Hacker News Reader

Very interesting point - I'm not sure how best to judge what is exploitative and what isn't. I guess it becomes exploitative if it serious subverts in some way the business model of the original data/service provider.

But then I'm not sure still...maybe that is okay if consumers massively benefit from the reverse engineering, and thus overall utility is increased...! What do you think?

View on HN

Yeah, I'm not sure myself.

Generally, though, I think the situation has interesting parallels to piracy. Companies have many options on how to respond to unofficial use:

- cracking down on unofficial users == chasing down pirates

- attempting to control unofficial use (probably at the cost of normal usability) == DRM

- embracing unofficial users == the "piracy as free marketing" view

- viewing unofficial users as a sign of a specific weakness in the product == the "piracy as a service problem" view

I suppose that would make the original reverse engineer similar to someone who cracks a game's DRM?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com