

Bitcoin Developers Attempt To Kill Open Source Project, Sends DMCA To GitHub - redegg
http://solidcointalk.org/topic/510-bitcoin-developers-files-several-dmca-takedowns-against-solidcoin-over-misplaced-license-file/

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sp0rus
Bitcoin is mainly continuing at this point only because of the large community
behind it, as there wasn't much credibility to begin with. Doing things like
this does nothing but take that community further from where it wants to be.
It was an interesting concept, and still is, but that is all it will ever
amount to if this continues.

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igothacknews
I don't see how this helps the Bitcoin project at all, trying to shut down
projects because a text file wasn't included? And with no prior contact before
that? Seems like Bitcoin can't wait until SOPA is enacted to give them even
more power against projects they don't like.

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nullc
Where do you get no prior contact from?

The fact that SolidCoin had stripped the copyright notices from the fails and
were fraudulently claiming to have rewritten everything (as part of their
process of closing access to Solidcoin and putting it under a restrictive
license) was a popular discussion subject on the AltChains forum and had come
up multiple times.

They also apparently violate the Berkley DB license.

~~~
igothacknews
Did you read the link?

"On our side, we apologize for misplacing the MIT license that Bitcoin uses. A
friendly reminder would all have been necessary."

They say a friendly reminder would have been enough, which implies they didn't
get any notice except a DMCA take down. If SOPA was enabled right now they
could have gone even further and got domain names confiscated for offenses as
slight at this, a missing license.txt . It's inappropriate response from the
Bitcoin developers.

~~~
nullc
And you believe it? Why? Google for solidcoin copyright. You can see the posts
on bitcoin talk _months ago_ talking about this.

Looking for myself, it appears that they still haven't fixed the copyright
notices. The file cited on the github page still has the mentioned code with
nothing but a copyright notice by solidcoin.

And if there is no issue they could simply file a DMCA counternotice and get
everything put back up.

~~~
makomk
I think they have, but it takes something like a week? Also, there's an open
question as to whether Luke Jr's modification was even substantial enough to
claim copyright.

(For what it's worth, the same guy that did this is also running a 51% denial
of service attack against my own pet Bitcoin alternative using the Bitcoin
mining pool he runs. The other Bitcoin developer mentioned in that forum post
- gmaxwell - is an op on the IRC channel for the pool and has been trying to
stop me countering Luke's attempts to mislead people into thinking his pool
wasn't involved in various places.)

~~~
DiabloD3
DiabloMiner author and Bitcoin forum mod here.

makomk, enough with the FUD, eh? gmaxwell is not protecting LukeJr, nor has
LukeJr done anything worth throwing a fit over.

This is offtopic for HN, take it elsewhere.

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jasonzemos
This is a non-story posted by the people who infringed and ended up getting
DMCA'ed. The mods are encouraged to downvote or delete this. Knife fights
don't belong on HN.

