GitHub announced the creation of a service to provide free legal assistance to open source software developers accused of violating Article 1201 of the DMCA, which prohibits circumvention of technical protection measures such as DRM. The service will be overseen by lawyers from Stanford Law School and funded by a new $XNUMX million Developer Defense Fund.
The funds will be used to hire staff to provide legal advice to those accused of violating the DMCA, train lawyers and students to accompany programmers in this area, and conduct research and raise awareness on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
It is noted that receiving requests to eliminate violations of the DMCA can lead to complex legal problems for which developers do not have the time and resources to resolve, and even if the request is unreasonable, it is easier for the developer to accept the removal of the repository than to get involved in the fight.
The established service will undertake the provision of legal expertise and advice to developers in this area. In addition to peer review of the legality of a DMCA request by GitHub staff, the developer will be able to receive fully independent legal support acting in the interests of the community.
Recall that in the wake of the past Youtube-dl project blocking incident, GitHub has changed the way it handles blocking requests. Mandatory review by legal and technical experts of each block request based on Article 1201 of the DMCA has been introduced into practice. In the absence of clear evidence of illegal bypass of protection, blocking is not performed, and for justified claims, a preliminary notification of the developer is introduced with the provision of time to dispute the claim or make a correction to the repository. Developers of blocked repositories are given the ability to export issues, PRs, and other data that does not contain illegal content, and support calls for blocking due to the DMCA will be given the highest priority.
Source: opennet.ru