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Comment by g3rv4 | Hacker News Reader

this was a bunch of Tampermonkey scripts... but I don't want to ignore their cease and desist. I... just don't do it.

changing the name is not an issue... however, if I have to take it down, that's moot.

"I... just don't do it."

You mean you do not ignore cease and desist orders by principal? Why? There should be at least some criteria by which you judge which ones you can ignore and which you can't? What if they told you to cease and desist programming forever on any project because they state in their terms that once you mess with their UI with JavaScript you are not allowed to program anymore? Ridiculous right? So would you listen? Probably not.

So lets see what they are 'forbidding' you: They don't want you to write code that makes browsers do other things to their site... How is that any of their business?

What if a new browser comes along that renders all of their fonts differently so that they become unreadable, is that any of their business or is it the business of the people who use that browser? I'd say the latter.

I agree that a disclaimer and a change of name should be enough. I'd suggest 'SlackingOff' as a name.

You are free to write any extension that does anything to any website as long as you aren't hurting users' human rights and as long as you aren't hacking them if you ask me. Users can decide whether they want to use your extension perfectly fine on their own.

Also note that you are free to not write any extension as well. It is your life of course :)

Because... I have lots of things to work on, lots of things I want to build, lots of people I want to talk with.

None of them involve talking with a lawyer in a different country over something that's really not that important in my life.

I got a cease and desist for a extension that improved the look of Craigslist. I just ignored it, I've never had to talk to a lawyer or anything. But that's my situation, I understand that other people may feel differently. EFF offered to review my case, but I didn't wind up following up with that either. Might be an option for you.

Craigslist sued another company that extended its listings with their own code and, as I recall, won.

I assume you mean this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc.

It seems unlikely to apply to a Chrome extension:

Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

What would keep it from applying to an extension? It says sufficient, not necessary and sufficient.

For one thing, the extension author is not an active participant and cannot be considered to be trespassing. A user, maybe. But I don't think we'll see Slack banning users anytime soon.

The intent is clear. I don't know the details of those decisions but Blizzard has won cases and stopped people from distributing tools that access their services in ways they don't approve of.

There may be other laws, precedents, and circumstances that are relevant. That doesn't mean that this case is.

I see all of these comments in here telling you that Slack doesn't have a leg to stand on, that you should do your best to stick it to them, that you're in the right, that you should ignore them, etc. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "If I were in this person's shoes, I'd probably distribute it privately to a few people who might want it, and in spite of all the hard work, let the project die in official capacity."

On principle, I want to side with all these other commenters. Fact of the matter is that time is precious. Glad you're doing what you feel is important to you.

Especially since anyone thinking it should continue can just fork and do so.

Once he delete it, everyone will lose their fork if they don't have a local actual independent copy from Github

"Deleting a public repository

When you delete a public repository, one of the existing public forks is chosen to be the new parent repository. All other repositories are forked off of this new parent and subsequent pull requests go to this new parent."

https://help.github.com/articles/what-happens-to-forks-when-...

Especially someone who has no existing contractual, customer, or ToS relationship with Slack.

Maybe let other people continue it? Shame to throw stuff away. Plenty of countries where that cease and desist would go straight to thrash.

Nothing is stopping other people from doing that now.

> different country

If you are in a different country than US I wouldn't worry at all. I would just avoid using the name "Slack".

> You are free to write any extension that does anything to any website as long as you aren't hurting users' human rights and as long as you aren't hacking them if you ask me.

But you're not the person being asked - the courts in g3rv4's jurisdiction and in Slack's are the ones who would be asked, if it came to it. Have you read the relevant law (including case law) about copyright and "cybercrime" in these jurisdictions and concluded that, in fact, Slack does not have the power to restrict this? Have you read the Slack user agreement and concluded that the provisions in that user agreement are unenforceable?

> Have you read the relevant law (including case law) about copyright and "cybercrime" in these jurisdictions and concluded that, in fact, Slack does not have the power to restrict this? Have you read the Slack user agreement and concluded that the provisions in that user agreement are unenforceable?

Is this your first week on the Internet? Of course he hasn't read any of those things! We're all arm chair lawyers here with our own personal, grumpy views about what shape society should be.

(I'm agreeing with you.)

It's our right as developers to modify and upgrade the tools we use. It's important to ensure that this remains true both today and in the future.

