I agree that it would be nice to have a concrete statement about the copyright status of content we post, but this isn't a large step from what's fairly well-known to have already been done.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1721105
(a) I've checked everywhere I can find on the site, including the sign-up, and the copyright status of posts seems very clear: it remains with the poster, and no-one else (including HN/pg) has the right to authorise redistribution elsewhere.
(b) This behaviour was only "fairly well-known to have already been done" if you happened to see that discussion a few weeks ago, and in any case wouldn't apply retrospectively to earlier posts.
(c) This isn't really about the legal status anyway. Assuming this is all based in the US, anyone who wanted to register their content with the US Copyright Office and then record evidence of redistribution by this service and anyone else hosting the torrents could theoretically hit each party with a $150,000 lawsuit for each post they copied, with bonus points awarded because they've even uploaded it to every copyright lawyer's favourite service, The Pirate Bay. Of course, that seems rather unlikely. It just seems really disrespectful to me to take content that many people have volunteered their time to contribute to HN and share/reproduce that content elsewhere without permission.
You didn't find anything mentioning it, correct? I'm ignorant of the law here, could someone who isn't please clarify what sort of implicit granting of rights takes place when we submit content to a website? This seems to be the crux of the issue. Clearly we're permitting it to be made available here even though that's not explicitly stated.
(b) This behaviour was only "fairly well-known to have already been done" if you happened to see that discussion a few weeks ago, and in any case wouldn't apply retrospectively to earlier posts.
SearchYC is fairly well-known and it has restributed HN content for a few years. Perhaps less well-known: it has also had them available in JSON for most of that time.
(c) This isn't really about the legal status anyway. Assuming this is all based in the US, anyone who wanted to register their content with the US Copyright Office and then record evidence of redistribution...
I don't think I understand what you're saying here. How is that not about the legal status?
The problem with this area is precisely that it is not clear, so clarifying it is hard. :-) But the basic rule would be that the benefit of the doubt is going to go with the copyright holder, and anyone who wants to make a copy without explicit consent would have to defend their position.
> I don't think I understand what you're saying here. How is that not about the legal status?
My own concern is not really about the legal status. It's about whether it is respectful to the community to reuse their contributions wholesale in this way.
Obviously if anyone wanted to take more serious action, their case would be entirely about the legal status, but from what I've seen, that status probably isn't in much doubt anyway.