
DMCA Takedown – Popular PHP Barcode Removed - kernelcurry
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2015-09-09-Tecnick.md
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Rantenki
Strangely, I agree with the original author who sent the DMCA.

Imagine that you're working on some project and you find one of those forks
with no GPLv3 attached (or worse, some other license that is more permissive).
You integrate it, publish, and then find out that your project is in copyright
violation.

I'd rather see a takedown induce an easily remediated repo change, than a big
legal PITA down the road. It's not like he took his repo down, nor any of the
forks that kept the license. He just DMCA'd the ones that stripped the license
files.

~~~
orclev
Yeah, you could maybe argue that DMCA is kind of heavy handed but for a change
it doesn't seem to be an abuse, it's actually being used for what it was
intended. In particular the fact that he went through the trouble of spelling
out exactly what was being violated, gave a number of rather reasonable ways
to address the violation, and provided links to replacement repos for the code
in question I think shows that some time and consideration was spent on this.
This wasn't just your run of the mill blanket "OMGZ MY IP!" type of DMCA
request we're used to seeing from media companies and certain large
corporations.

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0x0
So... is the TL;DR that a GPL3 project on github is DMCA'ing a bunch of github
forks that stripped the copyright/authorship notices?

~~~
markbnj
That's what I get from it.

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ascendantlogic
Seems reasonable if they copied the code and stripped all attribution and
licenses.

~~~
sp332
Instead of a takedown request, it would probably have made more sense to ask
those projects to add the required license information.

~~~
dlanouette
That was an option that he gave (towards the bottom). I have no idea if GH
passes these on to the repo owner or not. GH may have just removed the repos.

But, the original author did give that option.

~~~
jcoby
github is pretty accommodating to DMCA notifications [1]. They give the
infringing repo 24 hours to comply with the terms of the notice.

1\. [https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-
policy/](https://help.github.com/articles/dmca-takedown-policy/)

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s1lver
What crazyness is this? A DMCA we're not raging against??

~~~
aikah
well people here are infringing a GPL license by stripping it from the
original code. I agree with that. All my projects on github are GPL so I'd do
the exact same thing in the same circumstances.

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phkahler
Question. Is stripping the authors names OK? Obviously stripping the license
isn't, but does the GPL require you to "advertise" all contributors? I thought
that was considered a problem with one of the BSD variants.

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donatj
Looking back through Github's DMCA history, Tecnick.com has sent a fair number
of DMCA takedown notices in the last couple months. Looks like they're in
crackdown mode.

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chuckreynolds
used this in the past but nothing current. interesting to see but it does seem
the DCMA request is valid considering what I've been reading about all the
stripped gplv3 and other references to OP. Now for somebody fork it from a
recent pull and put in the required licensing and references as, from what I
understand, this repo had nice improvements from the OP. Just a matter of time
now.

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oso2k
It's a bit ironic that the original author's website's favicon looks a lot
like a Microsoft Windows 95 icon.

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kernelcurry
Have been using this repo for a long time now, and now deploys are broken :(
going to have to re-write some code i guess...

~~~
orclev
Should probably use [https://github.com/tecnickcom/tc-lib-
barcode](https://github.com/tecnickcom/tc-lib-barcode) or
[https://github.com/tecnickcom/TCPDF](https://github.com/tecnickcom/TCPDF)
both of which are mentioned in the DMCA notice.

~~~
525
Or not deploy from random repos you don't control.

~~~
RIMR
But that would be obvious.

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grymoire1
And they are down.... "This repository is currently disabled due to a DMCA
takedown notice"

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cpeterso
So who first deleted the license and copyright notices?

~~~
nieve
Either @dineshrabara stripped them since the first commit is based on an
official release three days earlier and lacks the notices or they copied it
from someone who moved really fast to do so and distributed them in some
mysterious third location. The former seems more likely.

ETA: An HN account of the same name was created 235 days ago, so it's probably
the same person if they choose to respond.

