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You may be right here, going forwards I am going to provide more commentary on my posts. But if you ignore the technical legal points, am I really harming anyo

by js7745 9y ago

You may be right here, going forwards I am going to provide more commentary on my posts. But if you ignore the technical legal points, am I really harming anyone by posting 75% of Paul Graham's essay on medium. It's definitely providing value to all of the people on Medium who wouldn't come across it normally, and Paul Graham isn't losing any valuable traffic or sales from this. So really what's the harm? Just because precedents have been set in cases involving much more monetary risk doesn't mean that what I'm doing is harming anyone. In my opinion, it's helping.

toss1 9y ago
That's exactly the same BS argument as "just give me your product for free and you'll get tons of publicity". Only works if the person proposing it is actually world-famous. Otherwise, it's just scamming. (Not even addressing the copyright infringement issues here.) You are freeloading on PG's insight and fame, trying to increase yours at his expense. Even if the expense is relatively trivial, it's no less true. If it were actually OK, you would have already asked PG if it was ok for you to hack up his articles and re-publish them under your name. Come to think of it, why don't you ask him directly, and see if he thinks it's ok, or what conditions he'd put on it? Let us know how that conversation goes.
hashkb 9y ago
It's not about your opinion. Of course you think what you're doing is ok, everyone does. Fortunately we have a general consensus (and laws) that say what you did was wrong. Own it.
singhrac 9y ago
To address your point ("So what's really the harm here"), there's a lot of reasons copyright law exists, including: 1. By using his work without permission, you risk misrepresenting his message. For example, you might accidentally remove a key passage or quote or citation. After all, you say "Below are (in our opinion) the essential excerpts" - I have a feeling he wouldn't agree. 2. He almost certainly prefers to have his work consolidated in a single place (he has a distinctive style), for any number of reasons (branding, analytics, ability to remove and/or edit, etc.) 3. At the end of the day, it's his property. I think it's easy to think "these laws don't really make sense here, because of [foo] reason", but it's nonsensical to do so without asking for pg's permission. You risk looking like you knew that he wouldn't be ok with it. If you really intended to help him, just ask.
mcherm 9y ago
> if you ignore the technical legal points, am I really harming anyone > In my opinion, it's helping. Have you talked this over with Paul Graham (the copyright holder)? Because if you have, and he agreed that it was fine for you to post this to Medium then you are NOT violating copyright law. On the other hand, if you DIDN'T ask him, then YOU are assuming for yourself the right to decide whether this is or isn't "harming anyone" without asking Paul. Perhaps he is in the middle of negotiations with an advertiser for his site who knows that it has valuable old essays that can't be found on places like Medium. Or perhaps Paul counts on old essays to help establish his reputation, even though he doesn't directly make money from them. These are unlikely, but my point is that YOU DON'T KNOW. This isn't a case of "ignoring the technical legal points", it is a case of "directly violating the law"! And for good reason -- I may quibble with the length of copyright, but I strongly believe that the basic rights granted by copyright are mostly correct in this situation. I think it SHOULD be up to the author to decide where to publish it and where not to. Good news though. Even if you DIDN'T get Paul's permission before publishing, copyright law is flexible enough that you may STILL be OK. Specifically, it is not a crime to violate copyright, so you can't be sent to jail over this and you can't be prosecuted by some overzealous District Attorney. Instead, Paul (the copyright holder) has the right to sue you. If he's feeling nice (which he probably is) then he won't. But stop just copying people's stuff. It's not OK, both legally AND (in my opinion) morally.
deleted 9y ago
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brudgers 9y ago
The first comment in this thread, read like "I made a mistake, sorry." I took it at face value. This comment makes me think that might have been a mistake because it misses the point that copying articles from one source onto another source and then submitting to Hacker News, is not consistent with the community norms of Hacker News [1]. The earlier submission makes Hacker News worse because it is low quality. That is the relevant harm here. It is why the community flagged the earlier submission. If that isn't compelling, maybe the high number of the comments here that are unrelated to Graham's essay (like this one) might be. [1]: It is also inconsistent with the guidelines which favor original sources.
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fapjacks 9y ago
What the fuck are you doing? You cannot possibly not know that what you're doing is theft, and feigning ignorance makes what you're doing even more insidious.
amch 9y ago
What's the harm? You're ripping off other people's content to advertise your "Founder Playbook" app. Do you really not see the issue here?
deleted 9y ago
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by js7745 9y ago

