This is true in American elections too. I can’t remember the exact number, but something like 80% (or more) of elections are won by the candidate with more money.
When everything is tied to money like this - legal, democracy etc, the little guy is always going to lose
Without copyright law, any actor can take your open system and close it.
No popular open source license that I am aware of attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation:
If there was no copyright, you could not force anybody to provide the source code of any derivative work (situation for copyleft licenses). On the other hand, in a no-copyright situation, you are not able to sue anybody who attempts to reverse-engineer such a derived binary blob and publish the reverse-engineered source code.
Thus, an open-source license that attempts to emulate a no-copyright situation would in my opinion have clauses like the following:
- you are allowed to create binary-only derived works, and are allowed to sell copies of it
- you must not sue anybody who redistributes these copies (even for money)
- you must not disallow any licensees to reverse-engineer these executables
- you must not disallow any owner of a copy to create any derivative work (even using reverse-engineering techni, as long as this work is licenses under this license. This in particular means that, if you create a derivative work, you have to take care that you cannot redistribute copies that (statically) link the work with parts for which this is disallowed
This is sort of the point of arbitration.
In practice, the company still has a big advantage in arbitration.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-binding-arbitratio...
> The problem is that companies generally know more than customers about an arbitrator’s record and thus are likely to strike out arbitrators who are more inclined to rule in favor of consumers. On average, each securities firm in the study had been involved in 81 other arbitrations. In non-securities disputes, such as those with cellular carriers, the average company had been in 133 hearings. By contrast, most consumers have never been involved in a previous arbitration and tend to strike arbitrators randomly. As a result, the firms’ informational advantage leads to systematically biased outcomes.
Not as big as in litigation. Yes, companies have familiarity. But the win rates in arbitration are way more favourable. Because you can’t starve your opponent as a strategy.
For JAMS and AAA, compared to federal courts, after accounting for litigation costs, on average, no. (At the tails, yes. But this doesn't apply if you can pull off federal litigation.) Do you have research to the contrary?
[1] https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/19-046_6706ef32-...
They need to be deterred. They should know that every time they do this, people will start recommending their competition.
If the EFF is motivated to reach out to the original DMCA recipient, then they could definitely present this avenue. That leads us to the next question, is the original DMCA recipient interested in pursuing a (now funded) defense? If not, are they interested in handing it off to someone else? Who? Would that person be an effective defendant?
Really, what we are doing here is speculating on one person's level of disinterest in pursuing the legal defense of their work.
What about a DAO specifically built for that purpose exclusively?
Just looking how to fuck back those lawyers
In this case the code was on GitHub before, so they wouldn't even need to give the code to the new target entity, this entity could just copy it from an undisclosed person who has a copy.
An effective defense has to protect your time and money. One such defense is to never let your real identity be plucked from obscurity and fixated on by a legal team.
I know they aren’t required to, but I remember the olden days when more companies would fight dmca requests. But I suppose they were much less common then.
The EFF might help, but even expecting individuals to appeal to the EFF is probably too much work and too much risk.
I’d like to see GitHub partner with EFF to have first look at these requests and choose to fight ones that seem invalid. I’d donate to they cause.
It probably doesn't make sense for Github to indemnify them, and short of that, there's not really a lot of convincing they can do if someone isn't interested in engaging in litigation with some huge company.
They could even sue for damages from false claims since API can’t be copyrighted.
There’s tons they could do. Microsoft has immense resources and far greater than Mazda.
I looked at the code some, there are some app secrets stored and used, so they probably have at least a thin claim.
They can also autogenerate the counter claim so an author just needs to click “dispute.”
I’m sure there are lots of valid dmca complaints against GitHub repos, like any site that allows hosting random files. But I think if GitHub wants to encourage programming, they need to invest and be more proactive in supporting programmers from people like the jerk lawyer at Mazda (or probably some stupid “ip protection” consultant) who filed this spurious seeming complaint.
I made a comment regarding this, before realizing yours, so I'm kinda repeating myself here, but it's something that piques my curiosity:
What would stop you from just continuing in a different repo (even different host like Gitee), with a pseudonymous, and claim that you have no idea who's that mysterious person that forked and continued working on the project?
As it turns out, you need both the piece of paper underwriting your rights and the force necessary to exercise them.
Lines of ink on plant fiber by themselves have never stopped anyone.