
GitHub Censors Catalonian App Tsunami Democratic - zoobab
https://www.elconfidencial.com/tecnologia/2019-10-29/github-bloquea-tsunami-democratic-aplicacion_2305027/
======
zozbot234
Takedown notice is discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629)

~~~
dang
Most comments moved thither. Thanks!

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lucideer
While it's fair to call out the owner of any property when something like this
happens, the emphasis of "Microsoft" in the headline seems to imply that this
is some newly introduced policy since the acquisition.

As far as I'm aware, Github has been honouring government takedowns of this
nature since long before they were acquired by Microsoft.

~~~
Operyl
The way I read it on the article, with punctuation, I don’t think it was
necessarily intended like that? It’s in parentheses “Microsoft (GitHub)”. I
don’t read Spanish fluently, though, so perhaps I’m not grasping it entirely.
It felt like they were just adding context.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> Microsoft (GitHub) blocks the Tsunami Democràtic to avoid the issues of
> their 'app'

Is how I'd translate it and depending on who you are, you might just ignore
the GitHub bit if you have no idea who that is and just assume Microsoft's
doing this outright. It is confusing, but the subtitle specifically calls
GitHub a service owned by Microsoft. They then mention since when Microsoft
has owned GitHub, which I'm not sure how accurate it is or isn't. Is it wholly
owned by Microsoft at this time? Though as others have said, it's an existing
policy.

~~~
freeone3000
Yes, GitHub is 100% owned by Microsoft. The date in the article is correct.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Thanks, I wasn't sure the state of the buyout.

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aeonflux
[https://github.com/github/gov-
takedowns/blob/master/Spain/20...](https://github.com/github/gov-
takedowns/blob/master/Spain/2019/2019-10-23-GuardiaCivil.md)

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dang
We have deep respect for languages other than English, but HN is an English-
language site, so this is off topic here.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22english%20language%20site%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21395629)
was posted earlier, so we'll merge (most) comments there.

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mfer
> Microsoft Spain sources have confirmed to Teknautas that they have not
> received any request from the security forces and bodies of the State to
> close Tsunami repositories

Note, this is a translation. If I understand it right, GitHub is a wholly
owned subsidiary. That means it may have been (likely?) GitHub legal rather
than Microsoft legal that received the request.

Did the reporter not know to check with GitHub or was it something else?

There is a little bit of organizational dynamics at play here. We may know how
these companies are organized but do the masses? How much of the international
reporters should we expect to know this?

------
maaaats
OT, but some headings with all capitalized words are impossible to decipher.
Where does one put the groupings here? Looks like a gibberish sentence to my
(non-native) eyes.

> _Microsoft 's GitHub Censors Catalonian App Tsunami Democratic_

~~~
jdmichal
(Microsoft's GitHub) censors (Catalonian App (Tsunami Democratic))

Some quotes around the app name, "Tsunami Democratic", would have helped a
lot. The structure of the original Spanish headline delineates the app name
from other nouns a lot better.

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notkaiho
From a machine translation of the article: "announced through its Telegram
channel that the US company had thrown access to the Tsunami repository from
our country. You only need to go to one of their last available web links:
tsunamidemocratic.github.io to see that it is true. In a warning message
written in English , the system alerts that "the repository is not available
in your location"."

I'm not in Catalonia, and was able to click through to the repository. Surely
no developer would be deterred by a simple IP ban?

~~~
wayoutthere
> Surely no developer would be deterred by a simple IP ban?

Except it's not just for developers; it's the homepage for the app.

Though part of me has a feeling that GitHub complies with these takedown
notices in the way that they do because they know how easily circumvented they
are. Pretty much everyone involved with a modern protest movement has been
taught some basic level of digital OpSec by the organizers.

