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AMD Uses DMCA to Mitigate Massive GPU Source Code Leak (Updated) (archive) (2)
AMD has filed at least two DMCA notices against Github repos that carried "stolen" source code relating to AMD's Navi and Arden GPUs, the latter being the processor for the upcoming Xbox Series X. The person claiming responsibility for the leak informs TorrentFreak that if they doesn't get a buyer for the remainder of the code, they will dump the whole lot online.
[...] In a DMCA notice sent to development platform Github, AMD identified the recently-created 'xxXsoullessXxx' repository and a project titled "AMD-navi-GPU-HARDWARE-SOURCE" as the location of its "stolen" intellectual property.
"This repository contains intellectual property owned by and stolen from AMD," the semiconductor company wrote. "The original IP is held privately and was stolen from AMD."
Github responded by immediately taking the repository down, as per AMD's request. That prompted us to try and find the person behind the repo and to ask some questions about what AMD was trying to suppress. The individual informed TorrentFreak that AMD's GPU source code was the content in question.
The seller was reportedly looking for $100 million. AMD called the information "test files" and says that "the stolen graphics IP is not core to the competitiveness or security of our graphics products".
Also at TechRadar and Tom's Hardware.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:51AM (7 children)
I often wonder how far ahead we would be if we just did away with patents and copyrights altogether.
Instead of progressing as a species we allow ourselves to remain stuck with artificial constraints.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:16AM (6 children)
I'm not entirely against intellectual property. The problem here is that anything useful is a trade secret (as in this example with AMD) and what ends up getting patents are a bunch of broad ideas intended to be accidentally infringed upon by others. Patents were supposed to be about giving us what these companies would otherwise keep secret but we don't see that happening here. Instead companies are trying to keep their useful stuff secret while obtaining whatever useless patents they can obtain for the sake of having patents to cross license and sue others.
(Score: 5, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday March 26 2020, @05:37AM (4 children)
The problem you describe isn't with patents, it is with the legal protection of "trade secrets". The idea was you got a choice, legal protection of your monopoly OR you tried to keep it secret. There should be absolutely no legal protection for secrets. You decide on that option and people find out, tough luck.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @12:48PM (3 children)
"There should be absolutely no legal protection for secrets."
Seems like the theft, extortion, and breaking into other folks computer rules should still apply.
Using DCMA should be an unfair misapplication of the copyright bargain without an intent to publish or eventually put in the public domain.
A little too much of an eat and keep your cake situation to be advancing the useful arts.
But probably the law. So, write your congress critter.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday March 26 2020, @12:55PM (2 children)
Yep. They sound like crimes alright. What do they have to do with legal protection of secrets?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @03:43PM
"What do they have to do with legal protection of secrets?"
In this case, they provide sufficient teeth to go after the bad guys without need for making IP rules even more nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 29 2020, @09:42AM
What does extortion have to do with legal protection of secrets?
Nothing much actually - said 'protection of secrets' is handled under contract law, using NDA's etc, and doesn't have anything to do with IP 'protection' mechanisms.
But extortion does have a LOT to do with IP law.
Patents are a not 'shields', they are 'weapons'. Quite literally they confer the legal right to commit sanctioned extortion, by levelling a lawsuit at an 'infringer'. No 'protection' -- they do nothing at all if not actively employed -- much like a handgun does nothing to 'protect' you unless actually used to threaten, injure or kill an assailant.
Patents are essentially the legal equivalent of an ICBM -- no real defence is possible if someone 'engages' with you by starting out with a C&D and going further. There isn't even much you can do if if the patent-wielder's goal is to simply stifle further development. Just like there's not much you can do if a handgun-wielder's goal isn't 'their protection' but simple death, destruction and mayhem.
This exact thing hamstrung the first major research in to nuclear fusion. Go look up the guy who did that: Farnsworth I believe -- also famous as the inventor of practical television. We might have had functional nuclear fusion already for decades with losing the first generation of work on it so long ago.
I think to keep things civil, for 'protection', the patent system we have might be in need of a few changes; not least being made compliant with the general prohibition against extortion.
Right now, as it stands, patent law basically fails at everything it is purported to be 'good' for: It's nothing more or less than old corruption. Hell, it started out literally as a formalisation of corruption via a 'kings' authority to simply demand the market not compete with his 'friend', essentially via edict.
We've never not had them, really, as long as the formal rule of law has existed. Along with globalisation they are certainly a key chunk of what we as a living planet are doing wrong.
Posting anonymously, as my name is, in fact, on a patent.
And yes, I am a coward. But I need to keep my job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @12:38PM
(and for the sake of having patents to avoid getting sued by others because they don't want someone else having that same patent instead).