Twitter's request to identify source code leak goes to court

Twitter is asking a California federal district court to help it identify a GitHub user who allegedly violated copyright law by posting parts of Twitter’s proprietary source code to the code-sharing platform.

The code, according to court documents filed Friday, includes highly valuable computer instructions used to run Twitter’s social media site. In addition to exposing secret technology recipes, source code leaks can cause vulnerabilities to a website's security.

In a request to the federal district court for the Northern District of California, Twitter asked the court to authorize a subpoena that would force Microsoft-owned (MSFT) GitHub to hand over more identifying information about the user or users who posted the allegedly infringing content under the account name “FreeSpeechEnthusiast.”

“The purpose of Twitter’s…subpoena is to identify the alleged infringer or infringers who posted Twitter’s source code on systems operated by GitHub without Twitter’s authorization,” Twitter’s in-house counsel Julian Moore wrote in the filings. The document goes on to say that Twitter intends to use identifying information to assert its rights against the unauthorized use.

Billionaire Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the company plans to publicly share the source code it uses to recommend its users' Tweets.

The folder or repository that posted the allegedly offending content on GitHub has since been suspended under GitHub’s DMCA takedown policy.

DMCA, short for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a federal statute signed into law in 1998 to protect various types of technology works.

In response to Yahoo Finance’s request to learn if GitHub would comply with such a subpoena, a spokesperson for the company said: “GitHub does not generally comment on decisions to remove content.”

However, the spokesperson pointed to the publicly shared takedown request from Twitter that it says led to the removal, and added that every takedown request it receives is made public.

Twitter is asking the district court to require that GitHub turn over copies of the upload and download history related to the content that it says was illegally made public, as well as contact information, IP addresses, or other session information related to the content.

In addition, Twitter is asking for associated logs related to the leaked information and any forks that were made public before the allegedly offending content was removed from Github.

Musk acquired Twitter in October, in a contentious $44 billion deal. Since that time, approximately two-thirds of the social media platform's 7,500 employees have been laid off or have voluntarily left the company.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also launched an investigation into the platform over concerns about its ability to properly protect user privacy.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on Twitter @alexiskweed.

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