Comment by direwolf20

2 months ago

Programmers don't appreciate the fact that you can just violate terms of service. You can just do it. It's okay. The police won't come after you. Usually.

I think the point is more "in order to prevent people from scraping their site, which is against their ToS, they scraped some other site, against its ToS".

  • Read "in order to have more money, I did things that caused other people to have less money"

    • When someone who sees the world through a lens of morality notices somebody operating without morality, it is startling.

      And it deserves a call out! The benefits to being so cynical that you’re numb to it come with a lot of tradeoffs

Indeed. I read a lot of comments like these one you are responding on HN. It seems like there is a type of person who thinks that writing down what their rules are has some magical power.

“This isn’t what it was intended for”. Who cares?

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away I would encounter warnings on pirating websites saying “If you are an FBI agent you are not allowed to continue on this site”. Imagine their utter disbelief and shock if they were to be arrested by an FBI agent that clicked past the warning anyway.

I agree is must be programmers as a type that like rules a lot and, they think, what a perfect world it could be if people would follow them.

  • I'd ask who you think you have me confused for or where you got that quote from, but I know how little it matters insofar as getting you to recognize whatever delusion led to your comment.

    • I am sorry, I wasn't reacting to you I was reacting to the commenter who said:

      "Programmers don't appreciate the fact that you can just violate terms of service."

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