Qualcomm Uses DMCA To Shut Down Its Own GitHub Repository (Plus A Bunch Of Others)
from the because-copyright! dept
Another day, another story of ridiculously errant DMCA takedown notices. The latest involves Qualcomm hiring Cyveillance to issue a DMCA notice to Github, demanding the site take down 116 repositories for allegedly violating Qualcomm's copyright. Of course, among those repositories are... Qualcomm's own repository. Because, apparently, like many other companies out there that do DMCA takedown notices, Cyveillance doesn't much care about collateral damage, and issues overly broad takedown notices because it can, and because there's simply no penalty for doing so. The takedown also impacted CyanogenMod developers and Sony's own Xperia dev Github repository. Because if you're going to create collateral damage, why not try to hit everyone?The impetus behind the takedown request is a WiFi config file – literally a text file – which is taken straight from a Sony firmware release. In this takedown Qualcomm also took down PRIMA mirror which is open source code for Atheros wireless chipsets that they release on the CodeAurora gitweb site.The article at Ausdroid also points out that Qualcomm has been trying to create "better relations with the open-source community for sometime." I would imagine one way to do that would be to not pull down their GitHub repositories with bogus DMCA claims. But, of course, Qualcomm has long been known as a patent and copyright bully, so apparently old habits die hard.
Filed Under: copyright, dmca, github, open source, respositories, take downs
Companies: cyveillance, github, qualcomm
