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Comment by saaaaaam | Hacker News Reader

Unless you’ve got permission to commercially exploit other people’s copyright material, this isn’t going to fund your education - it’s going to get you sued.

Copyright violation has a statutory penalty starting at $750 per violation so you’re immediately looking at $1m+ in liability.

Wilful violation - which this would likely fall under - is $150,000 per violation. Congrats! That’s nearly a quarter billion dollar liability.

If you’ve actually cleared the licensing on these then congrats! You probably don’t need the education you’re trying to fund.

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Thanks for sharing your concerns.

We do not own the rights, however, all these decks are open sourced by the companies that own them. They have made these decks available for free to use.

If any company objects, we would be happy to remove their deck. Our intention is to make it easy for entrepreneurs to browse these decks at one stop.

What kind of "open source" are these --- the "GPL" kind, the "non-commercial" kind, or the "do whatever you want with it" kind?

Hi RyEgswuCsn,

I think these resources are not exactly open source, these are more like freely shared resources, as we are students, we didn't knew enough about legal stuff, so we have decided to consult a lawyer, and we will act on this, and make sure we do not break any rules.

Until then, we would really appreciate if you can upvote and share about us with early stage entrepreneurs who can benefit from FundingFyre.

We really appreciate your advice, thanks a lot.

My suggestion: don't wait for lawyer'ing up. Take the hosted content down right now before it's too late. I know you folks must have put in a lot of effort, but it's nothing compared to what legal stuff can get you into.

For alternative revenue options, check my other comment starting with "Here are 3 alternative ideas that you can work on to make some money"

TBH I think you are mistaken if you think they are here to heed the legal warnings.

It might be just me, but it would appear they are banking on 1) no individual start-up is going to bother to sue them over a slide deck because it's expensive, and 2) those who do notice the infringements would recognise that suing a group of debt-laden students/graduates won't amount to anything (hence the emphasis on "doing this to fund education" aspect).

> We do not own the rights

!!!

> they have made these decks available for free to use.

Free to use, but have they made them available for you to charge for?? Given that you're college students, I'd imagine they allow you to use under the "education and non-commercial" use.

I am Not A Lawyer...but y'all need a lawyer asap.

Hi Valbaca, thanks for the comment, we are operating under the assumption that freely shared resources can be shared further, and we are only charging for the platform and the features we are providing like filtering, accessibility, ui and real time availability and updates, plus we will be adding more resources and features, that's what for which we are charging a fee.

But we will carefully think and act on this by consulting our lawyer. We really appreciate your comment. Thanks.

> we are operating under the assumption that freely shared resources can be shared further

Disabuse yourself of this and contact your lawyer ASAP. There is a non-zero chance that the audience of this site shares members with employees and owners of the startups from whom you’ve repurposed these materials.

A cease-and-desist is among the milder responses you can expect, and in the event you are sued you will be compelled to provide a legal response which will mean hiring a litigator.

If you truly are students struggling to pay for your education this an extravagance that your alleged financial situation does not have the means to support.

Hi fleetwoodsnack,

Thanks for your advice, you are correct as that financial situation could be a huge problem for us.

We are getting in touch with our family legal advisor and based on their response we will take necessary action.

Again, thanks for your advice, appreciate it

"Open source" does not mean that you can reuse the deck for commercial purposes. A lack of an explicit license means that you cannot assume you have any specific permission to use the content, especially for commercial purposes.

Just because they are published does not mean that you can host them, potentially modify them, and sell access. That's like the same thing as scraping Medium.com and re-selling access to all of their articles on your own site.

Hi Philip1209,

Thanks for your response, we are considering your response and of others who have pointed this out, we are in process of legal consultation and we will act accordingly. Thanks for your response, really appreciate it.

Not sure what you mean by “open sourced” here.

Just because they have made them available that does not mean that you can sell them.

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