Comment by mosselman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mosselman | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

"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 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.

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

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-...

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.

> 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".

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.

> 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.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com