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Comment by sonicggg | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised they did not have a plan for this. I thought Vanced would be based in a more "rebel" country like Russia, which is what Sci-Hub does. A Cease and Desist letter from Google would be meaningless there. Were they trying to pull this off in the USA, or other Western countries?

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In the end, it's not like the devs made any money off of this. If they weren't already in a Russia-like country, then it's not exactly reasonable to relocate for your side project you offer for free.

They apparently minted Vanced NFTs, so making money off of Vanced, or at least the brand, was in the pipeline. Probably part of their downfall, too.

Same with the Discord music bots, all of them streamed audio from Youtube, but also had paid subscriptions for extra features.

The number of people willing to put many months work into a project like this, with substantial legal risk, and no possibility of getting paid money, is very small.

And of that small set of people, the number who already live in Russia is even lower...

Is it necessary to actually live in Russia, though? If I ever managed a project like Vanced, or any other initiative that might trip a big company such as Google, I would definitely seek hosting on a country like Russia or similar, even though I am not there. That, and trying to run everything anonymously, not with my Github username.

I'm curious, where exactly are the Cease and Desist letters delivered, when they get sent? To whatever contact email appears in the project's website, if any?

If you don't go through the hassles of anonymously signing up with the hoster in Russia, and also paying them anonymously, then there isn't much point in this. As soon as the server can be traced back to you (in a way that convinces the court) you're toast.

You reminded me of SciHub. What is the prospect of being able to avail it in the future, given the current situation in Russia?

I thought it was run by someone in Kazakhstan, so it's not wholly dependent on Russia.

The website itself used to be hosted in St. Petersburg, Russia at least. Not sure if that's the case anymore though.

An American Court even found Sci-Hub guilty, in a lawsuit brought up by Elsevier. But nobody could enforce it, so it was just pointless in the end.

Russia would not have been ideal just based on current events though...

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