Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bye bye BetterSlack

g3rv4.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 392 posts

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#151

Post by jjeaff »

kodablah wrote: post #95
whoisjuan wrote: post #27

I think you can safely ignore this cease and desist. Just change the name and add a disclaimer so your users know that by using your extension they are violating their acceptable use policy. This is no different than any user writing a Tampermonkey script to modify any website they want to modify. Even further, this is no different than a user opening the Dev Tools console and modifying things there.

> I think you can safely ignore this cease and desist Will you cover his legal costs for choosing this decision? Right matters less than resources if it's expensive to even be right. You can state your case here on HN without repercussion, not so when being sued (it costs to even state your case reasonably due to hazards of self-defense and it costs dearly if you lose).

There isn't even a threat to sue yet. I'd at least wait until they escalate and post everything publicly as we go.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#152

Post by Tehnix »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #41

So I don't live in the USA. Can I fork it, rename it, and release it?

For everyone complaining about g3rv4 not (very understandably) taking a stand against slack, I'd advise you to clone it, and keep it live. That way we remove focus from g3rv4, but we keep alive the great extension that he built.

(I'm not in a country that would take Slack's illegitimate takedown seriously).

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#153

Post by jjeaff »

benatkin wrote: post #119
onli wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many jurisdictions you can't be bound by an agreement if not explicitly agreeing. It most likely boils down to where Gervasio lives. In my country for example I'd be certain Slack would have no standing at all with this. Though even in the US Slack would have to pull an Oracle to win this (which, well, is the risk that they might). Good reminder though in which moral category of enterprises Slack has to be sorted…

It might be more than just a EULA. Often to sign up for an API key, you have to go through a bit more explicit agreement to a ToS than there is in a standard funnel. There's also a bit more of an expectation that people will actually read them (and are competent to understand them).

This extension doesn't use the API. It just injects some JavaScript. Just like every adblockers and password manager does.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#155

Post by mattigames »

mikeryan wrote: post #144
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.

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.

Is there any company that have had positive results using such tactics?

It seems anyone who tries gets such a backlash and end up losing more than what they gain, plus they expose themselves to have false positives (e.g. one image didn't load due connection issues but slack falsely assumed it was an extension blocking it)

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#156

Post by imhoguy »

saagarjha wrote: post #45

> In order to remedy this, we ask that you please modify your product so that you are not forcing your own code into our services. We have opened a number of channels for the developer community to build tools that improve their experience with Slack. We encourage you to utilize those channels to their fullest extent. Except that these channels make it impossible to really interact with Slack, and they pulled the rug…

This. How many "Slack dark mode" haxtensions need to be made? I don't need more emoticon skin tones bloat. I need to save my eyes with hours in this productivity tool forced by my workplace.

Slack Team, just listen to the market (hint: HN score!) and bring such guys like OP into a gig to improve your stuff.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#158

Post by barbegal »

jahewson wrote: post #121
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…

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.

A disclaimer which says “this will void your warranty” is perfectly legal. Breaching the limitations of a warranty is not illegal. In fact in some jurisdictions, the limitations of a warranty are themselves not enforceable (in the USA under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act)

Inducing a breach of contract is a tort [1]. It does not apply in all cases where someone is induced to break a contract but in this case where the extension author has knowledge of the Slack terms of service and the extension targets Slack only, it almost certainly does apply. This argument was used in the case of Blizzard vs Bossland [2].

[1] http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/978...

[2] https://www.bristows.com/news-and-publications/articles/bris...

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#159

Post by jahewson »

rileyt wrote: post #20
comesee wrote: post #7

I dont see any legal reason why you can't publish the extension under a different name. Your extension is under no legal obligation to follow their acceptable use policy, only the users that use your extension.

I'd love to hear more about this from someone with legal expertise. It makes no sense for them to claim that every extension published on the Chrome store needs to comply with their acceptable use policy... If that were true, then wouldn't 1Password and any other extension that uses a content script also be considered unacceptable?

Great question. What matters is the outcome, not the mechanism. It is the modification of the functionality of Slack’s product which is at issue. Most extensions don’t do that in any substantial manner.

Furthermore, in a civil suit what needs to be demonstrated are actual damages to their business. (It’s not enough to just show that the ToS were violated). There’s no possibility of that for most browser extensions.

Re: Bye bye BetterSlack

#160

Post by jjeaff »

barbegal wrote: post #54
comesee wrote: post #7

I dont see any legal reason why you can't publish the extension under a different name. Your extension is under no legal obligation to follow their acceptable use policy, only the users that use your extension.

Whilst it is true that the extension has no legal obligation to follow the acceptable use policy, users do have to follow the policy and the courts would argue this extension coerces users to break the policy. The legal precedent is Blizzard vs Bossland [1] which Bossland lost in the UK courts [1], US courts [2] and German courts [3] [1] https://www.bristows.com/news-and-publications/articles/bris... [2] https://www.…

I'd say a large part of blizzard winning this case was the intent of the software. The interfering software was intended to facilitate cheating.

I think it would be unlikely to have won, had the software been made to streamline the game or make it run faster.

Post reply on HN