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My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

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Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#51

Post by thorough »

smt88 wrote: post #37

Flagged for misleading title. Accurate title: "Someone shared my copyrighted code, and GitHub used software instead of a human to arbitrate". Not as interesting or unexpected. None of the major platforms for user-generated content could possibly review every claim with human time.

How is the title misleading? It's "My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub has My Stolen Code."

If a website, even one like GitHub that posts others' submissions, had something I felt was mine and I had to go through a complicated process to get them to remove it, an adversarial process no less, I would describe that as a "brush."

If I felt that the process was made more difficult because the other party was a large corporation instead of a small group, and if I felt that there was a movement in the web in that direction, I would think it's reasonable to label the party "the corporate Internet." This kind of metaphor is certainly very common, where a journalist might label a practice by a company like like Facebook or Twitter as being done by "social media" writ large in spite of the fact that neither company is "social media," per se, but more literally a single entity in the large area that goes by that name.

And the statement "GitHub has My Stolen Code" is a very literal bottom-line summary of the source of the writer's contention. Its presence in the headline has the redeeming quality of removing the metaphor from the first half of the headline for readers who might want more specifics before they read the article.

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#52

Post by smt88 »

thorough wrote: post #51
smt88 wrote: post #37

Flagged for misleading title. Accurate title: "Someone shared my copyrighted code, and GitHub used software instead of a human to arbitrate". Not as interesting or unexpected. None of the major platforms for user-generated content could possibly review every claim with human time.

How is the title misleading? It's "My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub has My Stolen Code." If a website, even one like GitHub that posts others' submissions, had something I felt was mine and I had to go through a complicated process to get them to remove it, an adversarial process no less, I would describe that as a "brush." If I felt that the process was made more difficult because the other party…

"GitHub has My Stolen Code" makes it sound like:

1. GitHub did something special or intentional in this case.

2. GitHub is running the code.

In fact, when I saw the headline, my first thought was that GitHub was using someone's library in violating of the stated license.

It's also strange that this person published their source code along with the demand that no one reproduce it anywhere.

It's like if Twitter complained about people reproducing tweets. Sure, maybe they are violating your copyright in some way, but copyright is very, very difficult to enforce on a product that can be reproduced billions of times per second across the entire world.

Especially after seeing the code itself (simple forum software that runs on PHP 5.6, which has been unsupported for 2+ years) and that the author has no intention of monetizing it, it just sounds like they were looking for a sensational headline. There seems to be no actual harm happening here.

And as others have said, this is how we'd prefer the web to work: copyright holders have less power, not more.

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#53

Post by thorough »

beervirus wrote: post #15

Github didn’t steal anything. Some random person downloaded the code and posted it on github without its copyright notice. And Github’s DMCA takedown process is pretty much the same as everybody else’s. This is an unhappy story, but really, how would you like things to work? Github isn’t in the business of adjudicating copyright ownership, nor should it be.

If someone posted copyright information in say, the forum area of your personal website, and someone from the website containing that information emails you about it, you might actually find yourself doing some basic due diligence and just removing the code.

If you are a large corporation that doesn't have enough resources to do even this kind of bare-bones investigation because you have too many users per employee, you would probably come up with a process like this instead and lean on that process to guide you.

That would be reasonable in your situation, but it is perfectly fair for someone to say, "They should avoid getting themselves in that situation so that they don't have to make simple things so hard for individual people. The Internet is too dominated by ultra-scaled companies. It would be better if the companies operating in it were smaller."

I went to two colleges, one with tens of thousands of students and one with fewer than two thousand. When some paperwork issue came up, it was so nice to be able to go talk to someone in the accounting office and be treated like an adult instead of having to talk to a student working making barely above minimum wage who has to treat me like a stranger off the street because he deals with so many people. There are downsides to scale.

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#54

Post by thorough »

smt88 wrote: post #52
thorough wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the title misleading? It's "My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub has My Stolen Code." If a website, even one like GitHub that posts others' submissions, had something I felt was mine and I had to go through a complicated process to get them to remove it, an adversarial process no less, I would describe that as a "brush." If I felt that the process was made more difficult because the other party…

"GitHub has My Stolen Code" makes it sound like: 1. GitHub did something special or intentional in this case. 2. GitHub is running the code. In fact, when I saw the headline, my first thought was that GitHub was using someone's library in violating of the stated license. It's also strange that this person published their source code along with the demand that no one reproduce it anywhere. It's like if Twitter complai…

If you were "looking for a sensational headline" and GitHub intentionally took your copyrighted code and was running it, wouldn't you come up with a more direct statement than "GitHub has my stolen code"?

