First off, let me get this out of the way - I am not a lawyer. If you want a legal advice talk to a lawyer.
Second, I am sorry this is happening to you.
Third, based on GitHub's reply, specifically
> we're unable to confirm a violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201
they took your submission as 17 U.S. Code § 1201 takedown notice. Maybe you specifically stated this. Maybe it was implied. This is likely not what you want and GitHub's response is likely correct. The reason for this is that § 1201 prohibits circumventing a technological measure. The JS you host on your public site, even if obfuscated, very likely does not qualify for this protection. Another detail - the reason it took long (a month later according to your post) is that after the youtube-dl fiasco, they committed to manual review, legal and technical, of every 1201 takedown notice [0].
Fourth, if you believe these copies are sufficiently reproducing your copyrighted work,
what you likely want to do is file a standard copyright infringement 17 U.S Code § 512(c) takedown notice. This still goes through the same DMCA report flow but it should result in a less stringent review process and a faster response.
Fifth and finally, consider asking your favorite LLM to get more context around these laws. Good luck!
You should discuss this with an attorney that is experienced with IP law to see what your options really are. IP law is very complex and sometimes very surprising. You need expert legal advice, not advice from the HN crowd.
As an aside, I thought that "cracked" software meant software that has had the copy protection or other access control bypassed or removed, not the alteration of the software functionality itself. If your software was actually cracked then you may have some fairly heavy law in your favor. For better or worse, bypassing access controls (even weak or simple access controls) gets special legal attention.
Most state bar associations have a free consultation line that will refer you to a reputable lawyer to start with and do basic consultation on where your issue should go and how much it will be. If I had to guess, getting advice is probably $100 and having a lawyer send a letter is $250-500.
Hey guys, thank you all very much for your comments! I just woke up, I did not really believe my post would get this much attention, so thanks!
Honestly, I was a hoping that giving attention to this problem here at HN might lead to someone from Github actually noticing my problem and looking into it.
I think I will try solving it with a lawyer. But it would be really cool if I could spend my days writing code instead of dealing with lawyers and stuff.
> But it would be really cool if I could spend my days writing code instead of dealing with lawyers and stuff.
I think anybody in any line of work or life would like that. It's however unlikely to never run into an issue where a lawyer is really needed, so don't hesitate when you realize you need one.
Thank you for saying this. It's literally insane to me how thoroughly entrenched this sense of entitlement has become. It's at the point where it can't even be parodied, because a chunk of society, maybe even the majority, seriously holds the view that they are entitled to any software thing they want for free.
If he wants revenue he can restrict his product to paying users. Double dipping with the popularty of free access only to abuse users with spychological manipulation spam should never be accepted.
Depending on your definition, shareware models have been around for 40 years at this point. If you disagree with the terms, don't use it. That's a personal decision though, not a global moral position.
I would suggest that, instead of trying to complain about the people copying your products, which I think is practically impossible to avoid, and even from your own experience preventing it has led nowhere so far, you should focus on making sure that your version of the product is the best one. So that the people will naturally use it instead of those repackaged versions.
> take the Javascript code from my website, remove all ads from it
I would assume that this might be one of the reasons why people are modifying and repackaging your product. I would suggest to remove that incentive. So that the people will have no reason to repackage your product because it has annoying features. And so that they could use it directly and be happy about it.
Man, some of the comments this is getting are absolutely wild.
OP, I’m sorry this is happening to you. It must be incredibly frustrating to have people ripping off something you’ve worked on for many years and pass it off as their own work. I would be furious in your position.
I wish I could do something directly to help you but the best I can offer is to echo the best advice others have already given you: it’s time to get a lawyer. That is the one guaranteed route to get GitHub to sit up and take the action they should already have taken on your behalf.
Can you post the actual link of the repo? You'd get responses with more context.
You had commented on the photocraft post prior, so if it's that, then it's a bit muddled. It's a LLM based re-implementation and not a copy of the code made open. So the argument would be weaker there, and you'd really need specific code samples to make a case of copyright infringement. Photocraft not "piracy" as is normally understood, which is the exact same binary, optionally with the license protection removed.
A talk with a lawyer would be advised. But this is money you may not want to invest.
