Disclaimer: not a lawyer, do not actuslly follow this as advice. Yadda
> This is an isolated leak of materials which you very clearly do not have any rights to access, copy, or possess in any manner whatsoever
I think that's backwards - you don't need the right to posess something, you need to make sure that nobody has the right to stop you from posessing it. The default state in the absence of someone else's right interfereing is information gets to be free. So the question is, are you violating any of github's rights if you download the code for "personal research" or curiosity?
As far as copyright/fair use goes, the fact its a leak doesn't seem that applicable to me - you do not need permission from the copyright holder for fair use to apply (in fact that would defeat the entire point of fair use). "Research" might apply here, because in the united states you can basically ignore copyright if its for research purposes (although there is a lot of fine print on that and its really complicated). In particular, if your personal research is non-commercial and unlikely to affect github's bottom line, it further increases the liklihood fair use applies.
Personally i think trade secret law is more appropriate than copyright here, but afaik that only applies to people who have a responsibility to keep github's code confidential. I don't think that applies to randoms on the internet who are just curious what github's source looks like.
> This is an isolated leak of materials which you very clearly do not have any rights to access, copy, or possess in any manner whatsoever
I think that's backwards - you don't need the right to posess something, you need to make sure that nobody has the right to stop you from posessing it. The default state in the absence of someone else's right interfereing is information gets to be free. So the question is, are you violating any of github's rights if you download the code for "personal research" or curiosity?
As far as copyright/fair use goes, the fact its a leak doesn't seem that applicable to me - you do not need permission from the copyright holder for fair use to apply (in fact that would defeat the entire point of fair use). "Research" might apply here, because in the united states you can basically ignore copyright if its for research purposes (although there is a lot of fine print on that and its really complicated). In particular, if your personal research is non-commercial and unlikely to affect github's bottom line, it further increases the liklihood fair use applies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors
Personally i think trade secret law is more appropriate than copyright here, but afaik that only applies to people who have a responsibility to keep github's code confidential. I don't think that applies to randoms on the internet who are just curious what github's source looks like.
And again, IANAL.