They basically said "OK we'll take it down, but we're in Norway, so that law doesn't apply. Please prove this was copyright infringment".

They should have just said (potentially in Norwegian) "We're in Norway, that law doesn't apply. Please contact us if we are breaking Norwegian law"

Their post yesterday [1] notes that accordign to Norwegian law they have to take down the repositories:

Norwegian law commands us to respond to such notices by removing potentially copyright infringing content until it’s legality can be fully clarified.

I think this is a classy response; they took down the repos because they kinda had to. But now appear prepared to fight the corner for their users, and if Sony doesn't give them something solid... I guess they'll put the repos back up.

Calm and cool.

1. http://blog.gitorious.org/2011/02/02/gitorious-receives-dmca...

That's crap, the law in this case is like "guilty until proven otherwise", isn't it?

Yep, totally crap. It should go "Dear provider, here is why the stuff you host is illegal, please remove it".

Sadly it doesn't. I don't blame Gitorious for following the law, and I support them fighting back.

Isn't that exactly what Sony did? The whole letter is here http://gitorious.org/gitorious/dmca/blobs/master/2011-02-02....

Now, you may disagree with their reasoning or with the law, but that's a different issue

They only explained why it would be illegal in the US. Gitorious is in Norway, so they want Sony to explain why it would be illegal under Norwegian law, which is the only thing that applies to them.

In most places, you're required to notify an infringing party that they are infringing. I've never heard of a requirement to explain the law to them.

Welcome to the last 100 years of IP lawyering.

The way the Norwegian law sounds is that the claim gives Sony an automatic temporary injunction while the matter is clarified, which doesn't seem completely unreasonable.

The question then would be on who is it incumbent to prove whether an infringement took place or not, and whether there is a penalty for making false claims.

Just for those interested in the relevant law... Sony sent a DMCA takedown, which is purely US law. But the EU has implemented EUCD (EU Copyright Directive) which, for practical discussion, does much the same thing. I think that is what they referred to when taking down the content.

Norway is not an EU member.

Ahem, oops. :( That was a silly basic error, sorry.

EDIT: my Norwegian is non-existant but as far as I can make out they have their own equivilant (to the EUCD and DMCA) implementation of the WIPO treaties.

It's not only EU membership what counts, there is a lot of other Europe-wide agreements or even bi-literal agreements between US and Norway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Association

Well, to be fair, you can submit a counter-notification letter that commands the ISP to put the content back online and that doesn't require any proof either.

But the content has to stay offline for at least 10 day in order for the accusing party (Sony) to decide if it wants to file suit against the user(s).

Actually not quite. An ISP can ignore DMCA notices. This waives the DMCA safe harbors protection, and allows the alleged copyright owner to sue the ISP. Then the destiny of the content in question is then decided by the court, but the ISP becomes potentially liable for damages. An ISP cannot be liable for damages, if it complies with a DMCA notice, even if the content is actually infringing.

The law is crap.

If you want to change it, and live in Scotland, you might want to vote for the Pirate Party this May.

BTW, I'm Pirate Party candidate for Edinburgh/Lothians region.

Mirror of the various git repositories which were in the ps3free tree (some of which are still up and some of which are gone): http://rapidshare.com/files/446044378/ps3free.tar.bz2