[gpm]

Does anyone actually know who is running outline.com? Are they definitely infringing on copyrights or is that just a popular assumption?

I've been wondering for awhile, given how successful it is at navigating paywalls, if it might actually be run by the newspapers themselves as a way of attracting potential customers. Giving them content to keep them interested while guilting them into paying.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Does anyone actually know who is running outline.com?

The only hint I can get is their Terms of Service are governed by California law and the courts of Santa Clara County [1]. (It also refeeences “business transfers” in its privacy policy [2], implying it’s a for-profit entity.)

Otherwise—and this is unusual for any legitimate activity—I can find no reference to any legal person anywhere on their site.

[1] https://outline.com/terms.html

[2] https://outline.com/privacy.html

[gpm]

Unusual, but not as far as I know illegal or anything.

It would be unusual for an illegal operation to be

- Agreeing to the laws of a US court

- Have business transfers and be a for profit entity in that sense, hell, to even have a privacy policy.

(of course, they could also have just written that for fun)

[adventured]

You can pretty easily do a historical record look-up on the domain and its DNS. It does not appear to have any ownership tie to major media.

[acdha]

This is less useful than it was in the 90s:

    Registrant Name: PERFECT PRIVACY, LLC

    Name Server: NS-497.AWSDNS-62.COM
    Name Server: NS-1669.AWSDNS-16.CO.UK
    Name Server: NS-861.AWSDNS-43.NET
    Name Server: NS-1406.AWSDNS-47.ORG

[gpm]

Exactly, this tells us nothing.

If media were running this, the whole point is to not have it be publicly known, make people feel guilty for using the service.

If criminals are running this, obviously they don't want to be publicly known.