Firstly, they can't exist most of the time you can't actually call a lawyer and talk to them - you get their office and their "job" is to gatekeep that lawyer from making any discussions with anyone who isn't represented or paid for a consultation.
Secondly, once you do get into contact with them you'll get a blank stare or phone silence. This is not how most lawyers view pro-bono work. Most of them have a very small quota of pro-bono work to be done and that's it. They get assigned a case by their firm or go and accept a few a year from the state and they're done with it. The idea that an altruistic lawyer exists out there ready to do free and unpaid work is virtually non-existent today.
You can only issue takedowns in relation with material that you have copyright over. At least one of these sites I know for a fact routinely scrubs FAKKU licensed content, and abides by takedown requests.
It might even be true. Not having a download button is a copy protection measure as defined in the DMCA. If this project bypasses not having a download button, it's an illegal circumvention measure under DMCA.
That's absurd. Not having something is different from actively implementing measures to prevent something. I could similarly make the argument that any content that I can watch on my device doesn't really have copy protection measures because those bytes were purposefully copied into my display buffer.
Anti-circumvention provisions are a cancer that needs to die. They can be used to criminalize just about anything.
Is it? Isn't Section 512 the takedown section that applies to infringing works (e.g. notices require "Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed", 512(c)(3)(A)(ii)) and Section 1201 the separate anti-circumvention section which has government-imposed criminal penalties but no private takedown provision?
> I'll tell our DMCA agent you're in the clear
https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/discussions/9304#discussi...
similar to patent trolls, there is now a DMCA trolls for hire.
The underlying issue is similar to if there was a website that illegally hosted Netflix content it had downloaded from torrents. Then that illegal website put up advertisements next to the content, or even a paywall cheaper than Netflix to make money. Obviously, that's against the law and Netflix would do something about it. That's generally what we are having to fight against.
Ironically projects like this actually hurt that illegal website, by circumventing THEIR paywall or advertisements, and serving the content inside an app for free (which was originally paid content). It's a complicated issue, but going after projects like this doesn't solve the root problem.
If you want resistance from USA's bullshit, host in China or Russia. If you want resistance form China's bullshit, host in USA or Russia. If you want resistance from Russia's bullshit, host in USA or China.
For purposes of this chat, Europe == USA since they do as USA says when it comes to copyright.
You absolutely do not need and should not spend money on a lawyer for this. The only way you're possibly going to get in trouble is if you're acting in bad faith, you don't need a lawyer to tell you if you are.
Maybe there are more recent examples?
I want Codeberg to succeed, but running an open code hosting platform (both in the sense that anyone can create an account, and the service source code is publicly available) in the European Union, and especially Germany, is extremely challenging from a legal perspective. Sadly, once they become successful and popular, they will have to implement all kinds of weird stuff, like proprietary scanners for potentially infringing content prior to publishing it.
Big money interests rub shoulders with US politicians, US politicians deal with their overseas counterparts. Therefore, big enough DMCA requests will be mentioned behind closed doors in the same breath as international trade and other geopolitical concerns. Money protects money in deals between close enough friends and allies.
If Codeberg were based in Russia or a US geopolitical adversary, on the other hand, such requests would likely be ignored.
There have been multiple different ways to host git repositories over DHT networks such as BitTorrent. Similarly there have been ways to run DHT backed commands for Linux package managers like apt.
These tools often receive little praise because the value of decentralized systems seems low when centralized systems are working to most users without too many issues.
The enshittification is ramping up so quickly recently that more people are reaching out to me on how to setup Linux syatems, home media servers, etc. I genuinely enjoy these technologies, but for the last decade I had more or less just shut up about them to avoid being that guy.
https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/discussions/9304#discussioncomment-16279674
https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl/discussions/9304#discussioncomment-16280050
When you call about something like this, they’ll try to give you some general advice and refer you to a law firm.
This seems like turtles all the way down.
1) You can have an encrypted connection between two jurisdictions that have different laws, but then anyone can route around censorship because you don't know if they're discussing geopolitics or distributing DeCSS.
2) You can't have an encrypted connection between two jurisdictions that have different laws, which is >99% of all connections because even different cities have different laws, which is an Orwellian panopticon and the destruction of all privacy.
I'm going to have to insist we stick with the first one.
Are you prepared to be held accountable for breaking the laws of repressed countries that sentence people to death for leaving a religion or insulting authority?
I assume not, but then it's an arbitrary game of whos laws and when. The only logical continuation would be if we had a standard of law worldwide, but that's a separate problem in itself and not anywhere near reality today.
If people in your jurisdiction can make a secure connection to it, e.g. to get the 98% of the content they have which is lawful in your jurisdiction, then they can also get the content you were trying to ban because you can't tell which one they're doing. Preventing this is all or nothing: Either they can connect to the server that isn't subject to your laws, or they can't. And the latter is heinous and tyrannical.