Hacker News Reader

Comment by drchiu | Hacker News Reader

To the OP, I feel for you.

Your app made someone over at the IT dept feel inadequate. Remember, some older IT person is trying to protect their job, no matter how crappy they're doing it. Your app, as you had mentioned, was much better than the one that they made.

This, unfortunately, is the way the world is. Think about patent trolls, incumbents suing start ups that threaten to shake up the industry, etc.

The way they all sat you down (quite literally like going to the principal's office) was simply bullying.

Keep your chin up and look beyond this. This app is not the fight worth expending energy fighting for.

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I don't know where you live, but here in the US, you violated no copyright laws (or any laws or ethical clauses for the matter) by simply providing access to pre-existing works, ie. the schools website data.

If the school's website is publicly accessibly, as-in anyone can find it online, then it's public information and you can use it at your will so long as you state where the information came from (ie. not your original writing, etc).

if you are in the US, check your schools student handbook/policies... closely... if you found there is nothing restricting you, I would argue to pursue your app (and be prepared for pushback from the school).

I feel it's not as cut and dry as you are trying to make it seem. Imagine if this were a 3rd party Facebook client that stripped out the ads, I bet Facebook would sue you. Just last year there was the legal battle between Padmapper and Craigslist. The case got thrown out [0] but only after Padmapper did some sneaky stuff so that it wasn't scraping craigslist directly. Also because craigslist didn't own full copyrights to the listings because they were user generated.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/craigslist-3taps-lawsuit-de...

The OP didn't build the app to subvert the school's revenue model. That's the difference.

but it is most certainly subverting the school's technical partner's revenue model.

I don't think I need to state this is irrelevant.

If the school's technical partner was threatened by this app, they could bring suit... not the school.

really? you honestly don't see how a school allowing their students to sell their technical partner's (not public[1]) content is relevant?

[1]: pre-emptive reply: no, it's not public, half the article is talking about how he's circumventing their authentication system. this is NOTHING like a news aggregator.

> allowing their students to sell their technical partner's content

He isn't selling their technical partner's content. He is selling the reader, the content is already freely available to whoever can use the app anyway via a browser and their login credentials. There is a big difference.

i don't think there is a big difference. without their content[1], his app is nothing; the web browser is still a web browser.

[1]: it's irrelevant whether the school or the partner owned it, he did it without permission (and i highly doubt the reader has the license to do whatever they wanted with that data either).

You must be reading a different article. The OP does not circumvent authentication in any way. The OP caches it... that's it. And, that was only for some of the data, not the entire app.

So yes, his app is mostly like a news aggregator.

since we've established the data is not public, and is in fact restricted and controlled, how is it anything "mostly like" hacker news? hacker news does not store your NYtimes username and password, scrape the NYTimes site for an auth token, make a login request on your behalf to copy that article and display it, in full text stripping out the NYTimes attribution and branding, on hacker news.

what would happen if they did is a thought experiment i'll leave up to you.

You should probably get acquainted with the details around copyright and fair use before telling someone what laws they didn't break in their country or another's.

This same story has played out at various levels and it gets repeatedly delivered to this audience through the prism of a "victim." Virtual pitchforks get raised, etc.

The talented young programmer makes some assumptions and, benefit of the doubt, "naive" mistakes in standing on the shoulders of others. Then, he cries about how his massive effort is wasted and the powers that be have dashed the dreams of someone obviously superior in skill and/or intellect to "the man."

And again... the victim pretty obviously ran afoul of cultural norms, if not fairly well-known ethical and legal lines. In this case, even the narrator tells you that the adults are merely using this a teachable moment. He would get sued and lose. He also decided he couldn't wait for approval... just had to go run out and assume things - things which would mean everything was in his favor. Until it wasn't.

That data wasn't his. He turned "free" data into a paid app. He forced the hand of the school to shut him down. He still hasn't learned one of the most important lessons for devs... Don't build exclusively on top of a single platform that is out of your control and/or has no incentive to support you.

I would have broken his parser a couple times before dropping the copyright argument on him. More teachable moments were available.

I'm sorry but I strongly believe you are incorrect.