You could just go on, keep your product improving and proof this way that your solution is more worth than the copycats out there.
You just realized how it is to be a valuable target.
I am in the same situation where people are hosting copies of the software for commercial use in companies. Even as big as Tencent. That is not allowed with my license and they also went to remove the code that does the license check on application startup. GitHub’s response so far: “please give an explanation how they can become conformant so that the users can fix this.”
> Thank you for submitting a DMCA takedown notice. We've reviewed the information you've provided, and based on the facts presented to us, we're unable to confirm a violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201.
Did they actually republish you code or were they just creating wrappers that download/cache the code from your website to run locally?
I personally know Ivan. For many years of his life, every day, he programmed algorithm after algorithm in this complex online photo editing tool. Essentially, he devoted half his life to it. And now, when someone has literally stolen his work, nobody is reacting. And that's terrible. I think it's absolutely terrible. GitHub should respond to this.
I've seen people on Reddit writing things like, "Come on, what's the big deal? AI can write any code now." I disagree. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code here, very complex code, which even AI wouldn't be able to write on the first try or in a single day. So this person stole this code from Photopea and built a product on top of it.
This is a very old problem. One of my first commercial programs was a wordpress plugin and as you know, you just distribute the PHP source code in a zip file and there it is
You will never sue your way out of this. Piracy will always exist. GitHub will respond to a legal notice but whack a mole is the game and legal notices cost money
The solution in the WP community at the time was variations of the plugin as a loss leader to get revenue with support or to leverage community visibility into larger contracts for work or hosting the platform for others.
If your business model depends on your code being a secret, JavaScript is not a good play. The business model needs to enhance what the code offers since it’s basically a commodity now
AI did this to every developer in the world and nobody cares. This just confirms to me that software engineers are the biggest cucks that exist right now.
I saw someone who claims to have re-implemented Photoshop in Rust using clean room specs. I haven't checked into it yet, but it seems to have a lot of interest.
Yeah, this bodes well for my meditation app frontend I'm going to release on GitHub. It should be fair use ish but it does seem GitHub is fairly friendly anyway.
Headspace without being tracked and having data brokers cross reference "anonymized" (sic! word wasn't in keyb. dict) info on when I meditate, using which program etc.?
Headspace updated it's privacy policy info recently, which got me to have it checked with an LLM. And it turns out that what you're doing on $100 per year meditation app is still being sold to anyone willing to pay. Using headspace lost it's charm. I wonder if Andy ever agreed to this.
Sorry this happened to you dude. I don’t want to be harsh but, out of the crimes ignored in this era of AI clean rooming, book destroying distilleries and a despondent ostrich adjacent legal system you do seem to be one amongst a deluge of cheated individuals.
Hope you manage to get it sorted but I have no idea how that would go down at this point. I’m sure at least one of them could claim they copied it off the other ones and then you’re shit out of luck.
Regardless of what you do now, I think you should be prepared for the upcoming reality that LLMs are going to be able to reproduce software, feature-perfect, in a way that does not currently violate copyright law.
Right now, the settled law is that such an LLM reproduction is 100% legal.
If you really want to protect your software in the years to come, you might have to seriously consider starting some sort of popular political movement to address this issue in copyright law.
Current models can already do a full reproduction of anything with source code available (e.g. JavaScript...), and there's already been some poor-quality Photoshop knockoffs.
> Right now, the settled law is that such an LLM reproduction is 100% legal.
How so? Interfaces are not copyrightable, but that it not the same as dissecting a js bundle and copying the implementations. Are we sure these LLM are keeping sanitary habits there?
If you only used the output of an LLM, then you don’t qualify.
But, the use of LLMs is not disqualifying. To qualify for copyright protection your work simply must have a sufficient degree of human authorship.
However this is just about protection, not infringement.
If you use an LLM to generate something and that LLM just happens to output something that another human wrote, you may be liable for copyright infringement.
> popular political movement to address this issue in copyright law.
Or perhaps the people should admit that copyright, an artificial construct which is not rooted in natural property, was inherently broken and is not (or at least no longer is) a net benefit to the society and simply adapt around it.
