TurtleCoin serving DMCA takedown notices for use of forked Bytecoin's simplewallet

[mtl1979]

Several GitHub repositories have been taken down recently by GitHub due to DMCA violation reported by private individual claiming to be legal representative of original copyright holder -- and/but acting on behalf of TurtleCoin repository -- of software known as "simplewallet" and originally distributed by Bytecoin team and copyrighted to CryptoNote and Bytecoin development teams in 2002.

GitHub has asked owners of those repositories to assert that files that unnamed private TurtleCoin representative claims to violate original license are fraudulent and such original author of the simplewallet code needs to contact GitHub to assert the ownership of the code because only legal representative of the original author can dismiss DMCA takedown notice submitted under penalty of prejury. Version distributed on TurtleCoin repository at the time of the fork had partially removed original Bytecoin license from source files and replaced with new license that doesn't specify correctly co-authors of the code or trademark owner of the "simplewallet" name as per required by original license and by laws which must be obeyed by users and maintainers of GitHub services.

My repository containing simplewallet code correctly attributes co-authors as required by DMCA and still was disabled by GitHub. I have sent counter notice and currently it is pending reply from private unnamed individual sending the DMCA takedown notice via GitHub.

[mtl1979]

@crappyrules I have written over 50 applications from scratch without using even single line of code written by someone else. I have also contributed code to numerous projects started or forked by other people. Due to licensing terms of some forks I have created, I'm forbidden to distribute code in binary form on servers hosted in United States of America, but free to distribute them on servers hosted in Europe, Asia, Oceania or Africa.

[brandonlehmann]

@mtl1979

If you compare the PinkStar code from the latest commit I have a copy of (73643ee66284429e7d350df8f6e42e5d68ab18e5) against TurtleCoin's 0.4.4 release (where you appear to have forked from) you'll see that you do have the correct file headers in simplewallet files. You may or may not know this, but our rendition of simplewallet (now zedwallet) was completely re-written from scratch by another community member and does no longer follow the path of the original bytecoin implementation.

That being said, the differences in file headers looks like it comes down to just a few files where TurtleCoin made changes to those files, updated the file headers to include their work(s), and you removed the references to them. Removing those files headers, in whole or in part, actually violates the GPL-3.0 terms.

+++ b/scripts/easy_installer.sh
@@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env bash
-# rocksteady, turtlecoin developers 2017-2018
-# use this installer to clone-and-compile turtlecoin in one line
+# rocksteady, pinkstarcoinv2 developers 2017-2018
+# use this installer to clone-and-compile pinkstarcoinv2 in one line
 # supports Ubuntu 16 LTS

 sudo apt-get update
 yes "" | sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev gcc-4.9 g++-4.9 git cmake libboost1.58-all-dev librocksdb-dev
 export CXXFLAGS="-std=gnu++11"
-git clone https://github.com/turtlecoin/turtlecoin
-cd turtlecoin
+git clone https://github.com/pinkstarcoinv2/pinkstarcoinv2
+cd pinkstarcoinv2
 mkdir build && cd $_
 cmake ..
 make
diff --git a/src/crypto/cryptonight-variants.h b/src/crypto/cryptonight-variants.h
index d43aa5c..3fffff2 100644
--- a/src/crypto/cryptonight-variants.h
+++ b/src/crypto/cryptonight-variants.h
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, The Turtlecoin Developers
+// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, The PinkstarcoinV2 Developers
 // Copyright (c) 2018, The Monero Project
 // Copyright (c) 2012-2017, The CryptoNote developers, The Bytecoin developers
 //
diff --git a/src/crypto/hash.h b/src/crypto/hash.h
index 0dd471b..79f38d4 100755
--- a/src/crypto/hash.h
+++ b/src/crypto/hash.h
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, The TurtleCoin developers
+// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, The PinkstarcoinV2 developers
 // Copyright (c) 2012-2017, The CryptoNote developers, The Bytecoin developers
 //
 // This file is part of Bytecoin.
diff --git a/src/crypto/slow-hash.inl b/src/crypto/slow-hash.inl
index c570816..269426d 100755
--- a/src/crypto/slow-hash.inl
+++ b/src/crypto/slow-hash.inl
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, TurtleCoin Developers
+// Copyright (c) 2017-2018, PinkstarcoinV2 Developers
 // Copyright (c) 2012-2017, The CryptoNote developers, The Bytecoin developers
 //
 // This file is part of Bytecoin.

To make it clear, the ONLY thing you (PinkStar) changed in those files was the file headers.

[mtl1979]

@brandonlehmann I didn't personally remove anything but I can restore the remaining lines Giacomo removed in my own repository after my repository is re-enabled.

[brandonlehmann]

@mtl1979 My apologies, I used you meaning PinkStar in general.

As you said, the fix is pretty simple.

[mtl1979]

@brandonlehmann Like I said to Rocksteady when he contacted me originally, I will make all the required changes that are requested and warranted.

What comes to simplewallet/zedwallet, it was already pointed out it is not complete rewrite even though large part of the source code was rewritten. Copyright laws are pretty strict about leaving even small part of the original code in the alleged rewrite...

In music, the small part is defined as being at least 3 seconds in length, but I have yet not seen equivalent definition that would apply to software code, but usually it is considered to be use of name of other program and code block longer than one single line (limited to length visible on screen without need to scroll, usually 80 characters or less). White space change or splitting one or more lines to multiple separate lines or moving code block to other location in same file or another file is not considered as copyrightable change.

[brandonlehmann]

@mtl1979 I urge you to review the terms of the GPL-3 license. It clearly states in section 4:

You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice; keep intact all notices stating that this License and any non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code; keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.

This requires that whether you agree, or disagree, in the ability to copyright any works and/or changes, that the notice must be copied verbatim.

The team made changes, the team asserted additional copyright(s) on the work(s), the notice was updated in the files, and was subsequently removed/altered by PinkStar. That is the violation of the GPL-3.0 terms.

[mtl1979]

@brandonlehmann Like I said previously I have no commit rights to the PinkstarcoinV2 repository and I can't undo or had possibility to affect anything that happened before I joined the team. I have done my best making sure all previous mistakes have been corrected as requested by TurtleCoin developers.