[jeremycw]

I feel it's not as cut and dry as you are trying to make it seem. Imagine if this were a 3rd party Facebook client that stripped out the ads, I bet Facebook would sue you. Just last year there was the legal battle between Padmapper and Craigslist. The case got thrown out [0] but only after Padmapper did some sneaky stuff so that it wasn't scraping craigslist directly. Also because craigslist didn't own full copyrights to the listings because they were user generated.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/30/craigslist-3taps-lawsuit-de...

[Alupis]

The OP didn't build the app to subvert the school's revenue model. That's the difference.

[sxtxixtxcxh]

but it is most certainly subverting the school's technical partner's revenue model.

[Alupis]

I don't think I need to state this is irrelevant.

If the school's technical partner was threatened by this app, they could bring suit... not the school.

[sxtxixtxcxh]

really? you honestly don't see how a school allowing their students to sell their technical partner's (not public[1]) content is relevant?

[1]: pre-emptive reply: no, it's not public, half the article is talking about how he's circumventing their authentication system. this is NOTHING like a news aggregator.

[tcheard]

> allowing their students to sell their technical partner's content

He isn't selling their technical partner's content. He is selling the reader, the content is already freely available to whoever can use the app anyway via a browser and their login credentials. There is a big difference.

[sxtxixtxcxh]

i don't think there is a big difference. without their content[1], his app is nothing; the web browser is still a web browser.

[1]: it's irrelevant whether the school or the partner owned it, he did it without permission (and i highly doubt the reader has the license to do whatever they wanted with that data either).

[Alupis]

You must be reading a different article. The OP does not circumvent authentication in any way. The OP caches it... that's it. And, that was only for some of the data, not the entire app.

So yes, his app is mostly like a news aggregator.

[sxtxixtxcxh]

since we've established the data is not public, and is in fact restricted and controlled, how is it anything "mostly like" hacker news? hacker news does not store your NYtimes username and password, scrape the NYTimes site for an auth token, make a login request on your behalf to copy that article and display it, in full text stripping out the NYTimes attribution and branding, on hacker news.

what would happen if they did is a thought experiment i'll leave up to you.