Qualcomm made a DMCA takedown request on 116 code repositories

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has a lot of issues, and one of them is the almost instantaneous way in which content can be removed from the web if a copyright holder thinks it’s in violation – it’s a pretty classic example of “guilty until proven innocent.” That double-edged sword is swinging back at Qualcomm today: the company issued an apology to developers after forcing popular code repository GitHub to remove over 100 repos for violation of copyright. “Cyveillance is authorized to act on behalf of QUALCOMM Incorporated and Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (collectively, “Qualcomm”) in requesting removal of its copyrighted works from Internet sites. Under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 U.S.C. § 512) and other applicable U.S. and international statutes, Cyveillance provides this notification of claimed infringement and requests that you immediately remove certain documents from your web site and/or disable access to those documents through your web site.”