I was watching a video talking about how a world before copyright allowed innovation to spread quickly and allowed people miles away to iterate faster. Even if LLMs reproducing feature perfect software is deemed a copyright violation, people will just do it privately and use the software themselves.
I’m personally waiting for LLMs to get so good that I can make music and movies based on my favorite ones. I probably could never release it to the public, but being able to make it and enjoy it myself would be amazing.
That world worked because the ones doing the research were either self-sufficient hermits (often self-sufficient by necessity as they were outcast for "being mad"), financed by the Church or financed by a rich person (usually the fiefdom's ruler, sometimes independent wealth).
Copyright, patents and IP are the evolution of our (Western) way of converting research into a form of financial investment.
Patronage and support of the arts (and sciences) was a great value proposition for Churchmen in old times. You could commission works of music or sculpture or stained glass or what have you, and these were of course well-fitted to be installed or performed in the confines of your church and serve the liturgy. So they were collective goods that were enjoyed by many; they attracted locals and they beautified their surroundings, and they encouraged pilgrimages and stimulated income if you could become particularly distinguished and attractive, based on the beauty lent by your artisans and artists.
And a big church could employ lots of them, and thereby stimulate the economy. It seems that the Baroque Era and churches crammed to the rafters with art, may be an artifact of a very good job market for those architects, craftsmen and artists!
Yeah... you could copy some sheet music and share it around, but it still required skilled musicians to perform, play and sing it. And nobody was taking photos or uploading JPEGs of your art and sculpture, so it was fairly locked-in that people needed to visit, and see it in context. So it stood to reason that you could probably reconstruct Noah's Ark from the fragments of True Cross that were circulating around Europe... and how many fingers did your favorite saint really have?
Copyright-free church economics have sort of fallen apart since then. However, museums, arena concerts, theaters and the rest, they have all taken pages from the Church playbooks. The fact that a church can still draw in hundreds for a show with great production values, every week or daily, seems dull and unremarkable now, but a good rock concert or museum collection can evoke the same "goin' to church" fervor in people who like that kind of stuff.
There is something similar happening in the game modding communities. One of my favorite streamers had claude write a little mod to change the UI of KSP so it kept with the larger fanciful theme of the game, over being so sci-fi-ish. He didn't like, he changed it, he's probably not going to release it because of sensitivity in the broader gaming ecosystem.
I have agents maintaining several patches to my main tools, not forking, not sharing (some have no interest), personal adjustments
> he's probably not going to release it because of sensitivity in the broader gaming ecosystem
There is basically zero pushback to generated code. All the crazy Minecraft in GTA type mods that came out in the last couple weeks are obviously vibe coded but no one cares because they play good and surprisingly bug free.
If he put in AI visuals as in generated textures then it's different, because that's way more visible and gets labeled as slop immediately. There's also the (accurate imo) perception that AI is taking artists jobs against their will but coders adopted it on their own and benefit from it, so using it for code is ethical from a labor rights POV.
I feel like I need to nitpick a little:
Models don't need source code available to reproduce software. See all the "full decompilation" projects cropping up. There's no putting this genie back in the box, because LLMs can also "refurbish" a project enough that it ceases to look like the original. People don't bother now because they don't have to, but in a world where they'd get hit with copyright notices, they would.
It is not illegal to build a service with the same functionality.
So you are going to have to prove their code is a copy of yours, not just a copy of the functionality.
In Google vs Oracle, APIs also aren’t necessarily copyright able:
“So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical”
> based on the facts presented to us, we're unable to confirm a violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201
Sorry GitHub, that's not for you to determine, as you are not a US judge. They should never have replied like this IMO and this behavior opens them up to liability for not properly handling DMCA procedures.
Proper DMCA 512(h) notices (assuming OP's was proper) require the host (github) to remove or disable the content first without even attempting to verify the claims.
Then the repo owner has a chance to challenge the notice. If they choose to do, they're basically required to publicly doxx themselves first, by nature of just going through the motions of the judicial court system.
If there was no challenge after a set period of time, then the content stays down.
