GitHub has published an annual report that reflects the notifications of intellectual property infringement and the publication of illegal content received in 2020. Under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), GitHub received 2020 lock requests in 2097, covering 36901 projects. For comparison, in 2019 there were 1762 blocking requests covering 14371 projects, in 2018 - 1799, in 2017 - 1380, in 2016 - 757, in 2015 - 505, and in 2014 - 258. 37 rebuttals for illegal blocking.
There were 44 requests from government agencies to remove content due to violations of local laws, all of which were received from Russia (in 2019 there were 16 requests - 8 from Russia, 6 from China and 2 from Spain). Requests spanned 44 projects and mostly focused on posts in gist.github.com (up from 2019 projects in 54). All blocks at the request of the Russian Federation were sent by Roskomnadzor and are associated with the publication of instructions for suicide, the promotion of religious sects and fraudulent activities. For the first two months of 2021, only 2 requests have been received from Roskomnadzor so far.
In addition, 13 requests for deletion were received related to violation of local laws, which also violated the terms of use of the service (Terms of Service). The requests covered 12 user accounts and one repository. In these cases, the blocks were caused by phishing attempts (requests from Nepal, the US and Sri Lanka), disinformation (Uruguay) and other violations of the terms of use (UK and China). Three requests (from Denmark, Korea and the US) were rejected due to lack of proper evidence.
Due to complaints of non-DMCA violations of the terms of service, GitHub hid 4826 accounts, of which 415 were subsequently reinstated. Account holder access lockouts were attempted on 47 occasions (15 accounts were subsequently unlocked). For 1178 accounts, both blocking and hiding were applied at the same time (29 accounts were then restored). In the context of projects, 2405 projects were disabled and only 4 were returned.
GitHub also received 303 requests to disclose user data (up from 2019 in 261). 155 such requests were sent in the form of subpoenas (134 criminal cases and 21 civil cases), 117 court orders and 23 search warrants. 93.1% of requests were sent by law enforcement, and 6.9% by civil lawsuits. 206 requests out of 303 were satisfied, as a result of which information about 11909 accounts was disclosed (in 2019 - 1250). Users were notified of the disclosure of their data only 14 times, as the remaining 192 requests were provided with a non-disclosure order (gag order).
A certain number of requests also came from US intelligence agencies under the law on covert surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, but the exact number of requests in this category is not subject to disclosure, it is only reported that such requests are less than 250.
During the year, GitHub received 2500 appeals for unreasonable blocking of export restrictions in respect of territories (Crimea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea) subject to US sanctions. 2122 appeals were accepted, 316 rejected and 62 returned with a request for more information.
Source: opennet.ru