

Why does GitHub anonymize DMCA takedown requests? - duncan_bayne
https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/5476ab2ffe18a286a1476293276c3149c0c2d50d#commitcomment-442132

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benologist
Why would they publish the sender's contact information?

More disturbing is that Sony requested all available contact information for
the offending users .... it would be much more interesting to ask if GitHub
honor that.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Why would they _not_?

On one hand, the person sending the takedown request is afforded the courtesy
of anonymity.

This, while he (or she) is accusing someone who is most certainly _not_
anonymous of breaking the law, & demanding the identities of other users.

That is unfair, & unjust.

~~~
benologist
These are two unrelated things in my opinion:

1) GitHub is anonymizing the sender on DMCA notices they publish.

They anonymize it because they're not The Pirate Bay exploiting someone else's
work and keeping teh internets riled up so the ad impressions keep coming. You
should not expect them to instigate or facilitate or even just _enable_
retaliation, they gain nothing and risk plenty by taking a more antagonistic
approach to publishing DMCA notices.

2) Sony hopes a DMCA can be used in lieu of a subpoena.

This is not the same as removing senders.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'd express it slightly differently:

A Sony employee is publicly accusing a non-anonymous GitHub user of breaking
the law, and at the same time demanding the identities of GitHub users in the
hopes that GitHub will comply out of courtesy (i.e. without a subpoena). At
the same time, GitHub is providing him or her with anonymity.

~~~
benologist
Right, but it's just a _coincidence_ that it's Sony and that they're _also_
hoping to get that stuff - GitHub's policy is to _always_ anonymize the sender
regardless.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Yes, that's true. My question was _why_ that's their default policy. What is
the point of anonymizing requests? I certainly had no expectation of anonymity
when I employed the DMCA to take down unauthorised copies of my software from
download sites.

~~~
benologist
So as not to cause problems for themselves or others.

Imagine you're a legal guy at bigcorp and you issue a DMCA because some clown
uploaded [something shiny] to GitHub ... and then 10s or 100s of thousands of
people got pissed off it was removed, and shown your phone number, email, etc.

It's really a good policy for them to have - they don't need the fallout from
people harassing some guy or some company, and the internet's always looking
for an excuse to be outraged.