I could make a paid HN aggregator... legally. So long as I provided proper attribution.

The OP provided attribution. The OP never claimed the data was his. The entire purpose was to aggregate the schools data into an easily accessible format for students.

Cultural norms or not, the OP violated no laws. It's pretty plain and simple.

Yes, the school could play games and break this parser if they decided. Worse has been done before. It would be a teachable moment... but not for the reasons you seem to be concluding.

You can believe to any degree you like, but there would be no concern about "fair use" in the copyright law lexicon if it only took "proper attribution" to re-purpose others' content for commercial or non-commercial use. The content of the school's site is quite likely copyrighted and they can control the form and location of copies of their content/data.

Try this... Play an artist's song, in its entirety, on a radio station. Tell the audience where that song came from. Play another song... attribute. Never pay ASCAP license fees... see how long you are on the air.

Or... copy/paste the entirety of a newly released book to your tumblr. Attribute accordingly. No worries, right?

The original creator has copyright. They license or transfer it, frequently contractually, to publishers who control the rights to how copies of the material may be created and distributed.

There are fair uses for portions and/or derivatives of content, but this use would not fall into those categories. Let's not forget that the kid sought and was denied permission for his app. He just assumed that silence in his time window implied permission. That's not nearly long enough for copyright to expire.

Also, they could feasibly be dicks and say that his viewstate parser was a copyright circumvention technique putting him in the crosshairs of DMCA 1201 - Circumvension of Copyright Measures.

So, you are plainly and simply rejecting a lot of readily available information on well-understood restrictions around copying other peoples' content.

Maybe you are confused with Creative Commons licensing or something?

We may be arguing apples and oranges here.

The OP did not subvert anyone's revenue model.

Simply aggregating data is not violating any copyright laws nor protections. If so... most news sites would be in serious trouble. The OP was simply aggregating data into an easily accessible format for students.

The original creator retains copyright, but they can't prevent someone from linking to nor providing access to publicly accessibly information. If they truly want nobody to have access in this manor, they would have to block public access or restrict it in some form.

To use your book example. If the copyright holder of a new book posted the text in full on their website with no restrictions or payment necessary, and I reposted that text, provided attribution and a method to access the original content, then I would not be in violation of any law.

>The OP did not subvert anyone's revenue model.

Irrelevant. Saying "you weren't making money off of it so I decided to copy it and do so", isn't a valid argument.

>Simply aggregating data is not violating any copyright laws nor protections.

Yes it is. No high-traffic news site does this. Maybe you are confusing this with news sites that pay for the AP feed and the right to do so?

>To use your book example. If the copyright holder of a new book posted the text in full on their website with no restrictions or payment necessary, and I reposted that text, provided attribution and a method to access the original content, then I would not be in violation of any law.

Nope, you are still violating the copyright unless they explicitly give permission to repost it. You are conflating someone deciding to charge for something and someone keeping the right to prevent redistribution. They are very different things.

A copyright is automatic in the US. You have to explicitly license content with something like the creative commons license before people can safely copy things and repost them.

We may be arguing facts and opinions.

It has nothing to due with revenue. Note my non-commercial language above.

If you write something and present it anywhere that copyright is implied or described, you, as the content creator, maintain control of your work. If someone scrapes it and re-presents it, even with proper attribution and you have not provided an explicit license, you can still require the third party to remove, revoke, forfeit, and/or destroy the copy of your content.

Posting their book, in full, online would not relinquish the author's copyright. They have to pretty explicitly grant license for other uses. See Creative Commons licenses. Those are pretty loose and they only require attribution.

And what's with all this method of access stuff now? I thought it was JUST proper attribution. Now you need to provide a method of access too? You're making this worse.

He is charging for the app, of course he is violating copyright laws.

So if you view the site in a web browser that you pay for, the developer of the web browser is infringing the website's copyright?

This app is just an HTTP user agent, as far as I can tell.

How exactly? I fail to see that.

Thanks for throwing the ageism in there. It's cool to judge people like that.

I cannot comprehend how, psychologically, sitting down and recreating a principle-like conference is bullying. Is it because there are multiple powerful people shaming you? A form of gas-lighting?

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