I wanted to give you a moral boost, in case you were looking for a reason to take a stand. But if you don't want to, that's entirely valid.

Ok Stallman, now back to reality where people do own software, they do have legal restrictions on its use, and it's not a human right to circumvent it.

Yeah and I also own the machine that's rendering the HTML and executing the Javascript. Nobody has any legal right to prevent me modifying my browser and changing how it interprets said javascript.

They do when you want to redistribute it with their name, which is the whole point of this discussion.

The heart of their complaint was not the name. It was the fact that the extension injects code into their site.

So, even more nefarious, and in violation of their terms?

That’s what we’re arguing. Slack should not be able to restrict me from modifying the experience on my hardware.

JavaScript runs on the client genius, not the server. You're not changing their product, your modifying how it is run on your personal machine.

Those terms bind Slack users. This problem goes away if the maintainer doesn't use Slack and has never used Slack. It wouldn't be efficient, but it'd be possible.

If you are using IE to browsing slack, and IE couldn't correctly render it. It is illegal?

> the extension injects code into their site.

But it doesn't inject code into their site, right? The HTTP request is made to the server all the same, nothing modified via the browser, it's all code additive/correction in the extension?

I'm not sure I'd say it injects code in to 'their site', as slacks site never sees the code.

It injects code into the dom model of the users browser.

No, there are two points raised by the cease-and-desist: one was not to modify the experience, and the other was to change the name. These are two independent issues.

@g3rv4, I understand it really sucks and feels terrible. But I also understand their reaction.

Don't be surprised about legal writing. He/She as a legal person is responsible for writing in a very clear and explicit way since any misunderstanding might cost the reader or themselves in the future. It just shows their accountability. You don't want a misunderstanding cost you trouble.

I have colleagues working in the legal department. They understand you, but they still have to make sure there is no misunderstanding there.

They are serving enterprise companies, Anything goes wrong can destroy their business. It makes sense for them not to risk anything.

Companies are paying them for the security. Otherwise, there are cheaper alternatives to Slack with somewhat similar features.

Slack could allow custom clients. But I'm pretty sure all major customers will require their employees not to use un-official clients for security reasons.

I get it... but literally, there are THOUSAND extensions already injecting javascript on their site.

are they going after all of them? if that's the case, I'd understand.

> But I also understand their reaction.

And I don't. I mean, charitably this could be attributed to some non-tech person noticing the extension and sending/asking legal to send a C&D because they didn't like it. That's the only thing I can think of, because the alternative is plain malice. This is a client-side modification, the main part of their letter is just absurd, and the justification is nonsense.

> Don't be surprised about legal writing. He/She as a legal person is responsible for writing in a very clear and explicit way since any misunderstanding might cost the reader or themselves in the future.

Ok, then he/she can be called out since we are on the front page of HN and there is a lot of noise and harm done. I honestly can’t see a single reason why slack legal department, probably worth millions per year, in a company worth several billions, can write such things just to kill a free chrome extension built by a single person for non profit reasons. I never used slack but from now on I will actively advice against using it. When you arrive at the point that you can’t even modify your browser to see whatever you like I think that we are almost at the brink of total destruction/anarchy/“choose your not so preferred destination”. Disclosure for slack layers: I never used your product, so I never agreed to your TOS and I would never use it hopefully. I am not associated in any way with any of your competitors. I sadly have to admit that sometimes I play with JSFiddle in my browser just for fun. If you want to sue me please go on, there is not much difference compared to what you are suing g3rv4 for.

But they are risking something. As a Slack user, I find the temerity of this extremely annoying. I imagine that I'm not the only one.

If those enterprise customers are worried, they're free to lock down browser extensions on their employees' systems if they want. If they're worried about this, they should be just as worried about extensions acting on webmail, internal sites, etc.

And by writing that way they likely underweight the PR risk to their business. It's their choice, but it sure as hell just turned me off.

> Companies are paying them for the security. Otherwise, there are cheaper alternatives to Slack with somewhat similar features.

> Slack could allow custom clients. But I'm pretty sure all major customers will require their employees not to use un-official clients for security reasons.

Is security really a client side thing? Obviously I understand stuff like key logging and such in a malicious client, but how would somebody using a custom client affect another user's security with an official client? I mean if it would, wouldn't that be a horrible situation anyway from security point of view?

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