I'm being threatened by Magic Leap's lawyer. How should I handle this? | Hacker News Reader

I'm being threatened by Magic Leap's lawyer. How should I handle this?

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28 pointsshawn51 comments

They're telling you to take down their IP. Do it. And refrain from being cute about it.

Ignore the tone of the request, that's how lawyers speak to ensure there is no wiggle room for interpretation.

If you're upset that you're being bullied, know that it probably wasn't a decision made by anyone in Engineering. Just businesses being businesses.

What's unclear about this? You are publicly distributing intellectual property you have no rights over, and the owner is asking you to cease and desist. It doesn't matter how many people actually access it, that's not a valid defense.

Sure. But are they really going to drag me into court?

I’m not trying to defend myself, or say that I wasn’t doing that. But I was hoping to know whether it would be helpful to sacrifice myself for the greater good here.

If this is a situation where it merits taking a stand, I’m willing to do so. But if everyone agrees it’s ok for magic leap to assert that those who are making them money need to toe the line and obey, then I guess I should back down.

Mainly I was hoping to judge community sentiment.

Throwing yourself under this legal bus isn't going to benefit you or anybody else. I mean you can poke them as much as you want, but is this the hill you want to die on?

If it benefits others. That’s all I care about.

It seems like tolerating this may not be in the best interest of the community going forward. And I would find it interesting to be able to claim that magic leap has sued me for distributing 3 month old api docs to myself.

What benefit do you think it would give others? It looks like they're pretty clearly and understandably asserting their rights. Are you making their API docs publicly accessible?

All other arguments aside, I’m uncomfortable with a world in which developers are bullied and intimidated by large corporations over nothing. In this case, it’s 3 month old api docs distributed to myself, which may be absurd enough to possibly make a stand over.

The central issue appears to be the idea that in order to defend against anyone, they have to defend against everyone. And in cases like this, I’m not sure that’s to the public benefit.

People in that comment thread described it more eloquently and precisely than I could but it really comes down to "use it or lose it."

Would it have been _nice_ for them to send you a politely worded message like "oh hey soo could you take down our docs kthx!" but it lacks the legal precision to defend their copyrights.

Lawyer are, unfortunately, seldom paid to be nice.

Nah, I don’t blame the formality. What seems true is that both ipfs and blockchain technologies will make these legal tools obsolete.

What if we were to set up a project in response to this that made the Magic Leap API docs available in a distributed fashion? As well as a technical breakdown of everything that can be learned from them.

Is there no way to disobey in a productive way? Or is our only choice to agree to being bullied into submission for pointless reasons?

Sure go ahead if it makes you feel better. I appreciate the whole "information wants to be free, man!" mindset.

Just let them be the source of truth for documentation about the SDK. Honestly, its best for everyone concerned.

> What seems true is that both ipfs and blockchain technologies will make these legal tools obsolete.

I doubt it. More likely, it will make it easier to get yourself into hot water.

Committing a tort (in this case, violating the terms of a license agreement) is one thing, and, while lawyers might word their comments strongly, they're leaving you a very easy out here.

Committing a tort that can't be undone, but doing it on some sort of indelible public record, is probably just ensuring that you will get dragged into expensive legal proceedings. The current law still says that they have to defend their copyright in order to keep their copyright, so you won't really have left them with any other choice.

While I agree with your post, it isn’t true that they have to defend copyright to keep it. That is trademarks, which is a completely different form of IP protection.

You mean like a torrent file?

You realise that this post right here will be used as evidence of your intent to keep doing this, right?

You are getting no support for your position (albeit some sympathy) and seem intent on digging a bigger hole for yourself.

Yes, they will take you to court, yes will lose, yes they may impose penalties, and yes if you keep posting things like this those penalties could potentially include court enforceable bans from the use of IPFS.

Good luck.

I do. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that the old way of thinking has apparently died out.

At no point have I been more likely to convert to a free software zealot. I'll have to rethink my stance going forward on pretty much everything I do.

Anyway, thank you to everyone for providing thoughts and comments. This was most helpful.

You're in a situation where you are going to loose from a legal perspective, and (IMHO) nothing about your case makes it a particular interesting one to publicly demonstrate injustice or problems with how copyright works, which is why making a stand out of it looks like a waste of time and money.

If your goal is to widely/permanently make something accessible that the rightsholder doesn't want you to share, posting it under a real identity on a platform that'll enforce copyright really isn't the way to go.

> At no point have I been more likely to convert to a free software zealot.

Free Software doesn't mean "take other people's non-free work and do whatever you want with it". If you believe FOSS advocates will have any more sympathy for you, you're in for a rude awakening.

Can confirm, as a FOSS developer and advocate with zero tolerance for the kind of petulant disregard for the ethics of sharing and consent being displayed by op.

> What if we were to set up a project in response to this that made the Magic Leap API docs available in a distributed fashion?

If your name is still attached you will still get these letters. Because they will continue to try and show they are protecting their IP.

