Get the latest update on our Vizio court case
●News
Press Releases
Press
Blog
Vizio Lawsuit in the News
Our Issues in the News
●About
Sponsors
Sustainers
Board of Directors
Staff
Evaluation Committee
Outside Counsel, et alia
Transparency
Contact
●Our Work
Copyleft Compliance
We defend and uphold the rights of software users and consumers under copyleft licenses.
Impact Litigation
We defend the legal rights of software users. Learn the details, status, and stakes of our court cases.
Give Up GitHub
We urge FOSS Developers to Give Up GitHub! Learn why.
Outreachy
We offer internships for anyone who faces underrepresentation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the tech industry.
FOSSY
Our annual community-oriented conference focused on the creation and impact of free and open source software.
●Tools
Member Projects
We provide non-profit infrastructure and services to our members creating Free/Libre and Open Source Software.
Use The Source
Our tool for evaluating the source code candidates companies must provide for GPLed software.
OpenWrt One
We designed and built the first ever wireless Internet router designed with software freedom and right to repair in mind.
●Learn
The Corresponding Source
A bi-weekly oggcast about legal, policy, and many other issues in the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) world.
Glossary of Terms
A list of terms you might be unfamiliar with but occur frequently in our work.
FAQ About the Vizio Lawsuit
Your most frequently asked questions about the Vizio lawsuit, answered in one place.
●
Donate
●News
Press Releases
Press
Blog
Vizio Lawsuit in the News
Our Issues in the News
●About
Sponsors
Sustainers
Board of Directors
Staff
Evaluation Committee
Outside Counsel, et alia
Transparency
Contact
●Our Work
Copyleft Compliance
We defend and uphold the rights of software users and consumers under copyleft licenses.
Impact Litigation
We defend the legal rights of software users. Learn the details, status, and stakes of our court cases.
Give Up GitHub
We urge FOSS Developers to Give Up GitHub! Learn why.
Outreachy
We offer internships for anyone who faces underrepresentation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the tech industry.
FOSSY
Our annual community-oriented conference focused on the creation and impact of free and open source software.
●Tools
Member Projects
We provide non-profit infrastructure and services to our members creating Free/Libre and Open Source Software.
Use The Source
Our tool for evaluating the source code candidates companies must provide for GPLed software.
OpenWrt One
We designed and built the first ever wireless Internet router designed with software freedom and right to repair in mind.
●Learn
The Corresponding Source
A bi-weekly oggcast about legal, policy, and many other issues in the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) world.
Glossary of Terms
A list of terms you might be unfamiliar with but occur frequently in our work.
FAQ About the Vizio Lawsuit
Your most frequently asked questions about the Vizio lawsuit, answered in one place.
●Donate
Thanks to so many donors, we met our largest match donation ever of $211,939.
Two generous anonymous donors have provided another $40,012ofadditional matching funds.
Give now to help us reach this stretch goal!
For only 4 more days, the
next $13,079offinancial support we receive will be matched!
$26,933 matched!
$13,079 to go!
$211,927 fully matched!
Home / News / Blog
Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over youtube-dl takedown demand
byDenver Gingerich
on October 26, 2020
We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of youtube-dl, which was released and distributed via GitHub under a liberal FOSS license. In the notice, the RIAA cites DMCA Section 1201 (the removing digital restrictions section) as justification for youtube-dl's removal.
We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses. There are many, but to name a few, youtube-dl has the following important features:
●enable users to watch YouTube videos without installing any non-free software
●watch YouTube at different speeds (including speeds YouTube does not offer) — an important feature for accessibility!
●view YouTube videos at their highest quality on low-bandwidth connections
●ability to download (and then, with other software, modify and reuse) freely licensed videos, such as those licensed under CC-BY
●various aids for journalists, including fact-checking, video analysis, and bandwidth saving
We realize Microsoft, a paying member of the RIAA, has left themselves stuck between their industry association's abuses of the law and the needs of FOSS projects for which they provide infrastructure. While under current law (which we object to), complying with the takedown notice is admittedly the fastest way to limit Microsoft's liability, we view Microsoft's membership in the RIAA as a much bigger liability to our community, now that Microsoft controls GitHub. We call on Microsoft to resign from the RIAA and remove their conflict of interest in this matter. This is an important opportunity for Microsoft to stand up for the values of software freedom.
If you work at Microsoft (including for its GitHub subsidiary), we call on you to petition your employer to resign immediately from the RIAA. We suggest that you raise these concerns directly with your manager or other management, or (even better) by starting an internal email petition with other employees.
To build a strong community of FOSS developers, we need confidence that our software hosting platforms will fight for our rights. While we'd prefer that Microsoft would simply refuse to kowtow to institutions like the RIAA and reject their DMCA requests, we believe in the alternative Microsoft can take the easy first step of resigning from RIAA in protest. We similarly call on all RIAA members who value FOSS to also resign.
[permalink]
Tags:
FOSS Sustainability,
software freedom for everyone
Please email any comments on this entry to
info@sfconservancy.org.
Other Conservancy Blog entries…
Blog Index by Year
●2026
●2025
●2024
●2023
●2022
●2021
●2020
●2019
●2018
●2017
●2016
●2015
●2014
●2013
●2012
●2011
●2010
Blogs by Tag
●conservancy
●GPL
●supporter
●licensing
●conferences
●law
●events
●software freedom for everyone
●Member Projects
●Outreachy
●FOSS Sustainability
●diversity
●resources
●Copyleft Conf
●ContractPatch
●Filings
●Godot
●Reproducible Builds
●Year In Review 2016
●fundraiser
●CLA
●Wine
●Year In Review 2015
●Kallithea
●QEMU
●Selenium
●Google Summer of Code
●Homebrew
●inkscape
●patent
●security
●Clojars
●Git
●Hackfests
●Racket
●cyborg
●phpMyAdmin
●pypy
●volunteer
●Accounting
●LibreHealth
●Shotwell
●inclusion
●jQuery
●microblocks
●sourceware
Blogs by Author
●Vladimir Bejdo
●Kate Chapman
●Pamela Chestek
●Denver Gingerich
●Bradley M. Kühn and Denver Gingerich
●Will Hawkins
●Fred Jennings
●Deb and Karen
●Jeff King
●Bradley M. Kühn
●Conservancy + Bro LT
●Christine Lemmer-Webber
●Deb Nicholson
●Sourceware PLC
●Rick Sanders
●Bradley M. Kühn and Karen M. Sandler
●Karen Sandler
●Tony Sebro
●Sage A. Sharp
●Brett Smith
●Conservancy's Staff
●Daniel Takamori
●Outreachy Team
●Marina Zhurakhinskaya
●Molly deBlanc
●Main Page
●Contact
●Sponsors
●RSS Feed
●
Software Freedom Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity.
Privacy Policy last updated 22 December 2020.
This page and its contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
