GitHub published an annual report reflecting the IP infringement notifications received for 2020 ownership and publication of illegal content. Under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), GitHub received 2097 lock requests covering 36901 projects. For comparison, in 2019, 1762 requests for blocking were received, covering 14371 projects, in 2018 – 1799, 2017 – 1380, in 2016 – 757, in 2015 – 505, and in 2014 – 258. From the owners of the repositories received 37 denials for illegal blocking.
From government services received 44 requirements to remove content due to violations of local laws, all of which were sourced from Russia (there were 16 requests in 2019, 8 from Russia, 6 from China and 2 from Spain). The requests covered 44 projects and mainly related to notes in gist.github.com (in 2019 – 54 projects). All locks at the request of the Russian Federation were sent by Roskomnadzor and related to the publication of instructions on suicide, promotion religious sects and fraudulent activities. This year received 2 requests for blocking from Roskomnadzor.
In addition, 13 requests for deletion were received related to violation of local laws, which also violated the terms of service (Terms of Service). The requests covered 12 user accounts and one repository. In these cases, phishing attempts (requests from Nepal, the USA and Sri Lanka), misinformation (Uruguay) and other violations of the terms of use (UK and China) became the reason for the blocking. Three requests (from Denmark, Korea and the United States) were denied for lack of adequate evidence.
GitHub also received 303 user disclosure requests (up from 261 in 2019). 155 such requests were sent in the form of subpoenas (134 criminal cases and 21 civil), 117 court orders and 23 search warrants. 93.1% of inquiries were sent by law enforcement agencies, and 6.9% in civil claims. 206 out of 303 requests were satisfied, as a result of which information about 11909 accounts was disclosed (in 2019 – 1250).
Users were only notified of the disclosure of their data 14 times, as the remaining 192 requests were issued with a nondisclosure order ( gag order ) .
