This is really more of a cautionary tale about how not to be an asshat to yourself.
Go make the popcorn, I’ll wait.
Welcome back! Here’s our story.
A developer got banned from WordPress.org (temporarily) because they slapped themselves with a DMCA.
No, really. Evan (not his real name) filed a DMCA that went to the data team, who handed it to Plugins and asked “Uh, what the hell?” I looked into it, read it a few times, and confirmed.
- It was a legit DMCA
- Evan was the plugin owner
- He had authorized a company to act on his behalf for DMCAs
- The company claimed Evan’s plugin on WordPress.org was in violation
Yeah, you read that right. Take down these illegal copies of Evan’s own plugins… Except the plugins were Evan’s and were clearly not illegal copies. We read that a few times and decided it was one of these:
- They’re weird and don’t know it’s their own plugins
- Evan wasn’t thinking and just approved everything from the company
- It was a false claim
On Monday I emailed the DMCA company and Evan to ask that. Neither of them replied. I checked with the legal folks and they agreed, we had to close the plugins and notify Evan of the situation. Since the DMCA said it should be passed on to him, I shrugged and did just that.
Three days later, Evan shows up freaking the fuck out for pretty obvious reasons. He explained he’d used a computer program/service to send out the DMCAs and no one checked before sending.
Playing middle-man, the plugin team passed on the details and explained that things were … not going to be quick. They got directions on how to formally retract the DMCA notice, and advice about that. The only other option we had was to file a counter-notice, but that would take weeks.
It took about a week after that to untangle the fuckery.
The kicker was it happened a second time, but Evan caught that super fast and fixed it before we had to take action. I suggested he just not try that shit again anyway, since his code was GPL to begin with.
Coda
There is an interesting though here, though.
Is a DMCA valid for Open Source code? The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is intended to protect copyright (it’s right there in the name). It exists to prevent people from taking a copyright protected item (say … a copy of an episode of The Simpsons) and posting it up on your own website. You don’t own the show, you don’t own the intellectual property, you’re just a fan.
But Open Source code is meant to be shared, right? That’s one of the first rules (… open …). The right to take the code, tear it down to the bones, and build something else from it. The entire existence of WordPress literally lives on that (remember WP is a fork of B2).
Could B2’s creator turn around and sue Automattic (or the WordPress Foundation) for copyright abuse?
Thankfully, no. WordPress properly keeps the copyright in place. If you’ve ever heard me snark about copyright and how it’s additive, the easiest way to understand is this. If you take an existing plugin and refactor the code to make it even better, you would add your copyright notice on to the existing one.
@copyright Person A, 2022 becomes @copyright Person A, 2022 ; Person B 2023
Though I recommend you do it nicer and neater.
Anyway. There are two main kinds of DMCA attacks against Open Source. The first is “That code is my copyright, stop using it!” and the second is “That code is circumventing a technical protection measure.” If the second one confuses you, don’t feel bad. I am very familiar with the first item (I’ve hosted fansites for 25 years and had my fair share of DMCA claims) but the first time I ran into the second was when YouTube forced GitHub to remove a library.
In the end, GitHub restored the code (and explained why). Anticircumvention claims pretty much boil down to “This code is used to get around my protections” and is why people who make those DVD ripper tools are often in trouble (and in fact they’re why the DMCA happened in the first place). None of that matters in this fellow’s case though.
The question is … Does Evan have a valid DMCA claim?
Honestly, I don’t think so. Taking someone’s code and reselling it as your own is likely illegal for other reasons, and there may be some merit to any images or proprietary work used. But at the same time, the code was released under a license that literally allows its use as such. Now the GPL also has some requirements (like maintaining copyright, as well as not claiming it’s yours) but re-hosting code on your own site? Yeah, you can do it.
Still, that’s a question for a lawyer, and not me. For me, what I stand by is that if ain’t your code, and the developer(s) ask you to stop selling, or giving it away, you should do what they asked. Don’t be a dick. Be cooperative together.