> based on the facts presented to us, we're unable to confirm a violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201

Sorry GitHub, that's not for you to determine, as you are not a US judge. They should never have replied like this IMO and this behavior opens them up to liability for not properly handling DMCA procedures.

Proper DMCA 512(h) notices (assuming OP's was proper) require the host (github) to remove or disable the content first without even attempting to verify the claims.

Then the repo owner has a chance to challenge the notice. If they choose to do, they're basically required to publicly doxx themselves first, by nature of just going through the motions of the judicial court system.

If there was no challenge after a set period of time, then the content stays down.

If there was a challenge, it stays down until a court decides what happens next.

the musicians love it when their original work is DMCA'd by bad actors and YT takes it down and never answers the appeal /s

two sides to the coin, we'll hear about how some evil corporation used their influence to have a legitimate project DMCA'd and HN will have the opposite reaction on that day

something like "jury duty" from the community seems an interesting idea for a middle path, if we want better systems, we'll all need to contribute a little to making it so