begin with.

The die is certainly not multi-terabyte. A more realistic number would be 32k-sided to 50k-sided if we want to go with a pretty average token vocabulary size. Really, it comes down to encoding. Arbitrarily short utf-8 encoded strings can be generated using a coin flip.

The number of sides has nothing to do with the data within. It's not random and sometimes it repeats things in an obviously non-chance way.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#119

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

ajross wrote: post #7
merlindru wrote: post #2

The repo in question incorporated FFmpeg code while claiming their code is Apache 2.0-licensed over 1.5 years ago[1] This is not allowed under the LGPL, which mandates dynamic linking against the library. They copy-pasted FFmpeg code into their repo instead. [1] https://x.com/HermanChen1982/status/1761230920563233137

That's not it. The LGPL doesn't require dynamic linking, just that any distributed artifacts be able to be used with derived versions of the LGPL code. Distributing buildable source under Apache 2.0 would surely qualify too. The problem here isn't a technical violation of the LGPL, it's that Rockchip doesn't own the copyright to FFMPEG and simply doesn't have the legal authority to release it under any license other…

"In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License."

They should be covered as an aggregation, provided the LGPL was intact.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#120

Post by eqvinox »

koolba wrote: post #27
dzhiurgis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when you want to mix two libraries with different licences?

If you own one of them, mix in LGPL code, and publish it, the result is entirely LGPL. If you don’t own it and cannot legally relicense part as LGPL, you’re not allowed to publish it. Just because you can merge someone else’s code does not mean you’re legally allowed to do so.

This is not correct; you're simply required to follow all applicable licenses at the same time. This may or may not be possible, but is in practice quite commonly done.
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