For example, if I bought a phone on Craigslist and someone said to me, "You have my stolen phone," I would not assume they were accusing me of stealing their phone.

I think the main problem with this headline is that so many have read it as "GitHub has stolen my code," but that is hardly the author's fault.

Maybe he should have written it as, "Someone stole my code and posted it on GitHub" but that would disguise the author's main point, fleshed out in the article, that GitHub is not acting appropriately in this case.

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#55

Post by thorough »

gspr wrote: post #33
stormcode wrote: post #9

Sadly, this is corporate America these days. We are living in the Cyberpunk future where corporations have the upper hand and are not required to provide an actual reasonable human to investigate or pass judgement on your issue. You see it with the algos that run user interfacing parts of Youtube, Facebook regularly. It's messed up. I'm sorry your code got stolen.

There's plenty of problems with corporate control of the Internet, but this here ain't one. This is, in fact, one of those situations where the DMCA does a good job.

All right, you've stated that you think that having to remedy such an obvious abuse by hiring a lawyer is not a problem. But the question is, why don't you think it's a problem?

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#56

Post by tzs »

rwdim wrote: post #45

I’ve had code stolen by an employee who used it to start a competing service. I sued him in Federal court and won. You didn’t have your code stolen. Your code was free and open, and the header he removed stated that fact. What you had was a violation of your terms of use, and I while I agree the guy’s probably a scumbag, the only issue here is that he was seen doing it. Rest assured, others have done it without being…

> Your code was free and open, and the header he removed stated that fact

The header in the source code from the author's site says:

  // This software is the beta version of bwfForum.  It is free for
  // you to use.  You may not modify any of the PHP code without
  // the author's permission.  You may modify the configuration file
  // as needed to get bwfForum to run as designed on your computer.
  // You may not sell or redistribute bwfForum without the author's 
  // permission.  If you would like to use bwfForum on your website,
That's not free and open.

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#57

Post by gspr »

thorough wrote: post #55
gspr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of problems with corporate control of the Internet, but this here ain't one. This is, in fact, one of those situations where the DMCA does a good job.

All right, you've stated that you think that having to remedy such an obvious abuse by hiring a lawyer is not a problem. But the question is, why don't you think it's a problem?

I do think that would be a problem. But I don't think that's what's on the line here. Why would you need a lawyer to file a DMCA notice against GitHub if you're 100% certain that the code in question is copyrighted by you and distributed unlawfully?

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#58

Post by tzs »

kernelbugs wrote: post #39
jrochkind1 wrote: post #34

I've never done it, but I don't think you need a lawyer to file a DMCA takedown request. It's not that hard to do. Is there any reason for him not just do it, or that you'd need legal counsel? Thinking it through, I suppose theoretically you might worry that if you did it wrong you could get in legal trouble, but a) this guy is positive he owns the copyright to this thing it's not any kind of grey area, b) even those…

In this case, the author did submit a DMCA takedown request, but the Github user then submitted a DMCA counter notification stating that, under penalty of perjury, they have a good faith believe that the takedown is invalid. As I understand it (and I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice), the only next step available is to use the US court system to sue for copyright infringement and perjury.

> In this case, the author did submit a DMCA takedown request, but the Github user then submitted a DMCA counter notification stating that, under penalty of perjury, they have a good faith believe that the takedown is invalid

Are we sure of that? GitHub publishes the notices and counter-notices. I can't find any notices there that appear to be for that repository, nor any relevant counter-notices.

I wonder if the author may have sent his request through some other channel than GitHub's DMCA takedown request form?

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#59

Post by monoideism »

shadowgovt wrote: post #42
monoideism wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Github has my stolen code". Do you understand this sentence? Shall I diagram it for you?

Harsh. You are correct, I misread it. And I am not the only one. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's amusing. You made multiple negative comments ("click bait", etc) based on a misunderstanding of the title, replied sarcastically when I pointed it out, and then when I bluntly pointed it out, you throw that at me?

Re: My Latest Brush with the Corporate Internet: GitHub Has My Stolen Code

#60

Post by thorough »

gspr wrote: post #57
thorough wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All right, you've stated that you think that having to remedy such an obvious abuse by hiring a lawyer is not a problem. But the question is, why don't you think it's a problem?

I do think that would be a problem. But I don't think that's what's on the line here. Why would you need a lawyer to file a DMCA notice against GitHub if you're 100% certain that the code in question is copyrighted by you and distributed unlawfully?

I think the article states and it has been repeated several times in the comments here that the author already did so and that a lawyer is now required because the offender disputed the claim.
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