If there was a challenge, it stays down until a court decides what happens next.
the musicians love it when their original work is DMCA'd by bad actors and YT takes it down and never answers the appeal /s
two sides to the coin, we'll hear about how some evil corporation used their influence to have a legitimate project DMCA'd and HN will have the opposite reaction on that day
something like "jury duty" from the community seems an interesting idea for a middle path, if we want better systems, we'll all need to contribute a little to making it so
Oh jeez. I'm not automatically assuming that the Chinese did this, but Chinese IP thieves did crap like this for decades, and most of the victims were unable to do anything. There were posts right here on HN like "Chinese company stole my app/game" and with AI this will be an even bigger problem.
Meanwhile AI refuses to touch photos that contain anything that remotely looks like Mickey Mouse.
First of all, thanks Ivan! Happy user of Photopea.
Second, the trademark will help you against the masqueraders, those copying your tool and the Photopea brandmark. That will help with customers complaining about some other modified product. It will not help in case you find someone copying your codebase and putting it out in the open under a different name. For that, you'll need a copyright.
Doing both of these might be expensive but gives you complete legal standing. Companies will have no choice but to take down the copies.
There are 100s of web based photo editors, paid and open source. How do you know they are taking yours, not someone else's or making their own with Ai?
I would imagine they all converge on common features and core implementation foundation
There have been only two photo editors that fully support the PSD format: Photopea and Adobe Photoshop. When a new one appears, which fully supports the PSD format, from an anonymous creator, it is very likely a copy one of these two. And they usually name it Photopea-offline, etc.
You seem to be thinking about "adblocker running in browser", since you brought up EULAs.
That's not what OP alleges - they are saying people are redistributing modified versions of OP's copyrighted code. DMCA is an appropriate measure in such a situation, but it's unclear why OP's DMCA takedown was rejected by GitHub. Without more detail, it's hard to comment further
> You want to sue people for blocking ads? Did I read this correctly?
That is an extremely disingenuous and bad faith interpretation of what OP has said and I think you know it. You want to be edgy? Go comment on Reddit.
OP is rightly frustrated that their copyrighted work, that they’ve been working on full time for over a decade, is simply being ripped off by people and GitHub refuses to do anything about it.
Publishing source as client-side JS when millions are out there looking to rip you off at every turn is a losing proposition. And I think you know it.
Shifting blame to GitHub is absolutely idiotic.
Try removing locks from your doors in a high crime area (which is what the Internet is) then being indignant when the police can't stop all the criminals stealing your property.
'losing proposition' is irrelevant. The law is clear in this case, and the law makes Github's obligations exceptionally clear. By refusing to act, if the DMCA notice was valid, Github is breaking the law and forfeiting their safe harbor status.
I was like oh cool... until you mentioned the ads.
I would not fork or re-release proprietary code. I would ask my LLM to write a very rigorous end to end test suite for your tool, delete all the code, then have a clean context LLM re-write the code to pass all the same tests. Then I could publish it under an open license.
Ads are a cancer, and it is a matter of weeks before someone does the above where you have zero recourse.
I suggest open sourcing the code properly without ads yourself before someone does it for you. If you do that someone might donate to you instead of paying for the tokens to clone your work.
Software is no longer a moat and DMCA means nothing anymore.
True. I understand the author on the emotional level, but the fact that a lot of work went into the product does not mean that it is that valuable. The author should focus on making the product better - unfortunately (for them) that means inventing a new business model.
You aren't. People aren't going to be able to make a living in software anymore, unless they work for a corporation. And even then, that's disappearing as well.
When the whole industry manually punched machine code into punch cards, people were threatened by assemblers taking their jobs, and then later by compilers, and now by inference engines.
The real engineering work that will always be paid for is identifying problems and testing solutions to see what solves the problems.
The substrate in which we use to do that will change, but the job will endure.
Those that just do what they are told however, yeah they are SOL unfortunately.
Creative problem solving is the only skill that will matter anymore.
And how many companies need creative problem solving? Way less and less. The problem is the moat is getting higher. Name any other profession that is kneecapped worse than by the free open source movement and the like. Meaning you can't monetize what you create. Or the usual ways are non-conformant, dictated by the corps and their mindless followers.
Almost anyone learn anything they want now. This all cuts both ways.
