Breeze is correct. You need to seek legal advice immediately, because reverse engineering is completely and entirely legal. Their DMCA notice does not claim that you copied their code (which is copyrightable), but rather that your software performs the same function (which is not copyrightable). This is a fraudulent takedown request. You can dispute the takedown and they won’t have a shot in court based on their claims in the takedown request. (IANAL obviously)
This is a blatantly bad-faith move on Mazda’s part (they have the lawyers to tell them this isn’t a copyright violation, they’re either too dumb or too malicious to ask them) and it’s extremely unfortunate that the DMCA does not contain any provision for punishing actors who use it in bad faith.
Take a break, pause you 30s and take the developer place.
Now what will you do? Of course you will close you repo.
I didn’t say it’s not abused from Mazda but it’s what everyone will do.
Now I also think it’s what nabu casa exist for.
The code of this integration should be integrated directly in ha by nabu casa.
Please that’s also why we support you. You are the only one that can do that sort of fight. One single person behide is screen with a family and a life that code for fun is not armed for this.
Very disappointed in Mazda…the official Mazda app takes way too long to open and start the vehicle. This API was the perfect solution, and I could even start my vehicle with my voice! So silly to lock it down…
Legal advice and court claims have a cost. HA is a free opensource environment, it’s ironic we expect each developer to have more of a financial stake than just a passion for code development and HA as a whole. Faced with the financial penalties, even if not morally and legally correct, I can understand complying with take down orders.
I drive a CX60 and I use multiple methods to optimise the charging, make sure it’s my car plugged into the charger before switching it on and finally to alert me that the boot is open when it magically seems to do so.
Or, you should but the code from the developer and develop it yourself.
I do not use this integration myself, nor own a Mazda vehicle. But as an integration author myself, this is a major disappointment.
When I first saw the removal in the release notes yesterday and read through the DMCA notice, the first thing that came to my mind was that this is nonsense, for all the other reasons called out here and in the removal PR: that this integration is the result of reverse engineering for the purposes of “interoperability”, which is absolutely legal (in the US) under the “fair use” clause. I agree with others saying that this is a blatant misuse/abuse of DMCA.
I’m disappointed that GitHub enforced the takedown in the first place. I hope that Mazda and GitHub reconsider this. And I hope that @bdr99 follows up with a counter-notice. But putting myself in those shoes, I don’t know that I would take on the risk of going up against a global corporation, and frankly I think that’s what Mazda is counting on (in other words, they’re being a bully on the expectation that they will get away with it).
If HA and GitHub allow this kind of behavior to go unchecked, then there’s nothing stopping every other company behind the products for which there are HA Integrations that offer interoperability from doing the same thing. That includes many of the integrations in HA core, as well as those available from HACS. Take a moment to think about all the integrations you’ve added in HA. Some of them have official published developer docs that officially enable integrations by third parties, but a large percentage of them do not, and the only way to offer interoperability for HA and systems like it is to reverse engineer the undocumented APIs that provide the data and functionality. That process is allowed as fair use under US copyright law.
I don’t think anyone’s expecting the dev to fight it, especially since this is likely just a passion project. It’s more about the public interest and hope that a legal rights foundation or other concerned party could take up the mantle.
What on earth are Mazda doing, someone need to educate them about software. Also it’s ironic that this integration was even better than the official app (which is a disaster)
This is what happens when legal reps try and use grey areas of the law to issue DMCA notices, and generally they’ll have no idea what they are actually looking at apart from “oh this replicates some functionality we built in our app, so it must mean its copied our code.”
While I don’t own a Mazda, I do hope that this integration is restored with an appeal.
