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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

> Personally, I'd rather see a more aggressive AGPL where REST calls are considered linking and trigger virality

That would be a horrible precedent. Sending an http request to a server should not trigger copyright violation. This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

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The issue should be whether there is a linking and not the nature of the linking. I mean if "over HTTP" was a get-out-of-jail card then you just need a C-ABI => JSON standard, and then you can link any library you want and only the server-linker needs to be opensourced (and probably would be as BSD).

I believe this is why the GPL uses the term "derivative".

> This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

Making links to their site might violate the license by which they allow you to browse their site, but it doesn't break copyright. If the on their homepage had a pop-up "You must agree not to not share any links found on this site as a condition of using this site" that would be analogous.

> This is similar to newspapers who claimed that having links to their site, violates copyright.

No newspaper has claimed that ever to the best of my knowledge, and it would make absolutely no sense to. What's being criticized is so-called "rich linking", ie. previewing content such as Wikipedia articles from search engines or news articles from aggregators without taking viewers to the primary source/site. People having a radical anti-copyright agenda have conveniently named this "rich linking" to dilute the discussion, as have news aggregators to downplay the issue.

As an aside, the way the EU copyright reform is being formulated into national law in Germany has been criticized as outright contrary to the whole purpose of the reform, and coming straight from pro-Google lobbyists [1].

[1]: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/eu-urheberrechtsrefor... (in German)

it’s not copyright violation. it’s a license violation. they are completely different.

Copyright law is the basis for the legal enforcement of software licenses. License violations usually get pursued under copyright law

that’s fair, but my point is that the analogy of linking to a newspaper article content doesn’t really apply to this. it’s apples:oranges.

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