I have to confess to having felt pretty idiotic when I went many months ordering individual print issues, thinking all along that Hacker Monthly might not last for a full subscription year (in time, I subscribed). This is far and away the most popular item in the reading area of our office, with many, many clients asking for copies of articles from it. It is a great product and I am happy both to subscribe and to feature it for clients. Lim has done something pretty amazing here.
All in all, a pretty awesome success story!
But I mention this mostly to be technically correct (the best kind of correct), and for the entertaining prospect of trying to determine exactly who or what actually created the collection in the first place, from a legal point of view. And then it would require whoever that author or set of authors may be to sue, and that's either effectively impossible (the group of submitters) or impossibly unlikely (if the law decided it was YCombinator, because my goodness would that ever be a stupid no-win lawsuit for that entity).
now, don't get me wrong -- huge kudos to author for pulling this off but me and sure other users here had the similar idea long time ago: a nice, polished thick and colorful catalog full of the 1st page articles even with printed Hackernes comments. The major thing that stopped me, for example, was the thought that if this will get a traction and will bring some profits, most likely HN will come after me to either option A (95% probability) shut this down, or option B (5%) - to work out some sort of a deal.
Major reason why HN, Facebook, Youtube, etc etc does not care about someone infringing is because there is no business behind what they do. So most likely they can only "spread the word" which is a good thing. Now, when it comes to generating some profits off of someone else thats a different story.
once again to underline this: huge kudos for great idea and awesome execution!
-Not trademark because there is none here.
-Not copyright because you can't copyright facts. You might get them on the structure of the facts (this bit of info is first, that bit is second and this is third) but with a site like HN, there is no fixed structure, except that at one time this link was in the top X. I believe that's a fact more than structure.
-Comments! Now that's the weak link. If you don't get permission from each commenter, you're likely infringing. HN cant shut you down but they can incourage others to and it only takes one commenter to make your life difficult in this type of publication.
IANAL but this is my understanding. If anyone knows different, please correct me where I'm wrong.
I guess time will show (if HNM will keep traction) if HN will somehow, anyhow react.
(So for example in this case, when you say that the number of sites using the term Hacker News invalidates the trademark, what you mean is that no reasonable customer would think Paul Graham sponsors HNM, because the term Hacker News isn't associated with this site in particular. That's, let's say, up for debate.)
Trademark is actually one of the sanest areas of IP. It's pretty much about whether the alleged infringer is hurting consumers or not. I've fantasized sometimes about what would happen if you applied the same principle to patent or copyright ...
[Disclaimer: This is so not legal advice. Don't be an idiot.]
Generally, there's all sorts of ramifications any time you do something worth doing - if you use that as an excuse not to start, you'll never do anything.