5 ms·
so they said "we're gonna talk to some lawyers" and your response is to write a lengthy public blog post without any legal counsel, in which you publish private
by zemo 5y ago
so they said "we're gonna talk to some lawyers" and your response is to write a lengthy public blog post without any legal counsel, in which you publish private correspondence along with the other person's contact info without their consent, and in which you essentially document all of the evidence against you -and- admit you understood your actions? huh. That's probably not how I would have responded.
- anm89 5y agoYes, poor repl.it who's explicitly threatening to use their big bankroll to squash a small developer doing something he is passionate about it. He should just shut up and accept the validity of their effort to silence him.
- zemo 5y agoit feels like you're intentionally missing the point here. If repl.it is acting as if they believe they have legal leverage, why respond by giving them more leverage?
- anm89 5y agoAh now I understand. He should just go get his own highly paid lawyers and dig down for a lengthy legal battle. His own VC guys will foot the bill! Or he could get on the top spot of HN for free and get a massive amount of community support, potentially people who actually will foot his legal bill, for the price of a few hours of writing a blog post.
- stale2002 5y ago> He should just go get his own highly paid lawyers and dig down for a lengthy legal battle. Have you considered that what the person did in this situation was actually illegal? Yes, when you do illegal things, it is difficult to defend them in court. But that doesn't make him in the right. It doesn't even look like he was going to be sued, since he took down the website, and apologized. It was the kid who went public with all of this, in order to get the clicks and likes.
- shkkmo 5y agoHmmm... what laws do you think might have been broken here?
- stale2002 5y agoAny numerous things having to do with copyright/intellectual property, or something related to any of that general category of stuff. The person used to work at that company, and then they built a similar project, that looks really similar to that other product. So something to do with design copyright. You can't just copy someone else's designs, in a similar space, at a company that you used to work for. You probably run afoul of something having to do with intellectual property or design copyright.
- mynameisvlad 5y agoWhat is your exact definition of "design copyright"? And keep in mind, repl.it explicitly does not have any patents (which would be the actual way for protecting an idea or design in the way you're thinking) for anything they have done.
- stale2002 5y agoI am not referencing a specific law. I am talking about intelectual property laws in general. Surely people should be able to see how if you work at a company, and then release a product that copies what that other companies does, and you build something in such a way as it looks very similar to that other product, then there is a pretty big risk of running into intellectual property law or any number of legal issues. This is a broad category of laws, where you could run into numerous issues. That should be pretty clear.
- mynameisvlad 5y agoAnd I'm asking you to specify exactly which laws you think this runs afoul of. You can't just handwave "copyright laws" away. Especially since there are no patents which protect the exact thing you're talking about. There is no such thing as "design copyright" other than actual, specific designs (fashion designs, specific graphics copy) that are copied. Ideas and software architectural designs are covered by patents. Something replit explicitly does not do.
- omega3 5y agoWhat leverage?
- zemo 5y agothat's a much more reasonable question and would be a reasonable response, but OP decided that instead of asking that question, he's rather provoke repl.it. If they had no leverage before, asking what leverage isn't going to increase how much leverage they have. But this? This post seems to me like it's more likely to increase repl.it's leverage against OP than the reverse.
- anm89 5y agoTo be fair, the one massive piece of leverage they have is their bankroll, regardless of the legal validity of their claim. However this just highlights the futility of turning this into a bankrolled lawyer battle.
- vidarh 5y agoThere's next to no additional leverage here, and bad PR is the best leverage you can get if you can't afford expensive lawyers.
- teraflop 5y agoAside from maybe the "admit you understood your actions" part, nothing in this blog post provides any additional ammo that the opposing lawyers' side wouldn't have had already. "Private correspondence" and "contact info" are not (in general) legally protected, and the contents of the email thread and the Github repo would be subject to discovery no matter what.
- Taylor_OD 5y agoYeah I don't exactly agree with your characterization of this actions but I would be very surprised if he doesnt get legal action taken against him for this post.
- juancb 5y agoI agree. This guy shows a consistent streak of poor decision making and lack of situational awareness. His behavior so far reinforces Amjad's claims that he was their most "demanding" intern.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]