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WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

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Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#61

Post by Bluestrike2 »

tn13 wrote: post #49
eli wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're aware that you have rights under DMCA too? File a counter-notification[1] explaining why you think the takedown isn't valid and Github will likely put the repo back online. And if WhatsApp doesn't like it, they can sue you. [1] http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca/counter512.pdf

With $19B in pocket they can totally ruin his life with a lawsuit.

Assuming you're filing a counter-notice in an instance where you have a good faith belief that the original takedown notice is in error, and that you can support that belief, it's rather unlikely that the counter-notice alone will make the supposed copyright holder more disposed towards litigation. Especially if they knowingly misrepresented matters in the takedown, opening themselves up to damages and attorney's fees.

In any case, they can already sue you regardless of whether a takedown notice is issued in the first place. :)

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#62

Post by perlpimp »

yuvadam wrote: post #45

I own one of the affected repositories, and submitted the original link to HN the moment I got an email notification about it from Github [1]. It's a shame we didn't get the discussion going earlier. IANAL, but what the hell does a security POC (and an unofficial API derived from it) have to do copyrights? On what grounds did a repo get chosen for takedown? Is it the "whatsapp" in the name? What about a simple "x.wha…

large money crush imagination and suck all the life out of creativity, of all people zuck should've entertained huge ecosystem of various clients that suit other people's needs...

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#63

Post by devcpp »

eli wrote: post #59
nitrogen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still a mandatory 10(?) day delay before the content can be reinstated.

Hey, I never said it was a fair and just process, but the designers of the DMCA at least did consider that the takedown process might be abused.

They should have solved that issue then, not just consider it.

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#65

Post by kuschku »

skywhopper wrote: post #9
jotato wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, companies _have_ to do stuff like this. By not protecting a copyright or trademark you are, in effect, giving it up. Calling your API "node.whatsapp" is using their trademark, and they do have the right and responsibility to protect it. It doesn't make them wrong; just a jerk :)

They have to do it to protect trademark, but not copyright. I'm not sure there's any real copyright claim to be made here. The DMCA does have provisions against reverse engineering etc. It's not clear to me from this notice exactly what's believed to be infringing other than the Trademark claim, which is pretty straightforward (and easily gotten around).

> The DMCA does have provisions against reverse engineering

Here in the EU reverse engineering is allowed and even if you sign a contract saying you won't reverse engineer something you've still got the right to do it.

How would the DMCA comply with this, would anyone be able to shut down legally reverse engineered code on GitHub?

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#66

Post by tgalal »

I own 3 of the affected repos:

Yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup MIT License

It is a library that implements WhatsApp's protocol. It is built on community effort of reverse engineering WhatsApp's protocol. I created this in first place to bring WhatsApp on an unsupported platform (Nokia N9/ meego platform)

Wazapp https://github.com/tgalal/wazapp GPLv2 License

This is a UI frontend to Yowsup for Nokia N9. Nokia N9 is the only smartphone produced by Nokia which never got WhatsApp support. I created this client because I wanted to use WhatsApp on my Nokia N9. The code is totally decoupled from Yowsup, and does not use WhatsApp in its name. You can see its icon here http://everythingn9.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/wazapp.pn... which for me looks different enough from official client's icon.

OpenWA https://github.com/tgalal/OpenWhatsappBB10 GPLv3 License

This is also a frontend to Yowsup, but for Blackberry 10. It is a little bit similar case as Wazapp. I created this for BB10 when WhatsApp initially said they're not supporting that platform. Again, this is decoupled from Yowsup, has same icon as Wazapp. Its name though on Github is OpenWhatsappB10, as a project name. However, the real app name is OpenWA. Perhaps a rename of the repository would be sufficient ?

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#67

Post by petercooper »

kuschku wrote: post #65
skywhopper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to do it to protect trademark, but not copyright. I'm not sure there's any real copyright claim to be made here. The DMCA does have provisions against reverse engineering etc. It's not clear to me from this notice exactly what's believed to be infringing other than the Trademark claim, which is pretty straightforward (and easily gotten around).

> The DMCA does have provisions against reverse engineering Here in the EU reverse engineering is allowed and even if you sign a contract saying you won't reverse engineer something you've still got the right to do it. How would the DMCA comply with this, would anyone be able to shut down legally reverse engineered code on GitHub?

GitHub is located and hosted in the US, so US rules apply when it comes to takedowns, etc.

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#68

Post by DjangoReinhardt »

tgalal wrote: post #66

I own 3 of the affected repos: Yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup MIT License It is a library that implements WhatsApp's protocol. It is built on community effort of reverse engineering WhatsApp's protocol. I created this in first place to bring WhatsApp on an unsupported platform (Nokia N9/ meego platform) Wazapp https://github.com/tgalal/wazapp GPLv2 License This is a UI frontend to Yowsup for Nokia N9. Nokia…

I was toying around with your (quite excellent) Yowsup library a little while ago and the one question I always had was this: Since WhatsApp doesn't have an official library, wasn't Yowsup always in the cross-hairs?

I mean, it was only a matter of time before they clamped down and claimed that you were violating section 3.A.iii of the ToS by reverse-engineering the WhatsApp protocol, right?

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved it if Yowsup was allowed as an (unofficial) API - or something like that. However, as a newbie to the world of programming & software development in general, I am trying to understand what was wrong about the DMCA notice. What, in your opinion, should they have done instead?

Re: WhatsApp issued takedown against alternative clients a week before acquisition

#69

Post by Niten »

dpe82 wrote: post #17

I wouldn't read too much into this. As part of their purchase agreement WhatsApp likely needed to say that they had been diligent in maintaining and defending their copyrights and trademark. That's pretty standard in a financing, so I'd imagine it's a standard part of M&A deals. It probably turned up during due diligence that they had some "cleanup" to take care of in order to not be lying when they made that represe…

It's pretty disgusting to dismiss this level of abuse of the DMCA (these aren't even legitimate copyright issues!) and legal bullying under the guise of standard operating procedure. It's over-the-top wrong.
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