The DMCA is heavily tilted in favor of the supposed rights holder, and GitHub really did have no choice in that situation. It’s messed up, but it’s the reality of the laws of the land.
There’s also the issue of people who are mistaken and think it was a section 512 notice (direct copyright infringement) when it wasn’t. It was a section 1201 one (DRM circumvention). We can argue all day about whether it’s DRM circumvention or not, but the fact of the matter is: there was obfuscation of some sort, and it wouldn’t be hard to convince a judge that that counts as DRM. GitHub erred on the side of caution here.
This is almost correct. GitHub could refuse to take it down and in doing so accept liability for any copyright infringement that exists. If the repository is not infringing (which in this case there's a solid chance it's not), then GitHub is doing nothing wrong. Of course, since the penalties for copyright infringement are so high and defending suits would not be worth it for GitHub, they are effectively required to take it down.
You can criticize them and you should.It is their choice to run GitHub in a US jurisdiction. Many other places in the world are not as repressive.
(Plus, I'm betting there's at least some mechanism to reject frivolous DMCA takedown requests immediately.)
2. Microsoft could spin off GitHub into a separate, non-US entity, outside its legal control for purposes of DMCA enforcement. Of course, it obviously won't do that, since it doesn't help the bottom line.
ok... am I crazy? I thought when someone sends a DMCA request to you, the platform, that you are required to take the content down and wait for a counter notice from that contents author. The legality of the message is not your problem. You receive the DMCA, you take the content down, if you get a counter claim, you put it back up, the two parties go to court.
If that's correct, then can you really criticize github for following an odious law? Whether we like it or not, they are bound by these requirements.