While this does technically violate 17 U.S.C. section 1201 (a)(1) according to other case law, I feel the responsibility is upon Snapchat, Inc. to make sufficient attempts to prevent such subversion. RE is always a sticky area, and because it appears you needed to pull some form of cryptographic keys out of that process, you are likely in an unenforceable region of a DMCA violation.
Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
41–50 of 137 posts
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#42There's no "fair use" defense because they aren't asserting a plain copyright violation -- they're asserting that using their API is a DMCA violation. I'm not a lawyer, but this seems laugh-out-loud crazy of them, and I'm not aware of anyone trying that claim before. So if you want to resist, you could start there: by finding out (possibly by asking a lawyer to talk to them) how they think your tool is acting to "des…
If you're using their API (which they host) without consent then you may well find yourself on the wrong side of computer misuse acts.
So this is definitely one of those occasions that legal advice is required, not moral advice.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#43I highly doubt this has anything to do with stifling innovation. Given Snapchat's popularity, it would make a lot more sense that they are trying to restrict 3rd party access to cut down on spam. Nothing will be more destructive to their service than bots churning out huge amounts of spam, undermining the trust they have built with their users.
The issue with their claim, I believe, is that the software isn't really circumventing any protections in place. It is simply using the existing publicly facing API. If the software made clear attempts to prevent this API from detecting or locking it out, then that would be an absolute violation, but I don't believe pulling crypto keys and reimplementing the API after REing it is necessarily a DMCA violation. Certainly it violates some other things, considering it is difficult to prove a clean-room situation when it was all done by one person. Seriously though, Snapchat should be focusing on hardening their API rather than trying to shut down imposter APIs.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#44I highly doubt this has anything to do with stifling innovation. Given Snapchat's popularity, it would make a lot more sense that they are trying to restrict 3rd party access to cut down on spam. Nothing will be more destructive to their service than bots churning out huge amounts of spam, undermining the trust they have built with their users.
The issue with their claim, I believe, is that the software isn't really circumventing any protections in place. It is simply using the existing publicly facing API. If the software made clear attempts to prevent this API from detecting or locking it out, then that would be an absolute violation, but I don't believe pulling crypto keys and reimplementing the API after REing it is necessarily a DMCA violation. Certain…
Agreed. They should definitely lock it down for their internal use (and eventually provide a public API). I would imagine that in a young company that is moving fast, there is a high potential to overreact or to appear to because of canned responses.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#45Ignore 99% of the responses in this thread, particularly any that say "I think...", "It seems fair...", and so on. You're in a legal situation here, if you are worried, contact a lawyer.
Bunk. He spent 2 days on a hobby project with no hopes of ever making any money off of it. It makes no sense to spend time and money consulting a lawyer over this.
Then it also makes no sense to not comply with the request. "It was just a weekend project" is not a legal defense.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#46> I am under the impression that reverse engineering is still protected under fair use doctrines. Is this the case?
Not insofar as the reverse engineering is used to produce an anti-circumvention device under the DMCA (that is, the reverse engineering itself is still just as protected as it used to be, but that protection does not extend to making the anti-circumvention device available.)
Note that there is still the issue of whether what you've actually is an anti-circumvention device.
> How should I respond, if at all?
If the project is worth the cost of consulting a lawyer, you very likely should do that so you understand better what your exposure here is and can make a more informed decision than you would be able to make based on lay advice you might get from HN. If its not, you should probably take it down.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#47The outcry! The injustice! Sigh
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#48At this point, I would just remove it. Since this is on the front page of HN, there's no way Snapchat can make the code disappear anyway.
If you need legal advice, I recommend seeing if SFLC (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/) will help you. In the past, I worked on a free software project where we willfully ignored a cease and desist notice and got sued by a large multinational corporation, and they were awesome.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#49Morally, I would take it down. It is all well and good to write these sorts of things as a demo, but distribution is something where I would defer to the actual owner of the API in question. After all, how many of us would want someone creating an unauthorized library to a private API that we don't wish to have public?
As was ruled in the recent Oracle vs. Google case, APIs are not subject to copyright protection: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/no-copyrights-apis-jud...
This time is a little bit different since google copy the API but they used their own devices to run the API, in this case he copied the API but still uses snapchat service so he must build their own snapchat server to avoid copyright protection i think.
Re: Ask HN: Take down my reverse-engineered Snapchat lib because they asked?
#50Whatever you decide to do, don't make posts like this that could potentially be used against you.
Just how can this post be used against him?