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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

#51

Post by amszmidt »

papercrane wrote: post #46
amszmidt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorporating compatible code, under different license is perfectly OK and each work can have different license, while the whole combined work is under the terms of another. I'm honestly quite confused what FFmpeg is objecting to here, if ILoveRockchip wrote code, under a compatible license (which Apache 2.0 is wrt. LGPLv2+ which FFmpeg is licensed under) -- then that seems perfectly fine. The repository in question…

The DMCA notice is available here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2025/12/2025-12-1... The notice has a list of files and says that they were copied from ffmpeg, removed the original copyright notice, added their own and licensed under the more permissive Apache license.

Thanks for the link; sadly none of the links to the repo can be viewed to see what exactly occurred.

To those downvoting, curious why? Many of the links are not viewable, since GitHub hides them, so any discussion becomes quite tricky.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#52

Post by wmf »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #24
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

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

You should keep them in different directories and have the appropriate license for each directory. You can have a top-level LICENSE file explaining the situation.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#53

Post by LeoWattenberg »

dheera wrote: post #31

Time to create a decentralized, blockchain-based GitHub (GitCoin?) and have every commit be a transaction on the chain. Nothing would ever be takedownable.

I mean, torrenting is decentralised and not technically takedownable. But it was entirely possible to make it legally painful for people involved in it, as seen in eg. The Pirate Bay, megaupload or an entire cease-and-desist letter industry around individual torrenting users

Intentional noncompliance with copyright law can get you quite a distance, but there's a lot of money involved, so if you ever catch the wrong kind of attention, usually by being too successful, you tend to get smacked.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#54

Post by odie5533 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #45
dheera wrote: post #31

Time to create a decentralized, blockchain-based GitHub (GitCoin?) and have every commit be a transaction on the chain. Nothing would ever be takedownable.

The cost would be incredible even for just a pointer to distributed file storage

Github stores about 19 PB. That would cost about $20k a year on Filecoin. Filecoin currently has more supply than demand because it's speculation-driven right now.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#55

Post by rvnx »

kelnos wrote: post #33
rvnx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then waiting to see how they addressed these points and what were the approaches taken and why ? Here spent time to think and document all the IRC chats, the Twitter thread, the attitude of the SoC manufacturer, etc. There has to be a backstory to suddenly come after 1.5 years for an issue that could have been solved in 10 minutes.

Then why didn't Rockchip solve it in 10 minutes?

Bad decision and risk/reward calculation for sure. If it's code that is core to your stuff, and it is GPL'd, it's (technically) very tricky to solve.

But here, as FFmpeg is LGPL and we talk about one single file, there is even less work to do in order to fix that.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#56

Post by LeoWattenberg »

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

Copy pasting code is allowed under LGPL, but doing so while removing license headers and attribution of code snippets would not be.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#57

Post by hogrug »

firesteelrain wrote: post #36

Not familiar with Rockchip. Plenty of searches come up with cases of people incorporating ffmpeg into Rockchip projects. I still see the license files and headers. What is different with this DMCA takedown? https://github.com/nyanmisaka/ffmpeg-rockchip

The one you reference doesn't look like it misrepresents the licenses, i.e. of you use it to make your own derivative you would expect to have to share modifications you make to the LGPL code.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#58

Post by zzo38computer »

dheera wrote: post #31

Time to create a decentralized, blockchain-based GitHub (GitCoin?) and have every commit be a transaction on the chain. Nothing would ever be takedownable.

Git already has a blockchain; what you will need to do next is to make copies of the objects of the repositories on other servers as well. (However, I don't know if the blockchain includes tags on git (it seems to me that it might not but I don't know enough about it), although it does include objects. Fossil includes tags in the blockchain as well as files, commits, etc.)

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#59

Post by alienbaby »

bfrog wrote: post #39

I wonder how this will work with AI stuff generating code without any source or attribution. It’s not like the LLMs make this stuff up out of thin air it comes from source material.

Llm's do not verbatim disgorge chunks of the code they were trained on.

Re: FFmpeg has issued a DMCA takedown on GitHub

#60

Post by Fnoord »

kelnos wrote: post #32
rvnx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's bullshit. The FFmpeg devs were well within their rights to even send a DMCA takedown notice, immediately, without asking nicely first. This is what big corporations do to the little guys, so we owe big corporations absolutely nothing more. They gave Rockchip a year and a half to fix it. It is the responsibility of Rockchip to take care of it once they were originally notified, and the FFmpeg dvelopers have no…

Yeah. This is like waiting 90 days before releasing a full disclosure on a vulnerability, and then complaining you could have contacted us and given us time, we only had 90 days now. Gaslighting 101. Those 90 days gives all those with a lot if resources and sitting on zero days (such as Cellebrite) time to play for free.
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