If security is a solved problem then anyone that wants to teach themselves enough can move to trying to solve disease, until disease is solved, then we all move on to building enough robots to mass produce enough food to solve world hunger and shelter... and once the needs of everyone on earth are solved at an ever cheaper price until it is free... then I guess we do whatever we want.
Only way to earn a good living is to pivot to solving diseases for a few years until robots solve world hunger and shelter. Then we can do what we want without the money to do it?
Hey buddy, you’d better be careful what you post on a public forum. Sooner or later somebody’s gonna ask their own personal LLM to write a comprehensive test suite for how you respond to comments and situations, move the mouse cursor upwards and to the left to click a button there, and recreate you as legally their property now. If I were you I’d gimme money gimme moneyyyyyy before my big LLM here teaches you a lesson the hard way.
Wonder how many even built a popular free product supported by ads?
It's quite difficult and you need to provide even more value than a paid product (if that makes sense) for users to come back constantly.
There is nothing new now with people copying software. It's just that much MORE of the masses have access to this now than before.
And thus thieves multiply exponentially.
Second, I am sorry this is happening to you.
Third, based on GitHub's reply, specifically
> we're unable to confirm a violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201
they took your submission as 17 U.S. Code § 1201 takedown notice. Maybe you specifically stated this. Maybe it was implied. This is likely not what you want and GitHub's response is likely correct. The reason for this is that § 1201 prohibits circumventing a technological measure. The JS you host on your public site, even if obfuscated, very likely does not qualify for this protection. Another detail - the reason it took long (a month later according to your post) is that after the youtube-dl fiasco, they committed to manual review, legal and technical, of every 1201 takedown notice [0].
Fourth, if you believe these copies are sufficiently reproducing your copyrighted work, what you likely want to do is file a standard copyright infringement 17 U.S Code § 512(c) takedown notice. This still goes through the same DMCA report flow but it should result in a less stringent review process and a faster response.
Fifth and finally, consider asking your favorite LLM to get more context around these laws. Good luck!
[0] https://github.blog/news-insights/policy-news-and-insights/s...
As an aside, I thought that "cracked" software meant software that has had the copy protection or other access control bypassed or removed, not the alteration of the software functionality itself. If your software was actually cracked then you may have some fairly heavy law in your favor. For better or worse, bypassing access controls (even weak or simple access controls) gets special legal attention.
Honestly, I was a hoping that giving attention to this problem here at HN might lead to someone from Github actually noticing my problem and looking into it.
I think I will try solving it with a lawyer. But it would be really cool if I could spend my days writing code instead of dealing with lawyers and stuff.
I think anybody in any line of work or life would like that. It's however unlikely to never run into an issue where a lawyer is really needed, so don't hesitate when you realize you need one.
If you don't, don't.
It's that simple. Be an adult, make a choice and live with it.
ETA: I dispute the implication that "honest" software is a category that necessarily excludes all ad-supported software, but that's a side story.
> take the Javascript code from my website, remove all ads from it
I would assume that this might be one of the reasons why people are modifying and repackaging your product. I would suggest to remove that incentive. So that the people will have no reason to repackage your product because it has annoying features. And so that they could use it directly and be happy about it.
OP, I’m sorry this is happening to you. It must be incredibly frustrating to have people ripping off something you’ve worked on for many years and pass it off as their own work. I would be furious in your position.
I wish I could do something directly to help you but the best I can offer is to echo the best advice others have already given you: it’s time to get a lawyer. That is the one guaranteed route to get GitHub to sit up and take the action they should already have taken on your behalf.
https://github.com/martinwoodward
before starting heavy artillery with lawyers.
(Martin also often posts on HN).
You had commented on the photocraft post prior, so if it's that, then it's a bit muddled. It's a LLM based re-implementation and not a copy of the code made open. So the argument would be weaker there, and you'd really need specific code samples to make a case of copyright infringement. Photocraft not "piracy" as is normally understood, which is the exact same binary, optionally with the license protection removed.
Did they actually republish you code or were they just creating wrappers that download/cache the code from your website to run locally?
If you have one of these, it’s possible that GitHub would honour it if you go via a lawyer.
I've seen people on Reddit writing things like, "Come on, what's the big deal? AI can write any code now." I disagree. There are hundreds of thousands of lines of code here, very complex code, which even AI wouldn't be able to write on the first try or in a single day. So this person stole this code from Photopea and built a product on top of it.
