Comment by ranger_danger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ranger_danger | Hacker News Reader

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Getting legal advice can absolutely take a long time, and the first thing they'll probably tell most people in this situation is "turn it off for now until we can do more research and collect money from you."

However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.

If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D. And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.

> Anyone can send an request.

As for emails, I think BIMI has solved this for some time now, at least for large companies.

> Getting legal advice can absolutely take a long time, and the first thing they'll probably tell most people in this situation is "turn it off for now until we can do more research and collect money from you."

Normally I would agree, but Nitter has been an adversarial integration from the start. I would expect them to have anticipated this attack.

> However, C&D's don't really carry any legal weight in the US to my knowledge... but I don't see any harm in complying ahead of time just to be safe. The only "damage" I can see is just by nature of the service being down temporarily.

Which is significant damage. By complying too eagerly you give those notices power that they would not otherwise have.

> If there is even a possibility that a court may find the service violating a law, I think the legal advisor would likely say to just leave the service down unless you have many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to fight it... you can most likely avoid the entire lawsuit altogether just by complying with the C&D.

If you're of that mindset why create Nitter in the first place. And they are pretty much guaranteed public (including financial support) for any lawsuit if they ask for it since Nitter is something a lot of people want to exist.

> And this kind of suit is one that can easily ruin your company or even personal life... so avoiding it seems smart.

It's ultimately not that smart when you're in the "business" of creating Nitter because it just tells the bullies that all that's needed is a nicely formatted letter and you'll fold.

"only damage". That's the damage. Five 9s is a thing, because being down means you lose market, your brand is harmed, and no one wants to use you. No one complies with 'cease and desist' orders before seeing if there's any meat at all. No one.

And the legal system "gets that". Reasonable compliance isn't "Oh, someone sent me a C&D. I should destroy my entire business on the off change it makes sense to do so. I'll just raze everything to the ground, hoping that it's better than just... having everything razed to the ground through a suit."

Just.. no. The legal system knows that due diligence is not simply complying, but instead taking time to validate the claim, see if it makes sense, and so on. After all, if the matter were truly urgent, an injunction could easily be obtained.

I don't think anyone was making money on nitter instances anyway, I don't see much in the way of any "brand" or business to lose... and lose to who? Not like there's a competitor. This is just a side project not worth playing games with IMO.

I wouldn't consider temporarily disabling a side project "razing the project to the ground" either.

> no one wants to use you

How do you know this was ever a project goal? Most FOSS projects I talk to have no interest in actively trying to gain more users on purpose.

I was having a generic conversation about the risks to continue service, when handed a C&D, prior to reasonable assessment time. And my point was? There is none.

This helps to give optics into what to do, when served a plate of absurdity.

And if this C&D is caved to, then so will future ones, and Nitter won't have any use anyhow.

Most of the C&D cases I've heard about on HN, have been against small open source projects that absolutely don't have the legal resources to fight it, and I'm sure the ones sending that letter know it. I suspect that companies are much more likely to send a C&D to an individual or small community than to a company with a legal team.

Everyone has the resources to fight a C&D since all it takes is a middle finger. Now if they actually have a case against you then sure its harder, but that case , if it exists, existed before they ever sent you a C&D. If you are scared about X being mad at you then the sensible thing to do is to not create something that pisses them off in the first place.

> And if this C&D is caved to, then so will future ones, and Nitter won't have any use anyhow.

I don't agree with any of that but ok. It's not like they can stop instances in other countries they have no jurisdiction over, so I don't think its "use" will suddenly vanish.

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