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Comment by shawn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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