You will never sue your way out of this. Piracy will always exist. GitHub will respond to a legal notice but whack a mole is the game and legal notices cost money
The solution in the WP community at the time was variations of the plugin as a loss leader to get revenue with support or to leverage community visibility into larger contracts for work or hosting the platform for others.
If your business model depends on your code being a secret, JavaScript is not a good play. The business model needs to enhance what the code offers since it’s basically a commodity now
But wow, how do you stand a chance in stopping anyone when your code is all there freely available in the browser
Because it is trained on code of people like Ivan
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bard/comments/1wxmqpt/ive_created_o...
Headspace updated it's privacy policy info recently, which got me to have it checked with an LLM. And it turns out that what you're doing on $100 per year meditation app is still being sold to anyone willing to pay. Using headspace lost it's charm. I wonder if Andy ever agreed to this.
Hope you manage to get it sorted but I have no idea how that would go down at this point. I’m sure at least one of them could claim they copied it off the other ones and then you’re shit out of luck.
Right now, the settled law is that such an LLM reproduction is 100% legal.
If you really want to protect your software in the years to come, you might have to seriously consider starting some sort of popular political movement to address this issue in copyright law.
Current models can already do a full reproduction of anything with source code available (e.g. JavaScript...), and there's already been some poor-quality Photoshop knockoffs.
Where did you hear that? Because it is 100% untrue and is the opposite of current legal guidance from reputable legal expert
How so? Interfaces are not copyrightable, but that it not the same as dissecting a js bundle and copying the implementations. Are we sure these LLM are keeping sanitary habits there?
several courts have ruled Ai output is not copyrightable, I am unaware of any co-authored cases
But, the use of LLMs is not disqualifying. To qualify for copyright protection your work simply must have a sufficient degree of human authorship.
However this is just about protection, not infringement.
If you use an LLM to generate something and that LLM just happens to output something that another human wrote, you may be liable for copyright infringement.
Or perhaps the people should admit that copyright, an artificial construct which is not rooted in natural property, was inherently broken and is not (or at least no longer is) a net benefit to the society and simply adapt around it.
I’m personally waiting for LLMs to get so good that I can make music and movies based on my favorite ones. I probably could never release it to the public, but being able to make it and enjoy it myself would be amazing.
Modifying/modding/remixing software was simply not as feasible as music, but LLMs made it possible.
Copyright, patents and IP are the evolution of our (Western) way of converting research into a form of financial investment.
And a big church could employ lots of them, and thereby stimulate the economy. It seems that the Baroque Era and churches crammed to the rafters with art, may be an artifact of a very good job market for those architects, craftsmen and artists!
Yeah... you could copy some sheet music and share it around, but it still required skilled musicians to perform, play and sing it. And nobody was taking photos or uploading JPEGs of your art and sculpture, so it was fairly locked-in that people needed to visit, and see it in context. So it stood to reason that you could probably reconstruct Noah's Ark from the fragments of True Cross that were circulating around Europe... and how many fingers did your favorite saint really have?
Copyright-free church economics have sort of fallen apart since then. However, museums, arena concerts, theaters and the rest, they have all taken pages from the Church playbooks. The fact that a church can still draw in hundreds for a show with great production values, every week or daily, seems dull and unremarkable now, but a good rock concert or museum collection can evoke the same "goin' to church" fervor in people who like that kind of stuff.
I have agents maintaining several patches to my main tools, not forking, not sharing (some have no interest), personal adjustments
There is basically zero pushback to generated code. All the crazy Minecraft in GTA type mods that came out in the last couple weeks are obviously vibe coded but no one cares because they play good and surprisingly bug free.
If he put in AI visuals as in generated textures then it's different, because that's way more visible and gets labeled as slop immediately. There's also the (accurate imo) perception that AI is taking artists jobs against their will but coders adopted it on their own and benefit from it, so using it for code is ethical from a labor rights POV.
So you are going to have to prove their code is a copy of yours, not just a copy of the functionality.
In Google vs Oracle, APIs also aren’t necessarily copyright able:
“So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical”
To sum it up; get a lawyer.
