844
China is attempting to mirror the entire GitHub over to their own servers, users report
(infosec.exchange)
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
844 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59312 readers
4528 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I do believe it's illegal if they take a repository with a restrictive license (which includes any repository without a license), and then make it available on their own service. I think China just doesn't care.
If it's hosted in a public repo, anyone can clone it, that's very much part of most git flows.
What you can do with the software, how you can use it, that's another matter, based on the licence.
That of course assumes China will respect the copyright..
Sure, you can probably clone it - I'm not 100% sure, but I think laws protect that as long as it's private use.
You can also fork it on GitHub, that's something you agree to in the GitHub ToS - though I think you're not allowed to push any modifications if the license doesn't allow it?
Straight up taking the content from GitHub, uploading it to your own servers, and letting people grab a copy from there? That's redistribution, and is something that needs to be permitted by the license. It doesn't matter if it's git or something else, in the end that's just a way to host potentially copyrighted material.
Though if you have some reference on why this is not the case, I'd love to see it - but I'm not gonna take a claim that "that's very much a part of most git flows".
Illegal according to who?
The US? Why would China care, they are their own country with their own laws.
International courts? Who is enforcing those judgments?
Again, what repercussions? Who will enforce an ICC judgement against the CCP? Laws aside, what possible actions could be taken? I guess sanctions but that's unlikely over something like this.
You can buy pirated software or pre-cracked consoles in stores there. They don't care.