[forgotusername]

Moral of the story, yet again, ad infinitum: don't waste your time watering somebody's else's garden. Yes it's the Internet and technically data is practically almost free to reproduce, but this doesn't imply a trouble-free right to steal your neighbour's database and proclaim your 100 line Javascript hack a startup. Borrowing content like that only works when you have lawyers, cash, and an excess of testosterone or stupidity (see also: YouTube)

[qq66]

More specifically, if you're infringing something, it should be to gain momentum or some other asset that you can use once your ability to infringe goes away, which it will if/when you become successful.

[andrewljohnson]

Isn't that sort of a horrible, morally bankrupt thing to say?

If there is no better reason to infringe than you want to make some profit, then you're just a scumbag. I'd hope there was some other moral stance you are taking before you infringe.

YouTubers will surely say the ends justify the means, that the TV monopoly needed disruption, and it was good for consumers to break down traditional ideas about copyrights. Maybe that's just a thin veneer on greed, but it's a start at least.

[qq66]

If you can make something of value that persists after you stop infringing, then I would say it's worth it to the world. For example, YouTube is a great asset to the world that would not exist without early infringement. But that's a moral calculus you have to do for yourself.

[forgotusername]

..and under no circumstance consider theft an actual strategy. AFAIK it only worked for YouTube due to the virginal DMCA still receiving initial court testing, and probably only then due also to the company's prolonged ability to afford legal representation.

[JoeCortopassi]

This applies to business in general. If you're idea can be trivially reproduced by a semi-competent competitor, then you will find yourself in a heap of trouble once you have any measure of success.

[wwweston]

While I agree about the garden-watering/sharecropping, "steal" is a pretty tenuous description of what Padmapper was doing, and to the extent it applies, any kind of link database with a digest of associated content is also theft.

[welder]

By making CLMapper I feel partially responsible for motivating CraigsList to improve user experience. Also, CLMapper is 1330 lines of javascript not 100 and you were probably talking about PadMapper anyway. ;)

[sliverstorm]

Wait, are you arguing YouTube is an unworthy hack? They have got to have a pretty big infrastructure to manage and re-encode all that video.

[forgotusername]

Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the early history of YouTube

[RegEx]

I'm actually not. Any good reads you know of?

[forgotusername]

Could do worse than leafing through here (perhaps change date range to cover 2005): https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=uk&tbm=nws&#3...