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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Just let them be the source of truth for documentation about the SDK. Honestly, its best for everyone concerned.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Do you have that much money to burn?