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Bye bye BetterSlack

g3rv4.com

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141–150 of 392 posts

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#141

Post by castis »

caffeinewriter wrote: post #58
castis wrote: post #28

While I completely understand your decision to pull it; both their decision to flex their legal arm and your decision to not stand your ground are equally disappointing.

I completely understand the decision to not stand their ground. Going up against Slack means going up against a multi-billion dollar company, and potentially all the legal firepower that entails. Even if every monetary cost were covered, there's still the time and opportunity cost of dealing with legal headaches.

Oh I understand the legal implications of doing so. It is possible to both understand something and be disappointed at the same time.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#142

Post by shopkins »

sbr464 wrote: post #85

Could Slack just defend against people doing this? Similar to how companies defend against Ad Blockers, Password Managers etc? Those also allow you to modify/tamper with elements, hide annoying things etc. Do you join lerna and block everyone now? I could agree with the name change, even if to not stir up a hornet's nest

Much quicker to have the legal team fire off the standard email threat than get the dev team to reverse-engineer the extension and block it (if this wasn't just an automated email).

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#143

Post by stickfigure »

tptacek wrote: post #105
jorjordandan wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a cease and desist for a extension that improved the look of Craigslist. I just ignored it, I've never had to talk to a lawyer or anything. But that's my situation, I understand that other people may feel differently. EFF offered to review my case, but I didn't wind up following up with that either. Might be an option for you.

Craigslist sued another company that extended its listings with their own code and, as I recall, won.

I assume you mean this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist_Inc._v._3Taps_Inc.

It seems unlikely to apply to a Chrome extension:

Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 942 F.Supp.2d 962 (N.D. Cal. 2013) was a Northern District of California Court case in which the court held that sending a cease-and-desist letter and enacting an IP address block is sufficient notice of online trespassing, which a plaintiff can use to claim a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#144

Post by mikeryan »

mattigames wrote: post #117
barbegal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disclaimer would not work. Disclaimers might work where there is a risk that the user will violate the acceptable use policy but this cease and desist letter has effectively said that all users will violate the acceptable use policy therefore the disclaimer would be quickly dismissed by any court of law. As a slightly bad analogy imagine a disclaimer that customers of a fairground ride might experience back pain. I…

False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.

This just starts a death spiral though. Slacks next step is to start detecting the objecting code and banning users from using the web interface that are found using those tools.

There are a bunch of folks doing this already for ad blockers.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#145

Post by miles_matthias »

g3rv4 wrote: post #69
pkaye wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the opposite at my workplace. Mostly the developers use Slack. What do your devs use instead?

We use bonfire, which is the same tool the community at Stack Overflow uses to interact.

Is there a link to bonfire somewhere? You're not talking about Facebook's video call app are you?

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#147

Post by jjeaff »

wstuartcl wrote: post #139
jahewson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. It’s fine to have a disclaimer which says “this will void your warranty”, just look at smartphone jailbreaking. He’s not breaking Slack’s terms of service - his users are. But then the next logical step is to argue that he’s inducing a breach of contract by his users, which seems to be the case.

In any case, it probably is not worth likely legal costs and effort should the other party take legal action. It is one thing to theorize about legal implications, quite another to risk livelihood etc to put it to test. Defending against action takes time and money which amounts to loss in many cases even when you are successful in court.

There is almost zero chance slack would win this case and I doubt they would even try.

Adblockers inject code into sites. So do password keepers. If sites could sue adblockers because it breaks their terms of service, don't you think they would?

You are not bound by the slack terms of service except in the scope of your slack account or an API connection of some type.

Someone else can use my software all day long to break their terms of service, but that doesn't make me liable. I didn't agree to anything.

People need to realize that terms of service are a civil contract. It's not "illegal" to break them. Especially if you didn't agree to the terms.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#148

Post by mattigames »

jahewson wrote: post #126
mattigames wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.

That’s not the case at all. Your “ownership” of the device isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. If you’ve signed an agreement with Slack not to modify their product, then you don’t get to modify their product. Blocking ads is not quite the same thing as modifying a product - but I don’t see any obvious reason why an EULA which forbids ad-blocking wouldn’t be enforceable. Though it would be deeply unpop…

You are not modifying slack (their product), when you request a website all they are sending you its a bunch of characters, including characters inside CSS or JS files, rendering those its up to your machine, you are not legally binded to render those in a specific way, otherwise screen readers would all be completely illegal, all threads of not modifying your local render of a website always end poorly by the people doing such threats, examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2r3uok/we_developed_a...

https://www.quora.com/Is-AdBlock-legal-If-not-specifically-w...

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#149

Post by jjeaff »

jahewson wrote: post #126
mattigames wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, how a website is rendered on a device I own is not enforceable (legally speaking) by a acceptable use policy or any website policy; otherwise people would just use that to deter ad-blockers browsers extensions instead of all the shady tactics commonly used.

That’s not the case at all. Your “ownership” of the device isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. If you’ve signed an agreement with Slack not to modify their product, then you don’t get to modify their product. Blocking ads is not quite the same thing as modifying a product - but I don’t see any obvious reason why an EULA which forbids ad-blocking wouldn’t be enforceable. Though it would be deeply unpop…

They don't sue adblockers because they wouldn't win.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#150

Post by TylerE »

saagarjha wrote: post #47
nsarafa wrote: post #44

One of the nicest cease and desist letters I've ever seen. I think what they're asking in the name change is more than fair, and providing guidence on changing the functionality to comply with their api seems like a good approach. Kuddos to Slack legal for keeping the matter human and civil.

Except, of course, for the fact that sending a cease and desist in this case wasn't particularly nice.

Well, I mean they are under no obligation to send a C&D. They could have gone right to a Trademark suit.
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