GitHub stuffs $1m in Stanford Law School's pocket to provide free legal advice to DMCA-hit developers

GitHub has pledged $1m to, among other things, provide developers facing copyright takedown claims with free legal advice from a top US university, it announced on Tuesday. The donation will fund, for two years at least, the GitHub Developer Rights Fellowship at Stanford Law School's Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and …

[Gene Cash]

How difficult to get?

I'm betting it'll be a complete pain in the ass to get any sort of assistance or advice.

[Alan Brown]

One of the failings of DMCA

Is that it requires that the claimant assert Copyright standing, Theyŕe not being held to that and false DMCA claims are legion as a result (The assertion is part os a legal declaration and as such, false declarations are perjury, but RIAA/MPAA, etc have more expensive lawyers than anyone on YouTube, etc)

Even if the hoster suspects the declaration is false, they're required to take down the postings to stay in Safe Harbour.

This broken burden of proof requirement is fundamentally flawen and allows DMCA to be used as a harrassment/shakedown tool powered by bot scripts.

[TVU]

Wonders will never cease - here we have Microsoft's GitHub helping open-source developers by providing them with free legal advice.