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Comment by enzanki_ars

8 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what part of this is considered illegal? Not defending Kite here, but it seems that even though they are using some shady tactics to gain users, none of their product/ToS seems illegal.

16 comments

enzanki_ars

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efdee  8 years ago

Theft of copyrighted material, if bfirsh's claim of having the tool upload _all of the source code on his computer_ without asking about it.

Maybe even corporate espionage.

  • jonathanstrange  8 years ago

    > Theft of copyrighted material

    Copyright infringement is not theft. These are two completely different issues. When data is copied it is not taken away from the owner like when physical goods are stolen. Secondary damages may or may not occur, but they are not the same as depriving someone of a good. As an analogy, I wouldn't steal a car, but I surely would copy a car if I could do so by simply pressing a button...

    • mort96  8 years ago

      This isn't necessarily only about copyright infringement (though it's definitely that too). If some of the source code on your machine contain sensitive information, like API keys, database passwords, etc.

      Legally, the word "theft" isn't only used when one party loses anything; a victim of identity theft doesn't lose their identity, yet we don't call it "identity infringement". I'm not familiar enough with US law to know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if the word "theft" is used somewhere for obtaining sensitive information without permission.

    • raverbashing  8 years ago

      Nuh huh

      It's one thing to infringe on the copyright of a public work

      Another, very different thing is to copy something that's not public and might be considered IP or a trade secret