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Comment by graemep

12 days ago

A lawyer will probably get you damages for the infringement and is less hassle than trying the whole process yourself.

I could find are a bunch of Photopea repositories on GitHub, but the authors are all either from China or Russia, so getting damages for infringement will be difficult to enforce. Hiring a lawyer sounds like a waste of money to me.

  • You might be able to get damages from github, especially as they have ignored a notification that there was infringing material. A lawyer would know.

    The US allows damages per infringement without need to prove an actual loss, and per infringement.

    • We don’t know if OP filed the DMCA “optimally”.

      In my experience GH usually does 512(c) takedowns in days; so it taking a month is quite abnormal. OP’s posted response suggests he didn’t file a copyright takedown but rather an anti-circumvention claim; which is a bit special in DMCA law, and generally best avoided when you have merits to do a regular 512(c).

      We also don’t have details of the repo. The author has commented on another project that claims to be a LLM _re-implementation_ of Photopea, without directly using source. If that’s the case, it’s entirely understandable why GitHub won’t take it down.

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Sadly though, you have to do the cost/benefit analysis of the legal process and your likelihood of recovering anything.

I spent $18k in legal fees over a $22k claim in a construction dispute. I won the suit and was awarded legal fees. So I'm owed $40k plus interest. I've collected exactly $0. The last lawyer I spoke to said I need to cut my losses in legal fees at some point because from a practical standpoint, winning damages isn't the same as collecting them. Especially if the defendant isn't local and has few assets.