

Why OpenHeatMap is banned from Github - joshfraser
http://petewarden.com/2013/09/27/why-openheatmap-is-banned-from-github/

======
alexholehouse
The weird/upsetting thing is that CTO would go to the producer of a software
his or her company use for _free_ and despite having active communication
lines open go behind the developer's back to have it removed from the very
website they got it from.

I believe that the technical term here would be "dick move".

~~~
iends
The world is full of people who are quick to jump to conclusions and refuse to
give you the benefit of doubt.

I used to use a self hosted blog aggregation software (Gregarius) and put it
up at www.mypersonalsite.com/blogs that was unlisted and unlinked to. It got 3
uniques/month for about 12 months. Then one day a company owner (a regular
from the Joel on Software's forums -- a technical person) wrote a blog post
linking to my site, calling me a spam blog, and posted my personal
information. He sent my host a C&D, and also blocked my work IP (most of the
local IBM office) from reading his blog.

From what I gather, he looked at his refer logs and saw I clicked through to
his blog 2-3 times, went to the link and freaked out that I was displaying his
RSS feeds.

I emailed him to try and clear it up, and was quite polite, but he kept being
an asshole, accusing me of stealing his content and breaking the law. He
threatened me with further action, and was condescending because I was 17.
("You should password protect your 'blog reader' as a learning exercise, then
blog about it so you'll have content of your own and you won't have steal my
content").

He never reached out to contact me. He just sent the C&D, wrote a nasty blog
about me, and didn't even try. Once he jumped to conclusions, it was too late.

~~~
euroclydon
Some people are like that. It's frustrating. But it's a good lesson that if
you're wrong, you're wrong, nobody owes you a conversation about it and
similar people in high stakes venues will deliver swift, harsh, uncompromising
justice that can have devestating consequences.

~~~
ballard
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss
people." Eleanor Roosevelt

The only thing to add is great minds are more generous and less concerned with
violent retribution to compensate for a lack of control in their own
frustrated lives.

Others have a 4 letter word for it....

cool.

------
lm741
That's funny. The Github page
([https://github.com/petewarden/openheatmap](https://github.com/petewarden/openheatmap))
says it was disabled due to "excessive use of resources, in violation of our
Terms of Service."

I also didn't find anything here:
[https://github.com/github/dmca](https://github.com/github/dmca)

------
xpaulbettsx
GitHubber here, we'll follow up on this with Pete. We think one of our replies
was missed along the line. Thanks for letting us know.

~~~
catch23
hopefully there is a documented process so that one doesn't have to make a
blog article to post on HN to get this stuff resolved.

~~~
unreal37
It doesn't sound like the OP tried very hard to contact them. He sent them an
email, didn't hear back, and then decided to write a blog post about it. I
mean, if he cared that much about github, he would send them an email back
asking what was up. Or 5.

~~~
twistedpair
There are always things like real people and phone numbers. You know, find
some GH staffers via G+, LinkedIn, Fb or your own network of friends and work
some connections. Pete does not say the lengths he went to, but email is
admittedly one of the most passive mediums.

~~~
mineo
You really should not have to find people working at GitHub on other parts of
the internet for something like dealing with copyright issues if you're not
the copyright owner because (I suspect) copyright owners will have no trouble
getting GitHub to (at least) listen to their complaints.

------
fiatmoney
Why not BitBucket then? Github is nice, but it's not the end-all of hosting
solutions.

~~~
zonkey
Yes. I use BitBucket because it allows free private repositories. No problems
at all.

------
kurotek
The copyright claim seems unsupportable in the first place. As far as I
understand, a simple list of things that fit in a category does not meet the
minimum originality requirement. See:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural)

It also seems like it would be trivially easy to compile a similar list from
linkedin.

~~~
chrismcb
Data isn't copyrightable. The format is, but the data itself isn't. Yes, it
would be nice to sanitize a list. And yes it would be nice to not actually use
real names with real addresses. But no copyright violation here.

------
alsobrsp
Sadly there in lies the problem of using a third party, you are at the mercy
of their legal department. The facts don't always matter.

------
jonchang
Another unfortunate example of the necessities of contributor agreements.

~~~
ansible
_Another unfortunate example of the necessities of contributor agreements._

Uh, no. This is an example of needing to take care, and fully understand what
is going into each commit.

The OP got a little sloppy (which happens), and is now praying the price for
it. Hopefully it can all get resolved soon and everyone can get back to work.

~~~
jthol
Whoever gave him the file might also share some of the blame.

~~~
PeterisP
There is a big difference in submitting an example that provokes a bug, and
publishing that example.

If an audio player crashes when opening a file with the latest Miley Cyrus
hit, then that specific file is useful to reproduce the bug, but it doesn't
mean that it can be redistributed further.

The same is with any personally identifiable information - if you have
obtained a list of people names/emails/adresses, it doesn't automatically mean
that it's okay for you to publish that list.

------
bougiefever
Another example of someone abusing copyright. This person is using copyright
as a means to shut down someone else's work, even though this is clearly not a
copyright issue. Something needs to be done about bogus copyright claims that
are really about censoring someone else. There should be penalties for issuing
bad copyright claims. That is simply not working.

------
joeevans
Why doesn't GitHub make it easier to research or attach an open source license
to code?

~~~
dbaupp
When you create a new repo it allows you to automatically pick a license (and
even a initialise a default .gitignore file).

~~~
joeevans
Ah, ok... I didn't know they had a license picker. Cool!

