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Comment by matrix | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. This behavior is not benign "naughtiness" (as the YC guys like to encourage), it's parasitic exploitation of other people's hard work. Another group I'd lump in with this group is readthedocs.org

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Why you put Read The Docs in the same category? RTD doesn't host anything unless you specifically set up an account and say you want to use them. They don't troll the web looking for projects, and hosting their docs whether they want them to or not.

Would you please elaborate on the problem with readthedocs.org?

readthedocs.org? How so?

I put readthedocs in the same category because they try to look like the original source of the documentation. They lift the content and style, lock stock and barrel, and then try to rank higher than the actual project's documentation pages.

I have in the past, unwittingly read out-of-date documentation because it looked exactly like the source site, and I didn't pay close attention to the URL.

If they were truly ethical, they would not try to impersonate the original sites. It fails one of the most basic tests for trademark infringement (which is, essentially: "might someone in a hurry mistake it for the real thing?").

Keep on trollin'

Erm... RTD does none of those things. There's a default site theme that is specific to RTD - they don't try to impersonate anyone. They don't "lift" anything unless the project owner has opened an account and requested that their documentation be hosted on RTD.

I'm at a complete loss how you've even come to the impression that RTD does the things you claim it does - because it does nothing of the sort.

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