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Inline content modification is one where I suspect the legal territory might be murky, however not propagating replies is almost certainly legal. While posting
by ig1 16y ago
Inline content modification is one where I suspect the legal territory might be murky, however not propagating replies is almost certainly legal.
While posting on usenet gives an implicit licence to allow servers to to copy the message, there's no explicit or implicit legal requirement for an individual Usenet server to propagate replies. Indeed even historically there have been many usenet servers that were one way only due to the nature of peering arrangements.
- Silhouette 16y ago> however not propagating replies is almost certainly legal. On Usenet, possibly, but it is probably reasonable to assume that someone posting to Usenet knows that it is a distributed system and not all servers copy all messages, and therefore that by posting anyway any implicit permission to copy their material takes this into account. On HN, however, a post is always accompanied by its replies. If someone posts something, and then posts a follow-up, they expect that anyone reading one comment can also see the other. Given that the entire legal basis for reproducing any comment from HN is built on implied consent, taking a snapshot that breaks that connection seems like fairly dangerous ground to walk on.