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Comment by davmar | Hacker News Reader

Two absurd claims: 1. Getting sued 2. Getting your work pulled off the internet

You say that you or your employer would be sued if you did this. Going through a legal battle over some copied HTML, CSS & JavaScript is expensive, distracting and time consuming. You'd first get a cease and desist letter. Who has the time or energy to sue over this?

Getting your work pulled off the internet against your will. How would that happen? Have you heard of the pirate bay? There's no off-switch because you used someones react component.

You might not like this tool or feel it facilitates behavior you consider unethical, and I get that, but these claims you made are absurd.

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C&D is a low effort shot to stop infringement. Suits follow where wilful and especially profitable or profit-damaging activity that can be shown. Eg, you stick it in your product. Saying suits are fanciful is harmful because they do happen. They often settle early, but that's attention your employer won't thank you for. It'll be grounds in many cases.

Very familiar with TPB. Their founders did time for their involvement. I've also sent DMCA notices and had content pulled from services, even a domain pulled by its host because the owner ignored the notice. You absolutely can take extraordinary steps to work around it but you know... Maybe just write your own components?

I've no opinion on this tool. It's a tool, like a text editor or View Source. I'm posting because of what people are suggesting doing with it.

I don't disagree - write your own components in most cases.

Your original comment stated, as fact, "you'll get yourself or your employer sued, and/or your work pulled off the internet against your will."

You're right that suits do happen, and while there is a grain of truth in what you said, stating it the way you did is just too bold in my opinion. I highly doubt the individual developer would be sued. How would a company seeking damages know who made the git commit so they could target the developer?

The clarification in your reply about copying being willful, profitable and profit-damaging is where things start to make sense. And if you had said something along the lines of that, I wouldn't have replied and would have found myself in agreement.

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