toss1 9y ago

That's exactly the same BS argument as "just give me your product for free and you'll get tons of publicity". Only works if the person proposing it is actually world-famous. Otherwise, it's just scamming. (Not even addressing the copyright infringement issues here.) You are freeloading on PG's insight and fame, trying to increase yours at his expense. Even if the expense is relatively trivial, it's no less true. If it were actually OK, you would have already asked PG if it was ok for you to hack up his articles and re-publish them under your name. Come to think of it, why don't you ask him directly, and see if he thinks it's ok, or what conditions he'd put on it? Let us know how that conversation goes.

hashkb 9y ago

It's not about your opinion. Of course you think what you're doing is ok, everyone does. Fortunately we have a general consensus (and laws) that say what you did was wrong. Own it.

singhrac 9y ago

To address your point ("So what's really the harm here"), there's a lot of reasons copyright law exists, including: 1. By using his work without permission, you risk misrepresenting his message. For example, you might accidentally remove a key passage or quote or citation. After all, you say "Below are (in our opinion) the essential excerpts" - I have a feeling he wouldn't agree. 2. He almost certainly prefers to have his work consolidated in a single place (he has a distinctive style), for any number of reasons (branding, analytics, ability to remove and/or edit, etc.) 3. At the end of the day, it's his property. I think it's easy to think "these laws don't really make sense here, because of [foo] reason", but it's nonsensical to do so without asking for pg's permission. You risk looking like you knew that he wouldn't be ok with it. If you really intended to help him, just ask.

mcherm 9y ago

> if you ignore the technical legal points, am I really harming anyone > In my opinion, it's helping. Have you talked this over with Paul Graham (the copyright holder)? Because if you have, and he agreed that it was fine for you to post this to Medium then you are NOT violating copyright law. On the other hand, if you DIDN'T ask him, then YOU are assuming for yourself the right to decide whether this is or isn't "harming anyone" without asking Paul. Perhaps he is in the middle of negotiations with an advertiser for his site who knows that it has valuable old essays that can't be found on places like Medium. Or perhaps Paul counts on old essays to help establish his reputation, even though he doesn't directly make money from them. These are unlikely, but my point is that YOU DON'T KNOW. This isn't a case of "ignoring the technical legal points", it is a case of "directly violating the law"! And for good reason -- I may quibble with the length of copyright, but I strongly believe that the basic rights granted by copyright are mostly correct in this situation. I think it SHOULD be up to the author to decide where to publish it and where not to. Good news though. Even if you DIDN'T get Paul's permission before publishing, copyright law is flexible enough that you may STILL be OK. Specifically, it is not a crime to violate copyright, so you can't be sent to jail over this and you can't be prosecuted by some overzealous District Attorney. Instead, Paul (the copyright holder) has the right to sue you. If he's feeling nice (which he probably is) then he won't. But stop just copying people's stuff. It's not OK, both legally AND (in my opinion) morally.

deleted 9y ago

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brudgers 9y ago

The first comment in this thread, read like "I made a mistake, sorry." I took it at face value. This comment makes me think that might have been a mistake because it misses the point that copying articles from one source onto another source and then submitting to Hacker News, is not consistent with the community norms of Hacker News [1]. The earlier submission makes Hacker News worse because it is low quality. That is the relevant harm here. It is why the community flagged the earlier submission. If that isn't compelling, maybe the high number of the comments here that are unrelated to Graham's essay (like this one) might be. [1]: It is also inconsistent with the guidelines which favor original sources.

deleted 9y ago
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fapjacks 9y ago

What the fuck are you doing? You cannot possibly not know that what you're doing is theft, and feigning ignorance makes what you're doing even more insidious.

amch 9y ago

What's the harm? You're ripping off other people's content to advertise your "Founder Playbook" app. Do you really not see the issue here?

deleted 9y ago

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