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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

Fingerprints are not copyrighted, code is.

You might claim fair use if you published it as part of an article, but probably not on GitHub which is intended for using and editing code.

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What about the copyright of the webpage whose code was altered with these injected ads? It's ironic that a company whose product disrespects the copyright of others would be so sensitive to the issue.

That was a very imprecise analogy. What we actually have here is the intersection of copyright, digital forensic evidence, three jurisdictions, and facts and circumstances that are in dispute. Figuring out what the law actually says on this matter would be a sizable project for a law firm, and probably can't be settled without a judge.

But fingerprints are personal data and at least in the EU the handling of personal data is very strictly regulated. It's not the same thing at all, but still the analogy works I think.

Personal data and copyright are completely different things. The analogy doesn't work at all.

For example, even if you are worried about personal data, you can still publish a fingerprint if you don't identify the individual.

Publishing research on malware should be perfectly legit.

Publishing a book report is very different than publishing the book itself.

If that book is malware itself? It should be OK, because it's security research and exposure of that malware. It should be covered by fair use.

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