> As well as a technical breakdown of everything that can be learned from them.

Then that would be your IP which you'd be free to distribute. You won't receive the same letter again, but you may be breaking an NDA and the terms of which may apply.

Why do you think that ipfs and/or blockchain is going to change how copying IP works?

To distribute docs to yourself, you download them or store them on "cloud" resources available to yourself. You are distributing the docs to any and all. The fact that nobody has taken you up on your offer is irrelevant.

> And I would find it interesting to be able to claim that magic leap has sued me for distributing 3 month old api docs to myself.

Do you have that much money to burn?

> If it benefits others. That’s all I care about.

I don’t see this benefiting anyone at all, so please put aside talking about this like a martyr.

You took someone else’s property and publicly hosted it. Dropbox or gdrive or sticking it on a private ftp or emailing it to yourself all would have done the job just fine - but you chose to do it publicly. It’s not 1985; you have plenty of resources for making files conveniently accessible without violating folks’ IP rights.

And then you got told to Stop It. You didn’t get sued, though you could have. You didn’t get DMCA’d, though you could have. You got the legalese version of “cut the shit”.

So, what principle are you standing up for? Your right to appropriate other folks’ property against their wishes? To distribute it against their wishes? To then make sure they ask you pretty please to stop?q

You’re not protecting the community. This isn’t a principle that people who make IP for a living are going to especially rally around.

Frankly, I think the answers here have been exceedingly courteous - beyond the point of reason. It’s like Pirate Bay crying foul about being “bullied” by the companies whose property they’re stealing.

Say you fight the good fight and tear down the edifice of intellectual property. Is that a better world than you feeling like they owe you some deference as a supporter?

>Sure. But are they really going to drag me into court?

Only if you don't comply.

If you believe your case is a civil rights case with substance, then you should be contacting a lawyer and avoid causing yourself trouble by talking about it over Hacker News.

Drop the content, comply with any take downs and put less energy and enthusiasm into helping commercial APIs succeed in the future.

If you could have gotten a copyleft solution closer to competing it would have been a better use of your time than working for free on someone else's plan to make money.

I don't get you. You ask 'How should I handle this?' and then you proceed to argue with everybody who tells you exactly how to handle this.

You're violating copyright and the counterparty has indicated they mean business. If you stick to this then you will lose a lot of money and in the end it will still be removed. So there is no upside but a huge downside.

Pick your battles. This is not a smart battle even if you feel that you are in the right (you're not).

I didn't mean to argue. Thank you for taking the time to explain that.

It's a perfectly reasonable request by ML.

Also, their terms of service document [1] states very clearly that:

"You are not allowed to (directly or indirectly): ... (c) copy, imitate, distribute, publicly perform, or publicly display any Site Materials"

[1] https://www.magicleap.com/terms

IANAL. Not legal advice, just bad opinion:

Seems banal and best to just politely take it down if no one is actually viewing your copy.

In no way is this a heroic hill to die on; you've just posted someone else's content accidentally and they are politely but firmly asking you to remove it. It's not "harassment" in the slightest.

Howdy,

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate venue, but I wanted to ask the community what to do. The details can be found in that reddit post.

In summary, a trademark lawyer is sending me threatening emails for uploading Magic Leap's API documentation to github. No one viewed these except me. Github's traffic stats show 2 viewers total.

Should I just take down the docs and forget about this? It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening the very developers they're counting on to make them money, so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

Ultimately, I think I'm willing to make a stand over this, but ideally I'd like to not be dragged into court over some 3 month old API docs. What are my options?

The ideal outcome would be that Magic Leap changes its behavior before it becomes the norm. It seems like if we tolerate this now, it's going to get worse later.

I think the comments on the reddit post give you some good information about the perspective of the lawyer, how it is actually their copyrighted material you're distributing (the docs).

They're in the right but bullying developers that are advocating for their platform with nastygrams probably isn't going to result in the best outcome for them.

They can just send Github a DMCA notice and Github will kill the repo without talking to you.

And any forks of that repo will also be killed.

Should I just take down the docs and forget about this?

Why wouldn't you do just that? It's their IP, and they asked politely (as politely as you're going to get out of a lawyer).

It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening

What threat? The strongest word in there is "demand", and (IANAL) I believe that to be standard legalese for "could you not do that?" The implication, of course, is if you don't quit doing that, they'll sue.

so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

What behavior is that? "Could you not distribute our IP/documents w/o our permission? 'k, thx." Because that's what Google's Legalese->English translator gives me.

I mean, if you think you have a legal leg to stand on, knock yourself out. But from where I stand (and keeping in mind that IANAL), it looks like you took their IP, passed it around, and now wonder why they're being mean. Perhaps try putting yourself in their place for a few moments?

> What threat? The strongest word in there is "demand", and (IANAL) I believe that to be standard legalese for "could you not do that?“

Yep, they’re officially called “Demand Letters.” It’s legalese, not stormtroopering.

> What threat?

> if you don't quit doing that, they'll sue.

