DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE
Dear Sir or Madam:
We are outside counsel to The New York Times Company (“The Times”) and its subsidiary, Listen In Audio, Inc. On behalf of The Times, we request that Github remove the infringing website page https://github.com/jimtje/audm_scraper. Listen In Audio conducts business as Audm, and is a company that provides, through its Audm mobile application, long-form journalism, read aloud word-for-word by celebrated audiobook narrators, to subscribers of numerous publications, including The New York Times. Listen In Audio owns U.S. Registration No. 5,074,296 in the mark “Audm” and owns the copyright in the code that underlies the Audm mobile application. See https://www.audm.com/.
The referenced website https://github.com/jimtje/audm_scraper is a “scraping site.” As you surely know, web scraping is the process of using bots to extract content and data from a website, or in this case, a mobile application. In the case of the referenced website, this is clear from the domain name extension that literally contains the word “scraper” and the website itself, which states: “This script will download and join all segments that make up each story as read and available on the Audm app.”
The conduct encouraged at this website and through the associated scripts constitutes per se copyright infringement. Github’s allowance of a tool on the Github platform that permits the scraping of copyrighted content indeed induces third parties to infringe NYT’s copyrighted works, i.e., the absence of the tool would preclude the infringement from taking place. Indeed, we have located a website (jimz.io) that is republishing The Times’s copyrighted content, and we understand that the owner of the website (jimz.io) is the same person as the GitHub user “jimtje” who hosts the software on GitHub that allows for the unauthorized copying of Audm. Again, the script is even blatantly called “Audm Scraper.”
I can attest that this usage of The Times’ copyrighted content has not been authorized by The New York Times, its agents, or by law.
On behalf of The Times, we hereby request that you immediately disable and take down the infringing website.
Under penalty of perjury, I hereby declare that this Notice is accurate and that I am authorized to act on behalf of The Times.
We look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
[private]
[private]
Flaster Greenberg PC
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Tel: [private] · [private]