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noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

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Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#61

Post by jethro_tell »

dcow wrote: post #36

I’d love to hear from the copyright owner (the repo owner). According to github they were contacted and offered legal support. Why didn't they take it or investigate and challenge the notice? I could see how it would be easy to think “welp I help people remove DRM for archival and interoperability purposes and I got a DMCA notice it’s over”. I wonder if the EFF would be interested in lending support.

from his statement on mobile read, it sounds like they were given 24 hours to take that help and did not check their email in time.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#62

Post by wtallis »

bitwize wrote: post #45

Good. Like it or not, anticircumvention measures are black-letter law in much of the world. In the USA, producing or distributing software designed to circumvent DRM can subject you to civil and criminal penalties. According to 17 U.S.C. section 512, it is not necessary for the material itself to be infringing in order for a DMCA notice to be valid. If "an activity using the material" is infringing, the material must…

> "an activity using the material"

You cut off a few words that probably carry real meaning:

> "does not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing;"

So there's a (somewhat ambiguous) restriction that the only activities this clause is concerned with are those happening on the system or network operated by the service provider that wants safe harbor protection against liability for their users' infringement.

And to determine what activities can qualify as copyright infringement, you have to look in section 501 and the other sections it references; section 512 does not alter the definition of copyright infringement, it just adds nuance to who can be held liable for infringement.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#63

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Aerroon wrote: post #38
kmeisthax wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the thing about circumvention exceptions is that... 1. There is no general exception for format shifting. If there was, DMCA 1201 would have zero legal weight. 2. Even if there was, it would not materially impact the legal status of this DMCA 512 takedown request This is because DMCA 1201 circumvention exceptions only apply to half of the law. Section 1201 renders two different acts illegal: 1. You can't circumve…

> 2. You can't tell anyone how to circumvent DRM, regardless of purpose. This is the sort of violation being alleged here. I'm curious: why would this be the case? This is a restriction of speech that doesn't contain copyrighted content enacted by a copyright law. This seems like charging someone, by using an anti-burglary law, because they taught someone else how to pick a lock .

Just to give you an idea of how dumb this law is, try this for a hypothetical.

Alice uses DRM to protect her copyrighted work.

Bob uses the exact same DRM to stop you from copying public domain works, for example.

You publish some code to break Bob's DRM. Is that illegal?

The law shouldn't enable Bob to do that. But if you can have tools to break Bob's DRM, the tools will break Alice's DRM because they're the same, and then the law is pointless and might as well be repealed.

But if it's not legal to break Bob's DRM, then obviously the law is ridiculous and needs to be repealed, if it isn't already unconstitutional as a result.

We should not still have this.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#64

Post by schoen »

wtallis wrote: post #54
stefan_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implementing a DRM scheme is not circumventing it. No circumvention here, you still need the password.

I think you need the password and authorization from the copyright owner. The law provides this definition: > a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work. DeDRM tools are obviously not the ordinary cours…

Someone downvoted you earlier, I imagine for not liking this situation. I don't like it either, but I worked with lawyers fighting the DMCA for a long time and many courts have interpreted it the way you describe. I wish people wouldn't downvote the proverbial messenger for reporting on the legal status quo!

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#65

Post by schoen »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #35
kmeisthax wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the thing about circumvention exceptions is that... 1. There is no general exception for format shifting. If there was, DMCA 1201 would have zero legal weight. 2. Even if there was, it would not materially impact the legal status of this DMCA 512 takedown request This is because DMCA 1201 circumvention exceptions only apply to half of the law. Section 1201 renders two different acts illegal: 1. You can't circumve…

You're not allowed to circumvent for format shifting, but you are allowed to circumvent to access a work you have rights to. So these takedowns on GitHub should not be happening.

There's no exception to the tools prohibition based on purpose. One of many harsh features of §1201.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#66

Post by [deleted] »

loeg wrote: post #44
femto113 wrote: post #26

Think I have to side with Readium on this one, since the source code contains the actual bytes of the master key: def secret_transform_profile10(input_hash): ... # This 64-byte master key is basically all that distinguishes # the open source "open for everyone" version from the so-called # "open source" closed-source-version that's actually being used # by book distributors. ... masterkey = "b3a0..." If it read that…

The full number seems to be b3a07c4d42880e69398e05392405050efeea0664c0b638b7c986556fa9b58d77b31a40eb6a4fdba1e4537229d9f779daad1cc41ee968153cb71f27dc9696d40f .

[deleted]

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#67

Post by Ostrogodsky »

RKearney wrote: post #5

You can still download the repo off archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20211231094826/https://github.co... Click the green Code button, then Download ZIP.

Fantastic, thanks. Streissand effect at play, I would have never checked this repository otherwise.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#68

Post by schoen »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #14
akersten wrote: post #4

> I have taken fair use into consideration. This is always a fucking lie, and I wish we (as a community) would band together to make it more painful for giant companies to just spam DMCA takedowns as part of their DRM strategy. Ignoring the entire issue with the fact that there probably wasn't any copyrighted material in the repo to begin with and that code is speech, and speech is protected in the US - in other word…

As Italian, I think you should take my words with mistrust, but as far as I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen That said, I guess it was shortsighted from the founding father but I guess at the time people would be often oppressed by governments not by neighbors and friends and I think this is s…

What you describe isn't exactly the law in the U.S., but it gets at some real things:

(1) there is a separate "right of petition" in the first amendment in parallel with the rights of freedom of speech and press; the right of petition relates to asking the government to change its behavior;

(2) the courts have a notion of "core political speech", which is some of the most strongly protected speech; and

(3) the courts have a different notion of "commercial speech", which is some of the least-protected speech.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#69

Post by cft »

stefan_ wrote: post #13

Looking at the python file they are complaining about, it simply implements the "encryption profile" that is mentioned. There is no circumvention; it still requires the user password. It is also clearly a novel implementation, so there is no copyright violation here. Their "algorithm" or whatever is obviously not protected under DMCA. So this is totally bogus, again. Bonus points for the DMCA notice obviously not bei…

There has to be a meaningful liability for sending defective DMCA notices. But there won't be, wrong times.

Re: noDRM's GitHub repo DeDRM_tools is disabled due to Readium's DMCA notice

#70

Post by darknavi »

xvilka wrote: post #8

The amount of DMCA pull requests is staggering - every day there is a few: https://github.com/github/dmca/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed

Here I am browsing all of this cool content via the WayBackMachibe. What a good repository of goodies!
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