I think you answered your own question.

But there’s nothing inherently wrong about a lawyer protecting his client / employer’s IP. Sometimes lawyers have to make threats to do that. It’s within their rights to threaten (make demands). If they don’t enforce their trademarks they can even lose them.

You don’t have to adhere to their demands, and if you think you’re in the right and have the financial resources you should probably lawyer up and stand your ground and see what the court ruling says.

But from what I’ve seen Magic Leap is a very secretive company. Secretive organizations will want control of the distribution of information. It’s just how they operate. Apple will fire their best engineers with a single leak. IANAL but if being in control of every inconsequential piece of information is that important to them (even if it’s an API documentation that is distributed to developers), they’re not letting off on this.

Would you’ve taken it down if the email was from a developer instead of a lawyer and had said ‘hey Dave here from magic leap! Great to see you contribute. Noticed you had our docs on your GitHub. We’re trying to keep these in a central place, would you mind removing them?”?

If yes, then just remove it. Perhaps send a feedback message that the legal challenge was really off-putting and hope they want to take this in consideration for similar situations with their community in the future.

It seems you're conflating an entity exercising it's legal duty, with entities using the legal system to harass and bully others into complying with unreasonable demands.

Magic leap has created IP using Investor Money. That IP has monetary value, and that value in-part belongs to investors. If the company fails to protect that IP, the IP could lose value, impacting the value to investors. Losing that value because the company failed to act could open up the CEO to breach of fiduciary duty.

I mean, as soon as those docs are out of date, which will happen naturally and probably pretty quickly, you will be providing access to out of date/wrong documentation....and that will hurt the developer directly. Just let them be the source of truth for documentation about the SDK. Honestly, its best for everyone concerned.

Im not a fan of copyright, but this is one case where having an official source of truth is pure good for everyone.

Do you realize that by bringing attention to this, that you're causing people to go find that repo? You're in violation of copyright by making it available, regardless of how many people download/view it. But now, because you're kicking it up on HN, Twitter, and Reddit about it, you're making their case stronger. Just take it down, this is not worth the effort or money.

> I wanted to ask the community what to do.

You should comply and be grateful that we live in a world where you get a warning first before penalties are applied for miscomprehension of laws and of rights in general, not even just copyrights, because not everyone has been historically lucky enough to get a polite warning first.

> In summary, a trademark lawyer is sending me threatening emails

First, that's not threatening, and second, the message specifically discusses copyrights not trademarks.

> No one viewed these except me. Github's traffic stats show 2 viewers total.

That's just not relevant. The phrase you want to investigate here is "making available". Using the phrase in a sentence, one could say something like "I made naked photos of you available to your coworkers, which was incredibly disrespectful of me, even if only illegal on copyright grounds, because you want to be able to control when, where, and to whom those photos are shared, and you only shared them with me on the condition that I wouldn't then go and make them available to other people without your consent, consent which a respectful and respectable individual would get."

> It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening the very developers they're counting on to make them money, so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

I'm going to give you the best and most difficult to follow advice that you will ever receive: You do not get to make that decision for them. You only get to make decisions for yourself.

> Ultimately, I think I'm willing to make a stand over this

What stand are we talking about here? The copyright case seems very clear cut in their favor. In at least the legal sense, you don't have a leg to stand on.

> but ideally I'd like to not be dragged into court over some 3 month old API docs

Good. That's exactly the right feeling.

> What are my options?

Stop illegally infringing their exclusive right to control how documents that they authored are made available to the public? Stop developing for proprietary platforms that wield copyright like this?

> The ideal outcome would be that Magic Leap changes its behavior

True fact: You don't get to decide for someone else how they exercise their legal rights. If you don't agree with copyright, don't support organizations that leverage it. But be prepared to either lose, comply, or not get caught in the first place whenever you break whatever punishable laws are in place wherever you happen to be.

If I understand properly, you're violating an NDA, or an alternative agreement to not copy and publish their docs.

This is the legal enforcement of same. You can, f'instance, not do it. Now that you've made frontpage on a major SV watering hole, you've put things in a bind, where their response to you will now be taken as their general presumed policy.

Unless I'm badly mistaken (IANAL), you're risking being sued in court for this, with varied and sundry penalties. And you're not even being paid by Magic Leap.

Frankly, I suggest shutting down your magic leap work and contributing to an AGPL project, where redistribution is licensed and appropriate.

This appears to simply be a copyright violation based on the demand letter.

Magic Leap have asked you to take down their documentation. How should you handle this?

<b>Bring your legal questions to lawyers, not to random people on the Internet.</b>

@shawn Did Magic Leap ever reach out to you and try asking nicely before, or was this the very first contact?

Very first.

Firstly this is how lawyers communicate. grow up and suck it up.

Secondly you are making something available to others that should not be. you are in the wrong.

thirdly, if they do not actively work towards protecting their copyrights they will lose the right to copyright it. The Law makes them do this.

do as they say, you're the one in the wrong here.

This is asking nicely.

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