Instagram Uses DMCA Complaint to "Protect" Users' "Copyrighted Works"The anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA allow companies that own or provide access to copyrighted works to target tools and systems that facilitate access to that content in an unauthorized manner. [...]
This week Facebook-owned Instagram entered the arena when it filed a DMCA notice against code repository Github. It targeted Instagram-API, an independent Instagram API created by a Spain-based developer known as 'mgp25'. [...]
"Back in the day I wasn't able to use Instagram on my phone, and I wanted something to upload photos and communicate with my friends. That's why I made the API in the first place," he explains. [...]
"I think reverse engineering should be exempt from the DMCA and should be legal. By reverse engineering we can verify whether apps are violating user privacy, stealing data, backdooring your device or doing even worse things," he says. "Without reverse engineering we wouldn't know whether the software was a government spy tool. Reverse engineering should be a right every user should have, not only to provide interoperability functionalities but to assure their privacy rights are not being violated." [...]
After the filing of the complaint, it took a couple of days for Github to delete the project but it is now well and truly down. The same is true for more than 1,500 forks of Instagram-API that were all wiped out after their URLs were detailed in the same complaint.
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