Yeah, I followed that story pretty closely, including talking to a lot of the authors who were in that publication. It was all very suspect in that it seemed li

Yeah, I followed that story pretty closely, including talking to a lot of the authors who were in that publication. It was all very suspect in that it seemed like FCC was trying to create controversy to obscure their own bad, probably illegal, act. For one, the pressure was just that Medium went from not having a business model to choosing subscriptions as their business model and that had a lot of ripple effects in terms of incentives. I guess that creates "pressure" but it's hard to fault a company for having a business if the alternative is going out of business. Anyone saying this is a vanity project for Medium's CEO and thus doesn't need to be a business is way off base. He made his money in publishing platforms (Blogger, Twitter) and Medium is just more of the same. But what that subscription pivot led to was some publications feeling like they should leave. Only problem is that they don't have a license to any of the articles in their publications. So leaving, legally speaking, would mean starting with zero traffic. I'm 99.5% certain that what is called here "threatening us with a lawyer" was simply explaining the Medium Terms of Service which leave the copyright with the authors and ask for minimal license for use throughout the Medium network. It's definitely not the case that publications gain any right to license an author's work more broadly. That didn't stop FCC though. They copied thousands of author's work and moved it to a new site. Medium had no standing though--they don't own the copyright and so can't enforce it. And so that left a lot of authors in a weird position where they needed to decide whether it was worth figuring out their rights and fighting for it or what. I'm sure some were fine with the move, but I also talked to many that were upset. In any case, it definitely wasn't legal on FCCs part.