Photopea creator weighs in on Photosuite project
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49972730
Sorry GitHub, that's not for you to determine, as you are not a US judge. They should never have replied like this IMO and this behavior opens them up to liability for not properly handling DMCA procedures.
Proper DMCA 512(h) notices (assuming OP's was proper) require the host (github) to remove or disable the content first without even attempting to verify the claims.
Then the repo owner has a chance to challenge the notice. If they choose to do, they're basically required to publicly doxx themselves first, by nature of just going through the motions of the judicial court system.
If there was no challenge after a set period of time, then the content stays down.
If there was a challenge, it stays down until a court decides what happens next.
two sides to the coin, we'll hear about how some evil corporation used their influence to have a legitimate project DMCA'd and HN will have the opposite reaction on that day
something like "jury duty" from the community seems an interesting idea for a middle path, if we want better systems, we'll all need to contribute a little to making it so
Meanwhile AI refuses to touch photos that contain anything that remotely looks like Mickey Mouse.
Shit was never on the Common Folk's side.
Use a trademark.
Something else is needed. If the code is basically open, then there is no technical protection. Remove tens of those repos - hundreds might appear.
Second, the trademark will help you against the masqueraders, those copying your tool and the Photopea brandmark. That will help with customers complaining about some other modified product. It will not help in case you find someone copying your codebase and putting it out in the open under a different name. For that, you'll need a copyright.
Doing both of these might be expensive but gives you complete legal standing. Companies will have no choice but to take down the copies.
My reply is that you now own a customer list, brandname and trademark, and that is about it.
I would imagine they all converge on common features and core implementation foundation
This day in age, we need to verify ourselves
Can you show us an example? How did you verify?
I wanted to discuss the behaviour of Github without giving these "projects" even more attention.
I would think a github link would be easy to provide, sus that it hasn't been
If you want to make proprietary software that's cool, but client-side JavaScript was a terrible choice. The cat is out of the bag.
There's a reason software for which you purchase a license key generally doesn't give you source code outside rock-solid legal agreements.
Because what I see is essentially "they're storing stolen property" but the burden of proof is on the author to prove it was, indeed, stolen.
I imagine the bar for that is pretty high otherwise anyone could weaponize DMCA to target their competitors' repositories.
That's not what OP alleges - they are saying people are redistributing modified versions of OP's copyrighted code. DMCA is an appropriate measure in such a situation, but it's unclear why OP's DMCA takedown was rejected by GitHub. Without more detail, it's hard to comment further
https://reclaimthenet.org/kiwi-farms-dmca-subpoena-anonymous...
That is an extremely disingenuous and bad faith interpretation of what OP has said and I think you know it. You want to be edgy? Go comment on Reddit.
OP is rightly frustrated that their copyrighted work, that they’ve been working on full time for over a decade, is simply being ripped off by people and GitHub refuses to do anything about it.
Shifting blame to GitHub is absolutely idiotic.
Try removing locks from your doors in a high crime area (which is what the Internet is) then being indignant when the police can't stop all the criminals stealing your property.
I would not fork or re-release proprietary code. I would ask my LLM to write a very rigorous end to end test suite for your tool, delete all the code, then have a clean context LLM re-write the code to pass all the same tests. Then I could publish it under an open license.
Ads are a cancer, and it is a matter of weeks before someone does the above where you have zero recourse.
I suggest open sourcing the code properly without ads yourself before someone does it for you. If you do that someone might donate to you instead of paying for the tokens to clone your work.
Software is no longer a moat and DMCA means nothing anymore.
The real engineering work that will always be paid for is identifying problems and testing solutions to see what solves the problems.
The substrate in which we use to do that will change, but the job will endure.
Those that just do what they are told however, yeah they are SOL unfortunately.
Creative problem solving is the only skill that will matter anymore.
If security is a solved problem then anyone that wants to teach themselves enough can move to trying to solve disease, until disease is solved, then we all move on to building enough robots to mass produce enough food to solve world hunger and shelter... and once the needs of everyone on earth are solved at an ever cheaper price until it is free... then I guess we do whatever we want.
It's not. The economic landscape is also entirely different from before as well.