After reading the EFF's letter a little more closely, I realize now that it wasn't even a formal DMCA counter notice representing the repository owners, just an informal legal rebuttal of the original claims. Oops. So GitHub wasn't legally required to restore access at all even after 10-14 days, since no official counter notice was ever received.
That makes it more significant (not merely symbolic) that GitHub chose to short-circuit its DMCA process to restore access and open themselves up to liability in this case.
Not true. The first sentence of the first paragraph make mention that the EFF is representing the youtube-dl developers. An attorney-client relationship.
> The Electronic Frontier Foundation represents the current maintainers of the youtube-dl software utility, a free software project that uses GitHub as a home for development.
Thanks for pointing out the mention of representation. However the letter still lacked two required elements for it to be an effective formal counter notice:
- §512(g)(3)(C): A 'statement under penalty of perjury' that the material was removed by mistake.
- §512(g)(3)(D): A statement 'consent[ing] to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located', and to 'accept service of process from the person who provided notification'.
These are also noted as requirements in GitHub's counter notice policy [1] numbers 4 and 5.
I think it's also telling that GitHub never referred to this letter anywhere as a 'counter notice', only mentioning it as 'new information' they received about the project.
That makes it more significant (not merely symbolic) that GitHub chose to short-circuit its DMCA process to restore access and open themselves up to liability in this case.